"Your mother's wrinkles, your daughter's pimples, and your face is right in the middle."

That was the voice-over in an Oil of Olay advertisement I saw last night. And it got me thinking...

Oil of Olay has been around (under various names like Oil of Ulan and Oil of Olaz) since 1949. I remember seeing ads for the product when I was a kid (so very many years ago ;D). What I got thinking about is this: the women who were targeted by the Oil of Olay ads when I was a kid are the mothers of the women...

I was thinking recently about the time I spent in the university orchestra while I was a college student. I particularly remember our orchestra conductor, Anatole, who told many stories. Here's one he told during an orchestra rehearsal.

He was once part of a quartet that was working on a piece of music by a modern composer. It was a piece of music that had "more black than white on the page," which is a way of saying that there were lots and lots and lots of very fast notes! So this quartet worked and worked and worked to get every...

A couple years ago I had my cholesterol level checked, and my doctor told me "Your cholesterol level is way too high." We talked about what I was going to do about it, and I told him I wasn't interested in taking any medications to lower my cholesterol. I wanted to do the "all natural" approach, even though I knew it would be much harder.

So I changed my habits. I changed the amount of exercise I do, and made significant changes in my diet. Now I eat far less fast food, far less fatty foods than I used to. And the good news is that, in the last two years, my cholesterol has dropped 27 points. I still have a little way to go, but that's definite progress.

Changing my diet has really changed the way that I "taste" food. I used to love really greasy foods. Now, however, after being careful to avoid greasy foods, my appetite has changed. If I have a pepperoni pizza, I find myself thinking "Wow! This tastes really greasy!" It's not that pizzas are any more greasy now than they were two years ago; it's just that my appetites have changed because of...

When I was little, growing up on our farm, I remember one of my least favorite days was the day we slaughtered chickens. Not a fun time.

Of course, I can't complain too much...the chickens had a much harder time of it than I did.

Imagine for a moment that you could talk to the chickens, and they could understand you. So the week before it's time to do the slaughtering, you go into the chicken coop and say to the chickens, "Next week I'm going to start slaughtering some of you guys so we can have tasty fried chicken!"...

Every morning when I get up I go through all my morning rituals: a cup of coffee, a shower and (occasionally) shave, and maybe a bowl of cereal or a couple slices of toast. And before I set foot out of my house, I've looked at my mirror once or twice to make sure everything looks okay (or, at least, as well as can be expected!).

I suspect we all have similar rituals. I wonder, though, how often we think about the fact that we have a spiritual mirror as well! James tells us: 

My freshman year in college, I took Physics 121, which was the introductory-level physics course, required for all engineering majors. It was a "weed out" class, which meant it was intended to be difficult enough to "weed out" the people who either weren't serious about study, or weren't able to keep pace.

Tests were graded out of 120 points, and anything above 55 points was considered passing. Another way of saying that: if you got 46%, you were passing! Still, half the class was always in danger of failing.

Because I had an incredibly strong background in physics from high...

I have a violin which was given to me by my aunt many years ago. It is a beautiful instrument, and is capable of making very beautiful sounds. When I look at my violin, and listen to the sounds it makes, I think, "What an extraordinary piece of workmanship!"

The pieces of wood were carefully cut from the trunk of the tree in thin sheets, which were then cut into exactly the right shapes to fit together into a musical instrument. But that's not the end of the process; the ribs (the wood separating the front and back plates of...

This afternoon I was waiting at the crosswalk to cross the street by my house. A car coming from the left saw me, and pulled to an abrupt stop to let me cross.

There was no traffic coming from the opposite direction, so I should have been able to cross. But I noticed that another car, also coming from the left, was traveling rather quickly in a 25 mph zone, and didn't seem to have noticed that the first car had stopped.

Did I cross? No. I waited for the second car to come to a screeching halt, because I knew that if he hit the first car, the first car might jolt forward...and that would have been rather inconvenient for the person walking across the crosswalk...namely, me!

That was only sensible. I looked at the circumstances around me, considered the effects that others would have on me, and the potential consequences of my own actions, and then based on these considerations, chose a course of action. It was only sensible.

I find it interesting that in such a short book as Titus (only three chapters) Paul gives the instruction to be sensible five times! Depending on your translation, the word...

Imagine that you are not feeling well, so you schedule a visit with your doctor. After your checkup he tells you, "You've got a heart problem. We need to perform open-heart surgery."

So there you are, on the operating table, and the doctor is pulling out his tools of the trade...including, of course, his scalpel.

"Oh, Doctor," you say, "that looks very sharp, very painful. Do you think you could use something different?"

"What did you have in mind?"

After a moment's thought, you reply, "Maybe a feather-duster? That wouldn't hurt so much."

The doctor smiles, pulls a feather-duster out...

Lately I've been discovering gray hairs here and there throughout my gotee. The teens in my youth group tell me it's a sign of how old and decrepit I'm getting. They're so kind.

In reality, having gray hairs doesn't really bother me from an aesthetic point of view; I've always thought that beards which have a mixture of gray and dark look very distinguished. I'm certainly not one who feels the need to color my hair in order to continue feeling (or looking) young.

But the thing I hate about my gray hairs is that those hairs are a different...