Editorials

Hanes has a sock commercial that is just the most unbelievable spot ever concocted in the history of commercials. It shows a man dipping his son’s feet in what looks like plaster. He is apparently trying to make some kind of covering so he won’t have to buy socks for his son. Who can identify with that? Nobody. It’s just weird.

Some spots just don’t make sense like the ones for a rug cleaning company called Stanley Steemer (that’s the company’s spelling, not mine). They leave you trying to figure out what’s going on.

Is there enough salt in the ocean so everybody can take a grain of it to choke down all the politician promises served up during an election year.?There is no problem too large, no dilemma they can’t handle and no mountain they can’t topple. Have a leaky faucet? They will form a committee, study the problem, come up with a solution and attack the problem head on as they set up the DDA, the Drip Deterrence Agency.

One of the favorite Bible stories told to children is Daniel in the Lion’s den.

During my freshman year at Baylor, the football team was ranked third in the nation. It stayed in the top ten all four years I attended the university and in my senior year, the Baylor Bears beat Tennessee in the Sugar Bowl. Consistently winning games made students feel like we were all winners and could do big things. In subsequent years the team didn’t do well and fell from the ratings.

Donnie Dunagan grew up dirt poor in Memphis, Tennessee. He and his parents lived in a two room flat above a hardware store. A few blocks from his house a black man named Sam set up a crank victrola every day and danced to the music. People passing by would watch him for a while and drop a few pennies and nickels in front of him. In 1938, when Donnie was four years old, his mother took him to see the dancing man. Although Donnie was barefooted, he started mimicking the dancer. The man, who Donnie says was very courteous, asked Donnie’s mother if her young son could join the dancer.

Try and imagine back a couple of millennia as Mary sat in a barn, looking at her newborn son nestled in a feed trough.

The birth was different, she knew this from the visit she had from an angel about a year before. Luke retold the encounter: “The angel went to her and said, ‘Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.’

“And he said to me, ‘Go in and see the wicked and detestable things they are doing here.’ So I went in and looked and I saw portrayed all over the walls all kinds of crawling things and unclean animals and all the idols of Israel. In front of them stood seventy elders of Israel, and Jaazaniah son of Shaphan was standing among them. Each had a censer in his hand, and a fragrant cloud of incense was rising.