As you can tell, Peanut is no longer the wee little kitten I brought home from the Williamson County Animal Shelter on June 30, 2017. She’s grown a bit.

She’s completely at home now. She’s even learning to cuddle and be a lap cat, slowly but surely. She loves her some belly rubs, especially first thing in the morning.

I still have to remind myself that she’s not Lucy. She won’t replace Lucy, and there will still always be a little ache in my heart for my first cat who lived to the ripe old age of 17.

Still, I don’t regret for one moment picking Peanut. Or more truthfully, her picking me. I will always carry that memory of her reaching her tiny paw through the bars of her cage toward me, meowing pitifully. There was no way I wasn’t taking that little tortie runt home.

Here’s to hopefully at least 17 years more of Peanut making me laugh and bring a snuggly, cuddly little fur-ball who has completely stolen my heart.

Recently, I acquired an Atari Flashback Portable. It still blows my mind that a tiny handheld device can contain the same amount of games as that old console and a box full of cartridges. Theoretically, you could have every single game ever made for the Atari 2600.

I remembered two things when I went back and played some of the old familiar games:

1. The graphics were terrible. Video games have come a long, long way since the early days. Apparently, my generation (or maybe just me) were far more easily pleased. I mean, today’s kids aren’t satisfied with anything less than a smart phone and I was happy to have that pen with the four different colors of ink.
2. I suck at video games. And I’m not being modest while I break another high score. I’m terrible. Maybe even worse since being out of practice for so long.

It doesn’t really matter. I can play Pitfall or Centipede and get lost in those simple games and be 10 years old again for a little while.

I can’t go back to 1982 and live my life like a kid. That would be unhealthy, not to mention awkward and odd. I can at times briefly revisit my childhood in the form of nostalgia, while still remaining in the present and not missing what life has to offer me now.

Yeah, I think that sounds like a good plan.

“When John Kavanaugh, the noted and famous ethicist, went to Calcutta, he was seeking Mother Teresa … and more. He went for three months to work at ‘the house of the dying’ to find out how best he could spend the rest of his life.

When he met Mother Teresa, he asked her to pray for him. ‘What do you want me to pray for?’ she replied. He then uttered the request he had carried thousands of miles: ‘Clarity. Pray that I have clarity.’

‘No,’ Mother Teresa answered, ‘I will not do that.’ When he asked her why, she said, ‘Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.’ When Kavanaugh said that she always seemed to have clarity, the very kind of clarity he was looking for, Mother Teresa laughed and said: ‘I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.'”

Clarity is when I can see and understand my life and my future.

Trust is when I can’t see and don’t understand my life and my future, but I know Who does and I lean not on my own understanding (or lack of it) and lean on God’s instead.

Maybe we need to quit praying for clarity and start praying for trust.

Gratitude is a choice. Sometimes it feels like swimming upstream against the twin currents of entitlement and envy.

Gratitude makes your past make sense, and helps you see the good in your present.

Gratitude opens your eyes to see God in your life and in your world.

I choose to be grateful.

You know what the antidote is to the me-first epidemic of consumerism that is running rampant in this culture? Generosity.

As Winston Churchill said, you make a living by what you get, but you make a life by what you give.

Believers should be known by how they give– not just in terms of money, but in terms of time and talent.

I keep thinking of how Jesus praised the poor widow who gave her two mites for the offering in the temple.

Sure there were others who gave far more, but they gave out of their excess, while she gave out of what she had to live on.

I picture some of them had to downgrade from the Ferrari to the Lamborghini because of their gifts. Maybe they did without the second indoor heated pool.

This widow probably came home to a dark house because she gave her electric bill money.

I’m not suggesting that you give away the money to pay your bills.

I’m saying be generous. Go above and beyond the 10% tithe. Tip over the 15% standard, not because you got world class service but because God has lavishly given you far more than you deserve.

Before you begrudge the sacrifice of giving sacrificially, remember how God didn’t hold back or count percentages at the cross. He gave 100%. May we come to have God’s heart of generosity.

I did my usual lunch break walk through the Jackson Downs shopping center and peeked into Gamestop to see if there were any noteworthy items in the clearance section.

I didn’t see any clearance items I couldn’t live without, but I saw a serious blast from my past. The C64 Mini pictured above unleashed about a million memories from back in the day on Fox Meadows Road in Memphis, Tennessee where I’d spend hours playing games on my trusty Commodore 64 with a whopping 64 kilobytes (not gigabytes or even megabytes — kilobytes) of memory.

If you think you have it bad with spotty wi-fi, try having no internet at all. Not even dialup. My childhood was rough.

I’m pretty certain that my smart phone has more memory and storage and capabilities than every Commodore 64 ever in existence put together. But I have more happy childhood memories from that antiquated system than any ol’ smart phone will ever give me.

The only drawback is that the C64 Mini has 64 games. I wonder if it has the option of adding more. I imagine you could fit every C64 game ever in existence into a console that wouldn’t take up 8 gigs worth of memory.

So guess what’s going on my Christmas list this year.

Yep, I’m going retro again.

These are the names of the victims of the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that occurred on Saturday, October 27.

Pray for their families and friends and for the members at Tree of Life Congregation.

I’m convinced that this world we live in is a broken, scarred place where all creation groans from the effects of sin and the fall.

I’m just as convinced that one day, sooner than later, God in Jesus will come and set things right.

Therefore, we don’t grieve as those with no hope, as the Apostle Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4, but with hope that God will make every evil and every lie and every wrong come undone.

Just in case you needed this, here’s a friendly reminder:

Your current situation is not your final destination.

For those who belong to Jesus, the best is yet to come.

There it is. Your word of the day. And you thought you couldn’t learn anything from this blog post.

I do like rainy days. Just not when I’m driving in them, especially at night or in super heavy rain.

I like rainy days when I’m at home. I can look outside and enjoy the peacefulness and hear the relaxing rhythm of the rain without having to worry about all the crazy Nashville drivers who can’t drive in perfect sunny weather, much less in rain.

I know if I’m hitting the interstate on a rainy day, I’ll be slowed down by at least one accident. Usually more.

But at home, I’m free of all bad drivers. I can sit on the porch and watch the rain. I can read a book with a cup of hot tea. I can take a nap (and for some reason, I take the best naps when it rains).

So I guess I am a pluviophile of sorts. Just in the right setting.

I did my usual walk on my lunch break around 11:30 which inevitably leads to Target. I passed through the retro gaming section in hopes of finding some amazing 50% off deal.

This time I was in luck. I spotted an Atari Flashback Portable system marked down to $24.51 due to being repackaged. I think I may have briefly nerded out right there in the store.

You don’t know how much the Atari 2600 helped shape my childhood. Back in my day (says the old guy), that was THE gaming system to have. It may have been the ONLY gaming system out there, so the selection was a bit limited.

Now there’s a plethora of gaming systems that make that old Atari look like something out of the Stone Age that belongs in the Smithsonian.

But for me lots of memories are tied up in those games from almost 40 years ago. The older I get, the more I relish anything retro and nostalgic. It’s as close as I’ll ever get apart from a Tardis or a souped-up Delorean to going back in time.

There will be some Pitfall in my very near future.