Rejoice with me friends! My book, The Samaritan’s Friend, has been published and is available in all the usual online places.

Since you follow this blog, I would like to make an offer that holds a small request.

If you would like a free copy, send me an email, Hunter62415@gmail.com and I will send one, signed if you wish. The ask is that after reading it, you post a picture of the book on social media, saying that you read it, and that you also find the book on amazon.com and give it an honest review. Yep, I’m enlisting you as my launch team.

No worries if you have other things on your plate, but if you do read it, I love to hear what you think.

Grace, Jim

In a few weeks I will turn 70, completing my seventieth spin around the sun as they say.

I like saying it that way. A year long trip around our personal star feels cooler than adding another candle to a crowded cake. Plus, it inspires some pondering.

This year, I’m taking the ride with over 7 billion other Homo Sapiens. That’s a bunch of passengers. Over the course of our planet’s life maybe 117 billion of us have been born.

Of course it took us between 200,000 and 300,000 years to do that. Which seems like a long time until you consider that the mountain outside my western North Carolina window is 480 million years old. Which seems like a long time until you consider that the earth is 4.5 billion years old. Which seems like a long time until you consider that the universe is 13.7 billion years old. I’m not sure what was, or how old that may be, before the universe exploded into existence.

On top of it all, we’re invited to consider that the One who started this with such wild extravagance, has no beginning.

Back to our personal star. It’s not surprising that some ancients considered Sol a deity. He keeps us alive, makes things grow, and if he goes out, we go out. I don’t pray to him but I sure appreciate him. He lives in the neighborhood we call The Milky Way, which has between 100 and 400 billion other stars. It’s a pretty big neighborhood, about 100,000 light years across. There are maybe 100 billion such neighborhoods. We call them galaxies.

Meanwhile, on the back deck, there is a spider meticulously weaving her web. She’s hoping a gentleman spider will come by, they’ll hit it off, and she can get her eggs tucked away before it gets too cold. I believe that the One that knows when sparrows fall, the one without a beginning, is somehow in her and with her.

Maybe Adam, the Terminix man, won’t notice her when he comes by next week. I’m not going to point her out.

So here we are, the current Charlotte and me, riding an air bubble around my favorite star.

In the immensity of all this, here’s something I believe about Charlotte the spider. And me. And you. You remember Pooh’s buddy, Tigger? I believe he got it right when he sang, “The wonderful thing about Tigger is I’m the only one.” He is the only one, and I believe we can all sing with him, inserting our names.

In the vastness of time and space, you and I are completely, for ever and ever, unique. There has never been a you, and there will never be another you. That’s true for snowflakes, leaves, spiders, you, and me. If possible, that makes us all, the whole thing, even more amazing and sacred.

My plan when I do hit 70 is to take a walk. Nod to the sun. Watch a leaf fall. Hum a little “All Creatures of Our God and King.” Be glad I was born.