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A Soap Opera Is Capturing The Highest TV Ratings

The other day I discovered that a TV soap opera was making a comeback in popularity.

A soap opera is capturing the highest TV ratings

It might seem a little crazy that I would know about this sort of thing but, to be really honest, there was a time when I was into soap operas. 

It goes back to when I was in high school. 

Getting right to homework after school was not hot on my list of things to do. I liked to unwind by lying on the couch, with a handful of freshly baked cookies, watching some late afternoon television. 

The cookies always took the most effort because my mom would bake them and then hide them. My mom had this, “I’m making cookies for you, but I don’t want you to eat them all” mentality.

The truth was that however long my mom spent baking cookies, my brother and I could erase any trace that they existed in a matter of minutes. 

With my cookies in hand, I’d flop on the couch and watch my favourite afternoon show, Perry Mason. Perry Mason was a defence lawyer who never lost a case..

But as TV stations will do from time to time, they changed the afternoon programming line-up and Perry Mason was taken off the air. 

I ended up watching (and, I might add, getting hooked on) a soap opera called …. da, da, da, da: The Edge ……. Of Night. 

The show was just called “The Edge of Night” but in the opening credits the announcer had this dramatic pause between “Edge” and “Of Night”.

It wasn’t like I watched the show for years and years, but I did watch it for a time. I made sure I was in front of that TV every afternoon; I wouldn’t miss it. The storyline had me all wrapped up, knew each and every character and cared about what was happening or going to happen to them. 

About a year later, the late afternoon programming times changed again. They began showing reruns of the Flintstones so I started watching that instead. 

But every once in a while I would turn on the Edge of Night. Months would go by without me watching, but I discovered that when I tuned in, I still knew what was going on. The characters were the same, the storyline hadn’t changed and even the drama between characters had progressed very little. 

It was like I never missed a show. I realized that, though I was hooked for a time on watching every day\, I could watch it on a very infrequent, unscheduled way and never miss out on what was happening. 

Recently I’ve been doing that with the TV news. The content is mostly the same, the storyline hasn’t changed in a year and a half and, just like on “The Edge ….. Of Night”, only every once in a while a real bombshell is reported.

I don’t have to watch the news more than weekly to stay on top of it. … It’s like a soap opera.

Here’s the thing: On the one hand, days and years seem to go by quickly, but on the other hand, the storyline of our lives seems to take forever to unfold. We can get so caught up in the steady, almost unchanging, story of our lives that we forget about how fast life is really moving. The big picture is that we have a short time to respond to Jesus Christ and live out a life of faith in Him. Don’t be lulled into thinking you have time for that later. Be sure you are living the right storyline now.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What changes do you need to make to your life? Leave your comments and questions below.

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A New Study On COVID-19 Would Prove Interesting

I’m wondering if a new study could correlate the level of anxiety people have about the coronavirus with how much mainline media they watch.

a new study on COVID-19 would prove interesting

A study might prove that we are way more likely to believe what we hear, see or read in the news than we were years ago … I mean from when I was growing up.

If something is said on the news today, we accept it and grapple with it from the standpoint that it is 100% correct. 

Here’s why I think that. 

I don’t remember ever having a snow day when I was in school. Surely we don’t receive more snow, heavier snow, deeper snow and freezing rain now with global warming than we did when I was growing up.

I remember days that the snow would be over our boots with a layer of ice on top. We didn’t get to stay home. Our walk to school was just more of an adventure.

I remember skating up and down my street because it was so icy, but I don’t remember my dad staying home from work.

When I grew up, the weatherman was the comedy section of the newscast. He was wrong more than he was right.

Today we believe the weatherman. Granted he is more right now than years ago but, along with believing him, I bet a study would show we have become more anxious about going out in what we might have years ago called, “weather”.

When we hear something on the news, facts are used to create an emotional response in us. That means facts are presented in such a way as to get us to feel something. Some facts may not be presented, and sometimes facts may be skewed a little to steer us in the way the news station wants us to think. 

I believe more and more people don’t think for themselves but rather form their opinions, ideas and arguments based on what they are given by mainstream news.  

For instance, our prime minister has been holed up in his home for over three months. He has suspended the government from meeting, and given daily press conferences, urging us to social distance, stay home, stay safe. 

But then he showed up at a protest, having his picture taken surrounded by people pressing in on him, none of whom were practicing any kind of social distancing. 

So what is right? Should we stay home? Should we social distance? 

Should the prime minister be torched by the media for disregarding his own mantra and that of the medical community? Should he be crucified in the news for setting a horrible example and a double standard for all of Canada? Should he be held to a higher standard? 

Well, he is not. In fact, that wasn’t even the subject of the news. They focused on how aligned he was with the protest. 

Why could he not show his support and comment from his little tent outside his home? 

There is no logic, no consistency, no integrity in what he says about COVID.  

The news wants you to be moved by the topic, regardless of how ludicrous it was for him to do what he did. 

… And we buy into it.  

Here’s the thing: Friends, truth matters and where you go to find truth matters. We must check our sources and apply good logic and wisdom to what we believe. God has given us His Word. I encourage you to check it out, investigate it and study it. I know if you do you will find it to be true – the Truth. 

That’s Life!

Paul 

Question: What do you believe right now that you have not checked out? Leave your comments and questions below. 

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The Media Is Driving Me Crazy

I feel that taking a break from all media sources might help calm my mind and my emotions. 

Media Is Driving Me Crazy

In order for me to do that, I need to turn off the radio in my car, my television set at home, and all social media feeds on my computer, tablet and cell phone. 

That would be extreme living for me … and all in a bad way.

I’ve heard of people living off the grid, moving to some remote place where they have to hike in on foot, and setting up a yurt after they cut down a bunch of trees in the middle of a pine forest. 

They live on vegetables that they grow and fish that they catch. Every month or so they treat themselves to a trip to a city to really experience life.

You know I’m just kidding. 

For all my off-the-grid readers, how do you even get this blog? 

At least the off-the-gridders can be selective with the media they are exposed to. In the last couple of days I’ve been so frustrated with what I’ve heard in the media that I’m ready do something, but don’t what to do or whom to do it to. 

All the impeachment talk concerning President Trump has me itching to impeach the media …Could someone actually do that?

I’m not saying for one moment that Trump didn’t do something wrong, but let’s not jump to the conclusion before we have the whole story.

The conclusion is where everyone is. Even the NDP candidate running for the PM of Canada is calling for Donald Trump to be impeached. 

It’s all emotion based on information provided from someone we don’t know … information that still has yet to be verified as all true and accurate.

For all I know, what we are being told is true, but most likely it’s partially true or mostly true. 

Remember the prince in the Princess Bride who was only mostly dead? I think what we are being fed fits somewhere in that category of not being completely true or false, just mostly one or the other. 

But the media is talking about it as if it has all been proven true. They even interpret some of Trump’s words from the phone recording in ways that exaggerate what was said. 

It stirs people’s emotions and builds a hype that creates a unified voice that judges and condemns before any real investigation or trial has done its job. 

What the media is doing is building strong support for something that is based mostly on opinion at this point … their opinion! 

And when that opinion catches wind, they stir the embers and fan their opinion flame into a bonfire, maybe even a wild fire that can’t be stopped. 

Opinion is not truth. It might be true, but it’s not true until it is proven. When opinion becomes truth before it is proven, that’s what you call North American news. 

They hold up their right to inform the people, but they are really only forming the people to their opinion. 

Here’s the thing: Some people’s belief systems are based on opinion. Their opinion of God seems to be truth to them, even though they have never taken the time to prove their opinion one way or the other. All of us should question how we have let our opinion of God rule our relationship with Him, rather than seeking proof of God in our relationship with Him. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What opinion of God do you have that needs to be challenged? Leave your comments and questions below.

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How To Get News Out Before It’s Old

When you hear about something can have a profound effect on how it impacts you. What I mean is, if you hear about something right when it happens, as opposed to six months after the fact, you process that information differently.

oldNews1

Quite often when we hear about something long after it happened, we blow it off as not important or relevant any more … like if you heard that the government was going to remove all tax at the gas pumps for just one day on July 15 … and you heard the news on August 24th.

Today’s gas prices without tax would be around 55 cents a litre! It’s a far cry from the 34 cents a gallon I paid when I got my driver’s licence, but wouldn’t 55 cents a litre be nice right now?

Not only is that news irrelevant after the fact, but you’d feel a little annoyed just hearing about it now since you completely missed out on the greatest gas prices since about 1986.

On the other hand, your reaction would have been hand-rubbing, night-before-Christmas-like, if you had heard this information two days before the sale.

Not all old information is irrelevant, however; sometimes old information makes you think “what if”.

That’s what happened to me the other day. I was at my usual wing joint, picking up a pound of hot wings with Franks’ Red Hot Sauce (they’re the best), when I bumped into another customer who I knew and had played hockey with a few years back.

He told me that one of the guys we played with had recently died. I was shocked, but it hit me even harder to find out he had committed suicide.

Now I didn’t do anything outside of hockey with him, but we were buds on the bench. We always chatted while we were playing and in the dressing room. We talked about family, health and my work.

I probably played hockey with him about two weeks before he died. All I knew was he had to start taking pills for high blood pressure and we had compared medications.

I didn’t hear this about Leo until six months after he passed away, but it left me deeply saddened. I began to wonder if I could have said something or should have said something that might have made a difference.

I wondered if I had missed an opportunity to share Christ with him. I checked my calendar to see what I was doing around the time of his death.

This old news bothered me. It bothers me now.

This guy seemed content with life. He had retired just a couple of years before and seemed pretty happy and easy going.

This was old news that has made an impact, old news that caused me to think, “what if”. But it’s old new and I can’t do anything about it.

Here’s the thing: At some point the message of the gospel will be old news; it will be irrelevant. That day will be the day someone dies without Christ or Christ returns. Until that time in a person’s life, the gospel message is current and relevant. Who would this news – this good news – make a difference to today, or tomorrow or next week? Get the word out. Jesus is saving lives today!

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: Who do you need to talk to about the good news of Jesus? Leave your comment below.

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Why You Can’t Trust the News

Lately I’ve been bugged by the news. Actually, I’m regularly bugged by the news. My son says “Why do you even watch the news? It’s so negative and depressing.” And he’s not wrong in that.

Breaking_News1

The news media claim that they are reporting the facts, which is true. They do. But they also add their political bias and even religious spin to it, which actually skews the facts to be something other than fact.

Years ago I had some blood work done and when the doctor gave me the report he was a little puzzled. He told me that they couldn’t calculate my bad cholesterol because my triglycerides were so high.

Let me say that again in words I understand: There was junk in my blood that prevented the lab from being able to decipher what my true bad cholesterol count was.

Relating that to what the newsmakers do, they mix their junk in with the facts so that you can’t really tell what the facts are.

I realize that this isn’t anything new. It’s been going on for a long time. All the while, the news media defend their right to inform us, the public, of the truth … except we are not getting the truth – their triglycerides are too high!

I don’t like how they slant their stories against the government, or Christian religion. But when you get such a steady diet of the same spin, you begin to take their word as normal, it’s the way it is.

It’s just like me and my blood test. I didn’t feel bad; I couldn’t tell my blood wasn’t in good shape.  I needed someone to look at it and tell me there was something wrong there.

However, it’s pretty difficult to convince the newsmakers that there is something preventing us from getting the facts and that something is their political and religious views … I just call them their triglycerides.

Recently when we had the shooting on Parliament Hill, the news – and even some politicians – were quick to give us the facts: there was a shooting; it was a terrorist attack. They even figured out how the gunman did it.

But then we were told over and over that this attack was ideologically and politically motivated.

We were assured that this was not connected to religion or religiously motivated at all.  However, the gunman had converted to Islam, and according to the RCMP commissioner, had recorded a video before the shooting in which he made remarks about Allah and expressed Jihadist views.

News correspondents, media personnel, and even one of our national party leaders, have gone out of their way to defend Islam as a peaceful religion, stating there is nothing in the Quran that would insight violence.

My first thought is that these people are just ignorant, and are not doing the proper investigation. They are going on what they have been told.

… You know, I didn’t realize that the things I was eating were causing my triglycerides to rise in my blood. But when I found out, I did something about it.

What our media is doing is ignoring the fact that their triglycerides are high, reporting skewed facts to us anyway. And that’s not ignorance, that’s manipulation.

Here’s the thing: Your number one source for growth in your relationship with the Lord should be your Bible. You see, God the Holy Spirit directed and guided the writers of the scriptures. We can be confident that what we have is what God wanted to give us. Everything else comes with some “triglycerides” added. Use those as second sources, not first.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you use to help you in your quiet time with God? Leave your comment below.