When your life flashes before your eyes, make sure you've got plenty of quality memories to watch.

This has been a fairly quiet week but that is subject to change at any moment. In fact, none of us know in advance what a day, any day, might bring to us. It is Thursday, November 29, 2012, and I welcome you to today's edition. I suppose what got me to thinking about this is the 120 vehicle pile up that occurred last week, not so far away from where we live. Instantaneous terror. Unmitigated chaos. Mayhem. And, sadly, tragedy ensued. The couple that were sandwiched between an 18 wheeler and another vehicle were killed instantly. They had not made it very far from home. It was their very first time to make a road trip at Thanksgiving instead of being at home. They were in their early sixties. He owned a small business. They were beloved. It was very difficult to watch their grown sons talk about them on the TV news program. These fellows were devastated. I read their obituaries in the big metro newspaper. In his write up it listed all his family and then got to his grandchildren. About seven of them. Then came this parenthesis: (We love you Paw Paw.) What greater accolade could anyone achieve? Enough said. I feel another round of sniffles coming on. Must be my allergies, or something. May God bless their memory and also help us all to realize the unpredictability of this life that He has granted to us. Amen.

Where do we go to take responsibility for messing everything up? I'm talking about those of us who are called the post war baby boomers. We had the temerity to be born between 1946-1964. We are a huge problem to all the other groups, the Generation X's, the Millennials or Generation Y, and the soon to be unhappy with us, the Generation Z crowd. We have made it mostly difficult just by hanging around, and there's so many of us. That seems to be the problem. Stores don't really know how to market their products. They want our money but if they push stuff we are interested in, well, that turns off the younger customers. The Census estimates that between 76 million and 79 million of us were born during the now famous post war baby boom. The good news for those who think we are crowding them out is that several million of us have already died. (Some say more than one of us check out every minute of every hour each day.) Sadly, that becomes good news to somebody. Others predict that most of us post war kiddos will be out of here by the late 2020's. For me, I'm here as long as the Lord sees fit, and after that, I am ready to go to my real home, and if that should make it easier for a marketing person or make a retailer happier, well, so be it.

I suppose the age gap is nothing new. In the Bible we read about King Solomon's son inheriting his father's throne. His name was Rehoboam. Solomon had built one of the greatest kingdoms in the history of the world. But, to do so he had required great taxation upon his people. After Solomon's death, some wise white haired elders came and advised Rehoboam that he should secure the loving favor of the people by lowering the burden they were having to carry. He listened but then brought in his young buck buddies and asked their opinion. They gave him their take. He recalled the elders and essentially told them that if the people thought they had been overburdened in the past, well, they had better hang on because it was going to be painfully more under his rule. Bam! A civil war ensued and the kingdom was divided. (1st Kings Chapter 12) To quote Rehoboam's dad, Solomon, the recognized wisest person who ever lived on the planet except for God in human flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ, writing in Ecclesiastes, "The thing that has been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." (Chapter 1, Verse 9) See what I mean? And, oh by the way: It does pay to pay attention to thus says the word of the Lord. Amen.    ....More later.