"Don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines." - Satchel Paige

Every so often you read about a small plane making an emergency landing on a road, or if you're Harrison Ford, on a golf course full of doctors. It happened again this week when a single engine Mooney left a small airport in western Minnesota headed for Fargo, ND. After climbing to 1,000 the plane's engine died. He and his passenger decided - very quickly - that the best option was Hwy 10, and the pilot successfully set the plane down on the roadway. But once on the ground the plane, still going about 80 mph, quickly came up on Corey Ernst's Ford Fusion. She says she looked in her rear view mirror and saw the plane catching up with her but didn't have time to pull over before....

Yeah, those are prop slices coming up the back side of her car. Thankfully, the contact pushed the plane to the left and into a driveway, and Ms. Ernst into a ditch on the right.

Clean up on aisle 1.

Is it my imagination, or are days getting shorter? I don't mean sunlight; we obviously have more of that each day. But doesn't it seem like we've shrunk down to 23 hours, or maybe even 22? I used to get a lot more done that I do now, and that's the only explanation I can come up with.

I had a virtual conversation with a friend/former student this morning that arose from my comment the other night about some of my BL 101 classes that were, uhm, less than stellar. Sue wanted to know if her class was one of the good ones, or a loser.

I couldn't remember who was in her class (it was my first year teaching) so she gave me a list of about a dozen of her classmates. I was surprised that I remembered all of them, could put a face with the name, and recall something of their personality. And that was 1989.

I taught that class in the fall semester each of the ten years I was on the faculty, and some years there were two sections of the class. Even in the years when enrollment was down I had 40 students in BL 101, and in the years when I had two sections it neared 100. If I looked at a list of all the BL 101 students from all 10 years I taught I'm sure many of the names would draw a complete blank. But I sure remember a big percentage of them, and am connected with a lot of them through Facebook.

Of all the things I've done, both vocationally and avocationally, the classroom was my favorite, and where I felt I was most in my element. Don't even ask me about faculty meetings and institutional politics. They were the very steep price to be paid for the joy and fulfillment of teaching college kids. There's a reason they call it work, and there were days and students that drove me crazy. But I really did love those kids and teaching them the Bible. The best of everything.

T'ank you, Fadder.