My wife and I waited for our grandson to be dismissed from his last day of Middle School. Earlier, his older brother celebrated his Promotion Day (from Middle School to High School) with several academic medals hanging from his neck. It was a proud morning.

A dear friend of mine sends me verses every day. This morning, he sent me a poem he wrote about grace and peace which created an image in my mind of a shell in a calm sandy beach. I was transported to my carefree childhood summer vacation --- lying down on my stomach along the sandy beach, surrounded by an assortment of smoothly eroded, broken, white and pink, perforated, corals and shells. As the lapping waves pushed one shell to shore, I wondered what happened to the creature that lived in that shell. Was it eaten by some sea monster? Did it die of old age? Now, nothing's left of the soft slimy muscle tissue of this mollusk … only the beautiful fossilized home of the snail remains as a testament that it once slithered on the ocean floor. To think that each of these other shells has a story to tell.

A few days ago, someone mentioned that she came from a wealthy family. She said her grandfather owned a coal mine. “What an odd statement,” I thought. Why would anyone declare she was wealthy? Why would wealth even matter? Does wealth change our relationship? Will I need to bow down and worship? The rolodex in my mind flipped through a list of the many who I consider “wealthy.” Is there anything I could learn from them?

He was orphaned because he was born with physical deformities. He was transferred and abused from one foster home to another. That’s when he started his collection of tattoos and piercings. Like most self-mutilators, the physical pain countered the mental anguish that had become his normal reality. Internally he was shouting for attention so he could expose the injustice of his prison institution. But the more he disfigured himself, the more he became invisible.

Last week, my wife had a board retreat in Palm Springs so I tagged along. Most of the time, when I join my wife’s work activities, I just stay in our hotel room. You see, I’m not really into traveling and I don’t really care for the long rides --- be it on a boat, or in a float … in a train, or on a plane … on a van or on a tram … I do not like them, Sam I am! Nope, hate wasting my time like that. I can’t wait for Elon Musk to invent a teleportation machine and say --- “beam me up Scotty!” But this time was different. I rode a tramway to the top of the world with four sweet ladies.

My garage door suddenly died. I clicked on the remote --- nothing! I clicked on the wall switch --- nothing! No lighting … no sound … nothing! That began my adventure to the wonderful world of garage door repair.

I have a breakfast meeting every Monday morning at a fast food restaurant. It’s supposed to be a business meeting where we exchange referrals but it has evolved to more of an excuse for us to get out of our daily routine and unwind. We’ve known each other for over 15 years. When we solve all the world’s problems we separate to our own lives. Dan was one of us.

I just had my insides probed by a staff of three. It was supposed to start at 3:30pm but it actually began 2 hours later. As soon as I get back in shape I’m going to chasten the scheduler in the gastroenterology department. I didn’t want to say anything before the procedure otherwise I would have been at the mercy of those guys. That’s one of the things I realized as I waited in that lonely cubicle: I felt so helpless. There I was lying in a hospital bed with tubes sticking out and prepped up for the operation, naked underneath the flimsy hospital gown. My biggest concern: what to do if there was a 9.5 earthquake or a fire alarm sounded or Godzilla were to attack --- I would have to had run out butt naked and then interviewed by a CNN reporter.

Easter Sunday with the whole family was so much fun. All of my kids and grand kids were playing at the park --- from my oldest kid to the youngest grand kid, they were running around like little children. This was just as I imagined and hoped to see when I reached this age. God is good.

I've been doing research on the Ethiopian Bible and it's fascinating. In a nutshell, the Ethiopian Bible has the same books as our regular Bible except that it has a few more books (about 15 more) that were tossed aside by the Bishops (during the Council of Nicea during the 3rd century). They doubted these other books were God-inspired and were not worthy to be among the collected scriptural books.