It is interesting to me that everybody that is alive and dead all have / had a birthday. Some who were alive were not afforded that gift. I was born on August 24, 1942 and am entering by sixty-sixth year of life. I one reflected that when my dad was sixty-six in 1958, (he was born in 1892), I thought he was really, really old. I was just a teenager. Now that I have reached that age. I realize that he was not old at all. Rather young, I would say. My how perspectives change over the years. I recently discovered that in 1456 in Mainz, Germany, volume two of the famed Gutenberg Bible was bound, completing a two-year publishing project, and making it the first full-length book to be printed using movable type. Not a bad day to share a birthday with such an accomplishment. Go figure, that a large part of my life would be given to trying to figure out was printed.

I am bless with a wonderful wife and two kids who are a joy to my life to celebrate life with on this day. Several years ago when the Seattle Mariners were playing in their record season, it looks like they are going to have another one this year on the opposite end, our family jumped on a plane to go to Baltimore, MD to watch the Mariners play. It was Cal Ripken’s last year with Baltimore. We share the same birthday.

According to answer.com, the word for today is “blue law.” This was a U.S. statute regulating work, commerce, and amusements on Sundays. The name is said to derive from a list of Sabbath regulations published (on blue paper or in blue wrappers) in New Haven, Conn., in 1781. Throughout colonial New England such laws regulated morals and conduct. Most lapsed after the American Revolution, but some, such as prohibitions against the Sunday sale of alcoholic beverages, remain on the books in some areas. I remember growing up in the South where the latter part of this law was enforced. I lived in Orange County Florida and it was call a “dry” county. There was no alcoholic beverages sold. Of course, that didn’t mean that there were no alcoholic beverages consumed. Just four doors down from where I lived was Miss Myrtle’s Liquor Shop. She did a whopping business on Saturday often staying open till midnight. At the drug store where I worked the “bums” as they were called who could not afford the real stuff would come and buy two items, the first was Sterno, a small heating canister that was largely jellied alcohol. They would squeeze the alcoholic out of the wax and put it in a coke to drink. Second, they would purchase “Bay Rum” an aftershave lotion for its alcoholic contents and also put it in coke to drink. Attempts to legislate morality have never worked, folks are pretty creative in finding ways around the law.

For all you computer folks today in 1995 was the release of Windows 95. What a difference a window makes. Right in the middle of writing this post, my friend Jimmy John Morris, the Northwest Vineyard Worship Coordinator called to “sing” Happy Birthday to me. Priceless!

I trust that today and all others are a wonderful blessing from God to be his agent in his world for the sake of it.

About a half-mile, as the crow flies, from my home is a small church on a highly traveled road on the Eastside area of Seattle, WA. I have watched the sign in front of the church for many years now. The picture to the right caught my eye in that I am preparing two online courses for Missio Dei Learning Community around the topic of Missional Church. I think the slogan may tell the tale well. Church signs were big in parts of USAmerica in times past. It most likely is still a big business. My wife showed me a picture of a newly constructed church sign that she saw on her recent trip to SoCal. That sign came into being by spending thousands of dollars and came complete with a “sign dedication service.” What I find interesting is that both of these signs belong to Assemblies of God churches. I’m not sure that the one in the pic is going to do what those who spend time putting up such slogans hope it will accomplish, but it sure gives the flavor of much of the church living in USAmerica. In my opinion, the sad thing in this attractional model is that if a driver was attracted by seeing such a sign, pull into the driveway, park the car, get out, go inside the building, there would be little attraction once inside.