I just finished reading “The Twelfth Imam” by Joel C. Rosenberg, and I’m astounded that the book was published in 2010, a long 8 years ago. It feels so fresh as if it were written this year. The story about the twelfth descendant of Mohammed (only a descendant of the Prophet may be called “imam”) who is predicted in Islamic culture to be the savior and appear to unify the Islamic world and bring about the destruction of all infidels.

How often do you pray? Do you pray each day? How many times a day? Or are you almost a stranger to prayer, offering one up only in times of trouble or bowing your head to share one when you’re attending a feast or a funeral? If you profess to be a Christian, how can you not pray? That’s like saying you love your spouse but never talk or listen to him or her!

Can anyone truly walk in another person’s shoes? I remember a 1970s song by Joe South entitled “Walk a Mile in My Shoes” that implored us to not judge another person until we had walked a mile in their shoes. It was a pleasant aphorism that resonated with the “Love Culture” of the times, but was terribly naive, to my way of thinking. I understand the concern that people are too quick to judge one another.

As I sit at my desk this misty morning, I contemplate a view that never gets old. We sited our house at the brow of a north-facing hill so we could overlook the three ranches below us. As far as I can see, there are only long reddish grasses, limestone tumbling down the hills dotted with stunted cedar trees, and at the bottom, lines of leafless oak trees defining the expanse of grazing fields all the way to distant blue mesas.

Have you ever wondered why the so-called reality television shows are so popular? From what little I have seen of them, they don’t seem to bear much resemblance to any reality with which I’m familiar. Personally, the reason I watch television is to escape from reality. My current favorite viewing is the Masterpiece Theatre offering “Downton Abbey.” The show was in its sixth and final season before I even discovered it, and so I waited patiently for the entire package to come out in a box set so I could binge-watch it.

There isn’t a person alive or dead who hasn’t wanted to leave their mark in this world. It pains us in those quiet dark moments of our lives that we might not be remembered beyond some cold incisings on a granite monument. What we don’t understand, is that we are trying to protect footprints we’ve made across a beach. The people who have lived on this earth number in the billions now, like the individual grains of sand on that proverbial beach.