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

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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