A Christmas Story

One of our Mind Change Moment readers, Toni  LaGatta, shared this story with us and we wanted to share it with all of you. Thanks to Toni for letting us pass this along.  It is a bit longer than our usual posts but well worth your time. Merry Christmas and may God bless you in the New Year.

Christmas of 1979 will always be very special to me. I was a single mom with two boys, 4 and 7. I worked in Kissimmee, Florida, as a dental assistant, making $110 a week. Our 1973 Chevy worked most of the time, and through a special program I had managed to move into a small three bedroom house. It was our first Christmas in our new home, and I was wondering how I could make it special for the kids. I couldn’t afford to go home to Virginia where my family was, and none of them could afford to come to Florida. I had been divorced a few years and the kids’ dad lived in Texas. It was going to be just the three of us for Christmas.

Maximum Choice, Minimum Meaning?

Jonathan Sacks, writing in his new book, Not in God’s Name, says we are living in a century that “has left us with a maximum of choice and a minimum of meaning.”  That is a powerful, although sad, description of what it is a like in a world that is increasingly secularized.

One tech website says they identified 3,997 different smart phone models available in the world today.  With TVs you can pick a 24-inch flat screen or go up to 110 inches or land somewhere in between with dozens of brands to choose from. If you are into music you can use iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, Sirius/XM radio and dozens of other means.  We could go on, ad infinitum, but that is enough to make the point: A maximum of choice.