Consumerism, Snow, and Marriage

Highlight of the Day: Interviewing Ryan Connor, Jay Link, and Janet McMahon for this month's Beyond the Standard program. The title of the program centered around consumerism, the subject of the February Christian Standard, in which each of these three wrote. But we quickly moved to something beyond and before overspending and over acquiring to the basic issue of why we live and how we glorify God with all of life—including all our possessions and our money but certainly not stopping there.
I want to listen to the whole program again (you can hear it too, here)—I'm thinking there's probably at least one editorial in their comments, and besides that, I need to consider again all the challenges and perspectives of these three fine people.


Surprise of the Day: Snow! Did they say we would have more snow? I don't think so. Evelyn and I grabbed supper at Abuelo's, and when we walked back to the cars (we met there) about 6:30, snow flakes were floating down from the sky like a scene from a Hallmark movie. I stepped outside after 8:30 to find the driveway covered and a pretty sifting of snow on the bushes. It had stopped snowing by then, though; the temperature was above freezing; and I don't think we're going to have any real problems with the white stuff.

Quote of the Day: "With marriage, our generation thinks that we should all be incredibly happy all the time. The moment we are not incredibly happy, something's wrong with the marriage. Well, nothing's wrong with the marriage! You've signed up to live with someone for a half a century, and as long as you still have stuff in common and are still close it's fine. But you see people getting divorced and you think "What do you think is waiting out there?" I kind of like that [the generation that grew up in the interwar period] would have laughed at this idea."

—Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey, in the Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2014