The thing that has fascinated me most about the Virgin’s appearances at Fatima is that it was to children, unsophisticated children.  Whatever heaven communicated, it had to go first through the mind of a child.  And there was evidently no collusion with parents or clergy.  As a matter of fact, the clergy were strongly suspicious of it.

The fact that the appearances were evenly spaced, by the month, and on the same day of each month, the 13^th, which had some significance with the Russian Revolution, the motivation for the appearances.  Some of the things the Virgin told the children were surely beyond their ken.

The quote that shocked me the most, and appalled me, was this: “The sins for which the most people go to hell are the sins of the flesh.”  Now what do nine-year-olds know about sins of the flesh?  If Bernadette Soubirous had said that, in speaking of the Virgin, I’d understand.  But if the three shepherd children said it, I believe.

Two of my sons were almost opposites in personality; the older was a risk taker, the younger an estimator and calculator.  The older climbed the Half-Dome in Yosemite with two climbers who barely spoke English, and the younger booked passage to Thailand to attend a seminar on using the internet to make money.  Both were successful.  But the younger of the two is still with us, making money.

The basis of both their success, as I see it, is that the younger one was willing to work with God’s secret weapon—time.  His pergola sales accumulated over the year, and this Covid-19 year, when people stay at home, was a banner year.  The older one had heart, too.  But he couldn’t wait.

We work with what we have, and trust in the Lord.

What could be more frustrating?  I was given a smart phone and the equipment for recharging it, but it just went dead.  What kind of equipment does that before you can learn how to operate it?

I taught over a thousand kids how to use their English language to further their goals, and believe me, I taught them well.  And  now I get this Apple smart phone with no instructions on how to charge it.  What’s the matter with these kids; don’t they  know how to make a present of something?

You don’t give a trumpet without lessons, and you don’t give a book if there’s no chance the recipient will learn how to read!  I taught that boy the basics of life, but somehow I failed on the goal of life.

“The Lord loves a cheerful giver,” was a saying  I heard often as a youth.  I found this to be true in my own life, and I think I love a cheerful  giver too, especially when he or she is giving to me.

An example of a cheerful giver was Franklin Graham (son of Billy Graham) during that Christian March on Washington to pray for our nation.   A total surprise during the prayer was the blowing of the shofar horn, as in Jewish custom, by Jonathan Cahn, head of Jews for Jesus.  This is a totally new group, and I stand in support of them.  With a prayer shawl, it lent color to the Christian prayers for our nation.

George Washington said he turned to prayer  because he had nowhere else to turn, and it certainly paid off for him.

I got an emergency call from California.  It was Rudy, my brother, to let me know that Pres. Trump got three nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize.  (Yes, he’s a Californian, but an unusual one.)  As I see it, even the liberals believe in the Nobel Prize, though they may not believe in the flag, or the right to bear arms, or God.  Finally our President, in the view of all, made good.

When I was a boy, there was a cartoon strip called the Katzenjammer  Kids, who always got into trouble.  Well, President Trump always got into trouble , according to the Left, and now he finally made good.

There are stories galore in our folklore about people, mostly kids, who made good, from Cinderella to Tom Swift, and now the man the pundits scoffed has come into his own.