Third rock from the sun

My annual trip around Old Sol has two more days to go and then another one begins, regular as clockwork. Round and round she goes I go, and where I stop, nobody knows. What I'm trying to say is that my birthday is day after tomorrow, at which point I will be 9/10ths of the way through another decade on planet Earth.

79. It has a nice ring to it, especially when you consider that my mother died at 47 and my father died at 60. My maternal grandfather, though, died just three months shy of his 96th birthday, and my goal is to outlive him.

As they were saying in New Orleans a couple of weeks ago, Laissez les bontemps roulez!

In other news, Governor Brian Kemp here in Georgia left it up to individual church leaders whether to close or remain open for Sunday services. Several of the humongous megachurches around Atlanta decided to suspend services and do online streaming instead. Northpoint (Andy Stanley), Free Chapel (Jentezen Franklin), and Passion City Church (Louis Giglio) were among them. Last New Year's Eve, Passion City sponsored a college/career-age night at the new Mercedes Benz stadium in Atlanta and 65,000 people showed up. The woman who is bishop of the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist CHurch decided that all Methodist churches should close regardless of their size. The little Methodist church we attended for several years has about 75 people attending, and many of them are elderly, so they complied with their bishop's suggestion/orders and did their first-ever online "Lenten reflection" (as their pastor called it). The church we currently attend, not Methodist, normally runs between 250 and 300 in Sunday morning service and Pastor Chuck and the board of elders decided to remain open. We went, as did about 100 others. Many decided to stay home and watch via Facebook.

As of today, Georgia has had 121 cases of COVID-19 and one death. The man who died had been a greeter at a large church in a town about 25 miles from us. Two weeks ago that church had a special Sunday to honor and recognize their choir director who was retiring after 30 years. Before he went to that church he had been our choir director for five years (at the church we used to attend and now are attending again) so several current and former members made it a point to attend. I'm sure the greeters were shaking lots of visitors' hands that Sunday. A friend of ours, Tom B. (who is 69, lives about three miles from us, and attended that church that Sunday with his wife) is now on a ventilator in a local hospital and in isolation awaiting the results of his COVID-19 test from the CDC. If you are a praying person, please pray for Tom.

I didn't mean to end on a down note, but it is what it is. Life goes on, except when it doesn't.

As I was saying, Laissez les bontemps roulez.