We Are Not Promised Tomorrow

...you never know when today is the last one.

Just as I was arriving at a wedding rehearsal in The Colony this evening, I got a phone call that the groom's grandfather had suffered a heart attack and died about 90 minutes earlier. At the venue, only the best man and father of the bride were there; everyone else was at the hospital.

My heart aches for this family, and especially the bride and groom. The wedding will go on tomorrow, but there's no way it will be quite the same for the couple. What should be the happiest Saturday of their life will have a shadow over it.

However, we'll deal with it, perhaps with a moment of silence for his memory. It's absolutely no disrespect to the grandfather for the couple to celebrate on their wedding day. And it's also no disrespect to the couple to have a solemn moment in memory of a grandparent.

I currently have 4 grandchildren and one on the way. If God should call me on the day one of them is to be married, I absolutely want them to go on with the ceremony.

My prayers are with Elizabeth and Elliott and their families.

Blessings,
Ken

My Grandson Is...

Abnormal.

At first glance that sounds like a bad thing. Owing to my middle sister and my daughter-in-law #1 I've learned quite a lot about special education and special needs kids. Interesting thing is way more attention (and funding) is focused on those kids who are challenged or slower learners. What about the other end of the spectrum?

Aidan is different. His brain isn't wired like most of us. It's a little scary that my grandson is intellectually way beyond me in many ways. He loves space, science and math. His parents recently bought for him a DVD series called "Elegant Universe". It's pretty intense material about space/time, gravitons, and the inner workings of atoms.  Following the show, he went up to his room with a pad of paper and starting trying to put it all together. He was asking questions like "what's the speed of an electron?" and "when an atom loses a neutron does it bounce to another atom?". 

Aidan is 8 years and 5 months old. How many "normal" 8 year olds ask those questions? Where's the funding to keep kids like him challenged, focused and ready to invent the technology to take us into the 22nd century?

Blessings,

Ken