Faith & Religion

Back in the day when Bob and I still had young children at home, I baked a lot more often. Poor Bob - these days it’s Stater Bros Inc for all his baking needs! But we had pumpkin and zucchini breads, cinnamon rolls, and other yummy delights on a regular basis. One afternoon, while in the kitchen making rolls, our young daughter Sharon happened to walk in. She stood for a bit, just watching, before finally blurting out, “Is that the roll that’s called up yonder?” She caught me so off-guard I just had to laugh. Apparently she loved that song - “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder I’ll Be There,” but was pretty clueless as to its true meaning. Too funny - guess we never know for sure what kids are thinking — adults too, for that matter!

Clover Stewart has spent much of the last 14 months zipping up COVID-19 casualties in body bags. At times, she has felt like one of the many living casualties of the pandemic – frontline medical workers who, at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak, have witnessed a lifetime’s worth of gruesome deaths in the course of a typical week. One night in March 2020, amid the frenzied efforts of the medical staff, the grim sounds of patients gasping for air, and the acrid smell of disinfectant, Stewart’s job got very personal: She recognized one of the deceased as the receptionist she and her pregnant daughter recently spoke with at a doctor’s visit.

There used to be a yogurt shop in Hemet which had some mind-blowing artwork on their wall. I always wondered if it was there for all the impatient customers waiting for their orders to be filled. It was a giant marine painting of all kinds of fish and deep-sea plant life. Embedded and well hidden within the huge watery panorama was another hard to see picture - the taunt was to find the obscure design. But even when you eventually found the hidden image, the next time you came back for yogurt, you usually had to find the hidden picture all over again. It drove me nuts.

Jehovah’s Witnesses continue their ministry inside prisons without sending in ministers. The 60-cycle hum of dim fluorescent lighting was all that LeConte Hall could hear as he sat with a deaf Bible student named Derick, locked inside the tiny concrete-encased office of a prison chapel in Vacaville, California.

Occasionally, Bob and I love driving into Orange County for time off. We mosey through the malls, rumble through the antique stores, and dine at Felix’s, our ‘to-die-for’ Cuban restaurant. I remember one time in particular we drove to OC and tried checking into our favorite hotel. Of course, the first thing the desk clerk asks you is, “Do you have reservations?” Well, we didn’t. We had never needed them before, but unfortunately, this time, there was some kind of convention going on, so unless we had that precious reservation, we were out of luck. So - we were out of luck!