Rather than bring back an old post from 2009, I'm going to rewrite it using the same two themes. It was originally titled Two Significant Days:
As everyone knows, on November 22nd 1963 John Kennedy was killed in Dallas, Texas in what may have been God's first of many punishments on America over a fifty year span. We have never fully recovered from that tragedy. Aldous Huxley, the author of one of the most famous novels of a future dystopian society Brave, New World, also died that day. Yet a third famous man who died on that day was unknown to me at the time, and for many many years afterward. He also wrote a classic book, a book that I devoured during the days of my inquiry into the Gospel of Jesus Christ. C. S. Lewis died on November 22nd 1963! Mere Christianity was the book and since then I've read at least a dozen other books of his....and saw a couple of movies based on his books....The Chronicles Of Narnia.
On the second date... 36 years ago today, November 4th, 1979, Americans were taken as hostages in Iran and we are paying for that right up to the headlines of this past hour. On that day also, Edward M. (Ted) Kennedy's campaign for the Democrat nomination for president suffered a blow that it would not recover from. A televised interview with Roger Mudd, a distant relation to Dr. Samuel Mudd of the Lincoln assassination, was a disaster for Ted Kennedy. I know a little about this for I was a volunteer in Senator Kennedy's campaign which would be formally announced only three days after the Mudd interview aired.
As significant as these two events were, I was probably oblivious to them at the time, for my father died on that day and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, not all that far from the three Kennedy brothers. I had over thirty years of conversations with my mother on the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ before she died last year. It was never mentioned or even distantly alluded to with my father for I knew not Jesus Christ at the time. Possibly my father's death caused me to seriously consider what happens after one dies? I know this....within a little over two years after that day I was overwhelmed by that Gospel. I am still overwhelmed by its mercy, love and power for there is no greater gift, there is no fuller joy, and there is no other God.... no advocate as wise and no friend as faithful as our Lord and Savior.... and our coming King....Jesus Christ!
As everyone knows, on November 22nd 1963 John Kennedy was killed in Dallas, Texas in what may have been God's first of many punishments on America over a fifty year span. We have never fully recovered from that tragedy. Aldous Huxley, the author of one of the most famous novels of a future dystopian society Brave, New World, also died that day. Yet a third famous man who died on that day was unknown to me at the time, and for many many years afterward. He also wrote a classic book, a book that I devoured during the days of my inquiry into the Gospel of Jesus Christ. C. S. Lewis died on November 22nd 1963! Mere Christianity was the book and since then I've read at least a dozen other books of his....and saw a couple of movies based on his books....The Chronicles Of Narnia.
On the second date... 36 years ago today, November 4th, 1979, Americans were taken as hostages in Iran and we are paying for that right up to the headlines of this past hour. On that day also, Edward M. (Ted) Kennedy's campaign for the Democrat nomination for president suffered a blow that it would not recover from. A televised interview with Roger Mudd, a distant relation to Dr. Samuel Mudd of the Lincoln assassination, was a disaster for Ted Kennedy. I know a little about this for I was a volunteer in Senator Kennedy's campaign which would be formally announced only three days after the Mudd interview aired.
As significant as these two events were, I was probably oblivious to them at the time, for my father died on that day and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, not all that far from the three Kennedy brothers. I had over thirty years of conversations with my mother on the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ before she died last year. It was never mentioned or even distantly alluded to with my father for I knew not Jesus Christ at the time. Possibly my father's death caused me to seriously consider what happens after one dies? I know this....within a little over two years after that day I was overwhelmed by that Gospel. I am still overwhelmed by its mercy, love and power for there is no greater gift, there is no fuller joy, and there is no other God.... no advocate as wise and no friend as faithful as our Lord and Savior.... and our coming King....Jesus Christ!
