Pineridge Blog

While the New Year is still young, I want to wish you all a very happy and healthy 2020. Every year brings some sadness, fear and dis-ease if not disease, so my deepest prayer is that you have a meaningful 2020. Whatever this year brings know that God is the One “in which we live and move and have our being” in all things.

One day follows another, and we often don’t realize how much things have changed or how far we have come until we look back. Someone in the congregation shared with me some statis-tics for 1919, one hundred years ago. I shared the first half last week at the end of 2019. Here are the rest:

(continued from last week…)

• Sugar cost four cents a pound.
• Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
• Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
• Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
• Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from en-tering into their country for any reason.
• The Five leading causes of death were: Pneumonia and influenza; Tuberculosis; Diarrhea; Heart disease; and Stroke.
• The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was only 30.
• Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented yet.
• There was neither a Mother's Day nor a Father's Day.
• Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write and, only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
• Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help…
• There were about 230 reported murders in the entire U.S.A.

Some things have changed, but many are still the same. We still all need good food, safety, love and meaning. Fewer people go to church regularly than they did in 1919, but everyone who goes to church now chooses to. There is no longer any societal pressure to participate in a church. Another change is that “church” does not capture all of the ways people worship. Two other certainties we can count on are-- change and God. What-ever the world is like in 2119 it will be vastly different than it is today. And every moment of every day, God is Love.