Dear Byron,
Not sure if you read comic books. I know they've changed a whole bunch since I was a kid. I know you can still buy them to read about those super-heroes. Here's a story about a family that was about to lose their home because they couldn't make the mortgage payment. When they dug around in some old boxes in their basement they found an old Superman comic book that was very valuable to collectors, worth a cool quarter million bucks! They sold it and were able to make their mortgage payment and save their house: Cool-O-Rama » Superman Comic Saves Family Home From Foreclosure
This is the stuff that we who write novels love to use. At the last possible moment, just as disaster is about to come down upon the family, an unforeseen hero drops in, a strange twist of events happens and the bad guys go away, everything turns out right.
I have a friend who has collected and saved his Superman comic books for years. I don't recall him saying he has any first editions. I hope he does. He can use it for his retirement fund. Of course, knowing him, he probably won't want to part with the comic books themselves.
What's in your basement—or your attic if you don't have a basement? Let me put it another way. What do you know about your family history, about your heritage, about all those people who lived and sacrificed, laughed, celebrated, prayed and passed on what you and your family have today—your basement?
The Gospel of Matthew opens with the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. That recitation of Jesus' "basement" is critical (Matthew 1:1-17). It points to the careful working out of God's plan to rescue His people through His exalted Son through generation after generation, working forward from Abraham through David to Jesus with a stylized (three fourteens) legal line of descent. All of God's promises are now fulfilled.
The Gospel of Luke goes in another direction, tracing Jesus' genealogy all the way back to Adam, thus relating Him to all nations (Luke 3:23-38). Luke names the actual ancestors of Joseph's branch of the family.
What's in our family's basement? Something far more valuable than a Superman comic book. That's what I want to share with you, Byron, in the posts that will follow. I want you to know a little about me, your GGMa and all those other people who lived before you. But above all, I want you to know that Jesus has brought us all into His great and wonderful family. And I want to celebrate with you and the rest of the Jesus Family in our heavenly Father's house forever and ever.
All my love,
GGPa Al
Showing posts with label novel writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label novel writing. Show all posts
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Why I Started This New Blog
Dear Byron,
I'm sure you've heard from your parents or your Grandparents that I wrote three novels are about one young couple, Tillie and Albert Freitag. The series is called The Spiral Bridge Mysteries. One day soon I'll tell you more about the real Spiral Bridge. You may even be able to find my novels in ebook format.
In my novels Tillie and Albert fall in love, get married and have their first child, Louise, a beautiful little girl. My readers meet their families and friends, discover their thoughts and feelings, their doubts and fears, their joys and sorrows. That, of course, is why we read novels. In them we learn to love, like, admire, hate, fear or despise the characters—or not.
In this Blog I'll take you back at times to some of the events portrayed in my novels, but only to illustrate. My aim is to help you as you face the same kind of experiences Albert and Tillie encountered way back in the days of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Yours is a very different world, eighty years later. Yet in many ways it remains the same. People still quarrel, fall in love, have babies, grow up, try hard to make good grades in school, struggle other kids, get married, fail at marriage and divorce one another. They cheat, steal, celebrate birthdays, attend funerals, lose their jobs, go on trips, find new challenges and on and on. That's also what I'll be writing about in these blogs. As you grow up, Byron, you'll face the same kind of things, even though your world has outwardly changed very much.
One thing never changes: God's Word, the Word recorded in the Sacred Scriptures and proclaimed across thousands of years. I'll be drawing from that Word also as I ponder with you about the challenges of growing up, getting married, living in a family and learning how to trust God and His love for us all. I pray that you will receive many blessings by pondering that Word as you too grow up.
And please, Byron, be assured that I'll be praying for you, both during the days remaining to me on this earth and then in the great and wondrous hills and halls of heaven.
—Your loving Great-Grandpa Al
I'm sure you've heard from your parents or your Grandparents that I wrote three novels are about one young couple, Tillie and Albert Freitag. The series is called The Spiral Bridge Mysteries. One day soon I'll tell you more about the real Spiral Bridge. You may even be able to find my novels in ebook format.
In my novels Tillie and Albert fall in love, get married and have their first child, Louise, a beautiful little girl. My readers meet their families and friends, discover their thoughts and feelings, their doubts and fears, their joys and sorrows. That, of course, is why we read novels. In them we learn to love, like, admire, hate, fear or despise the characters—or not.
In this Blog I'll take you back at times to some of the events portrayed in my novels, but only to illustrate. My aim is to help you as you face the same kind of experiences Albert and Tillie encountered way back in the days of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Yours is a very different world, eighty years later. Yet in many ways it remains the same. People still quarrel, fall in love, have babies, grow up, try hard to make good grades in school, struggle other kids, get married, fail at marriage and divorce one another. They cheat, steal, celebrate birthdays, attend funerals, lose their jobs, go on trips, find new challenges and on and on. That's also what I'll be writing about in these blogs. As you grow up, Byron, you'll face the same kind of things, even though your world has outwardly changed very much.
One thing never changes: God's Word, the Word recorded in the Sacred Scriptures and proclaimed across thousands of years. I'll be drawing from that Word also as I ponder with you about the challenges of growing up, getting married, living in a family and learning how to trust God and His love for us all. I pray that you will receive many blessings by pondering that Word as you too grow up.
And please, Byron, be assured that I'll be praying for you, both during the days remaining to me on this earth and then in the great and wondrous hills and halls of heaven.
—Your loving Great-Grandpa Al
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