Contemplations

FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE Don't miss out on what awaits us in Heaven Who will go to heaven? "At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered. 2 Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. 3 Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever. Daniel 12:1-3 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.” Mark 8:38 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as mu

THE END OF EARTH Will the dead be able to communicate with their loved ones? 5 The living are conscious that they will die, but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all. Ecclesiastes 9:5 His spirit goes out, he goes back to the ground, in that day his thoughts, all his thinking do perish. Psalm 146:4 22 “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24 So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’ 25 “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go

DAD'S SOCKS We eight kids in my family were poor when we were very young but we didn't know it. We made do with what we had and were often creative with how we had fun. I remember Dad making a marble game out of wood, newspaper kites, a go kart that rarely ran, stilts and how he taught us to whip green persimmons off of the end of a very flexible, long stick. We climbed trees and swam in a creek that turned out to be sewer drainage. Mom refused to let us come in the house until she hosed us down when we returned home. There were little green snakes hanging off of every other branch around that creek. We also got in trouble for swimming in what my sister labeled "the skunk pond." It was where the pigs went to "bathe." When it froze over, we "ice skated" on the pond with just our shoes. I had a pair of shoes with taps so I could fly across that pond. We swung on "grape vines" over another creek. They weren't really grape vines but we ca

A BIT OF WALL HISTORY I was thinking that when John and I pass, there is much that the Wall family wouldn't know about Tallie and Lena. Some you already know, mostly through gossip, but I thought I would tell you what I was told happened to them through the years. You may or may not know that the building to the right of Tallie and Lena's house once belonged to Lena's family, the Anconas. Lena's mother's maiden name was Torregrossa. They were full Italians and looked it. Anyway, the building once housed a store. It burned down and I guess it was rebuilt because it's still standing today. Lena said her dad was a really mean man, so mean that when he died no one shed a tear. When the building burned down, Lena said they had no shoes to wear. They were given some but her dad refused "charity." So they had to wrap plastic bags around their feet. John Sr. told me a story one time and then later denied it happening. I told him I didn't pull it