What Do You Do with your Old Sunday School Manuals?

The Acts and the Epistles...The New Testament by Russel B. Swensen:  ( He was an ancient history professor at Brigham Young University). 

This manual was purchased in May 1995 by my husband, Ed Harris,

from the Ward Library (Fort Walton Beach, Florida), via Sister Mary Powell.  Ed and I had been married for just over 10 and a half years.  I knew well, by now, that Ed always needed a soft-covered book to stick by behind his back under his belt.  That way, he was never without a "good" book to read whenever or wherever he had a few minutes to kill.

My husband, Ed, and I were residing at 37 Maples Street, in Fort Walton Beach, at this time and our phone number, 850-243-4589, written on the face sheet of the book. 

This manual was published for use in the Sunday Schools of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.   The copyright was 1955. 
 
Swensen was an ancient history professor at the time of the publication of this manual.   This book can be borrowed for 14 days, via the Internet: https://archive.org/details/newtestamentacts00swen.

So a book can become a member of the family; I often was quick to mark up a Sunday School manual and make it my own, though the highlighting or underlining process didn't look particularly nice.  My husband, Ed, had been taught, by the nuns, perhaps, that such a habit was, in effect, a defacing of the book.  He may have learned over time to disregard that opinion, that "rule" of his first religion, Catholicism, but not in this case.  I cannot even determine that any of the pages are "dog-eared".

This is a scholarly book, a serious treatment of the subject and the first chapter is titled, "The Religious Significance of Acts".  Perhaps, I will read the book.  Paragraphs like this one make it a tempting proposal:

"Luke had written a most beautiful and appealing account of the career of Jesus wherein he stressed the Master's humanitarian and tender regard for the despised and underprivileged groups of the contemporary society, such as the poor, the sinners, the women, and the foreigners."
 

Good Timber

Intracoastal Waterway

A Poem Found, "Good Timber":  The photo is down at the shore on the Intracoastal Waterway, not far from the Mary Esther/Hwy. 98 location which used to be the home of some of my grandkids.  

I think this photo is Torin, my grandson.  Notice the "fence"?  Or maybe you would call it a guard rail?  It reminds me that fences can be made of wood, created to be a guide and a protection, as well as for keeping someone or an animal corraled.  

Torin is a young man, now, holding down a job in Orlando, and still great fun to be around!  Around Fort Walton Beach, this waterway is called "The Sound".  Torin is good timber.  The Sound represents to me all of the events that follow our life-lines.  Good, bad, and indifferent.  This is the test of good timber, the challenges, perhaps.

The Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) is a 3,000-mile (4,800 km) inland waterway along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts of the United States, running from Boston, Massachusetts, southward along the Atlantic Seaboard and around the southern tip of Florida, then following the Gulf Coast to Brownsville, Texas.

Location: Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts of ...

Length: 3,000-mile (4,800 km)

Good Timber

by Douglas Malloch 

The tree that never had to fight

For sun and sky and air and light,

But stood out in the open plain

And always got its share of rain

Never became a forest king

But lived and died a scrubby thing.

The man who never had to toil

To gain and farm his patch of soil,

Who never had to win his share

Of sun and sky and light and air, 

Never became a manly man

But lived and died as he began.

Good timber does not grow with ease,

The stronger wind, the stronger trees,

The further sky, the greater length,

The more the storm, the more the strength.

 By sun and cold, by rain and snow,

In trees and men good timbers grow.

Where thickest lies the forest growth

We find the patriarchs of both.

And they hold counsel with the stars

Whose broken branches show the scars

Of many winds and much of strife.

This is the common law of life.

This poem was printed in a church magazine many years ago; I had cut it out to save and re-discover.  If you want to see it on the Internet, put the title into Google.  Here is one such "hit".

 

 

 

Is watching history unfold a thing of the past?

I would suspect that so many folks have just tuned out when it comes to watching/listening to the daily news unfolding.  

We have the unique circumstance of choosing where to get the news; can we even obtain an outlet that isn't colored by interpretive reporting?

Is there a place that you can get unbiased news? Think about this: do you want the unbiased news?  Or do you want to filter your news through the coloring of one view or another?  Maybe you want to see history unfolded from the conservative viewpoint; where would you go, online, for that?  Which major news television offering tries to give both sides?

These are questions you might ask yourself and how much "happening now" or "breaking news" can you really take?!!  More on this topic, later.  And by the way, what happens to the stories that pop, instantly and then disappear...not to be found the next day?