Thanksgiving is upon us, and Christmas is just around the corner. It's hard to believe that another year is almost gone.
My grandmother, Nannie Summers, used to tell me that time would pass faster and faster as I aged, but I didn't believe her. How could what she said possibly be true when it seemed to me to take years for Christmas to arrive?
But that was when I was a kid. Since then, things have changed. I'm much older now, and I'm a convert to Nannie's way of thinking about time. It's flying past at warp speed! She had told me the truth but not the whole truth! It was worse than she said.
Every year, my wife and I tell ourselves that this year we aren't waiting until the last minute to do our Christmas shopping. None of that last-minute rushing around to do it. So, with great intentions, we begin buying gifts in the summer. (Actually, my wife begins sometime in February. I'm just beginning to get the decorations put away.) But then we get busy, and one thing after another monopolizes our time and, before we know it, Thanksgiving is upon us and we've hardly made a dent in that Christmas list. Moreover, with more grandkids being added to the family periodically, the list is getting longer every year.
Do you, too, find yourself still having gifts to buy as Christmas approaches? This year, with all the supply-chain problems and delivery services being slammed by the massive volume of online sales, one now has to worry about not only buying the gifts but also getting them delivered in time for Christmas.
A little suggestion to help you with that dilemma: If you know someone who is interested in Southern history or the War Between the States or religious and military history, I know of a few books they might appreciate receiving at Christmas. And they're available on Amazon, which has a good reputation for delivery service. After all, their vans now are as ubiquitous as the big brown trucks with which we're so familiar.
Christ in Camp and Combat is a survey of the various religious denominations' work among the Confederate armies during that late unpleasantness. It focuses on the ministries of chaplains, missionaries, and colporteurs and offers biographical sketches of many of them from every denomination.
Confederate Cabinet Departments and Secretaries is an examination of the too-often-overlooked civilian government during the war. It provides not only a survey of every cabinet position (the justice, state, treasury, war, navy, and post office departments) but also biographical sketches of every person who served in those cabinet posts.
The first half of COMBAT! Spiritual Lessons from Military History traces the military actions of biblical Israel from Abram's raid to rescue Lot to the destruction of Jerusalem. The second half of the work offers practical truths concerning the daily spiritual warfare in the Christian life, using illustrations from the organization and structure of both the historical and the modern U.S. military.
Check them out. Maybe you'll find among them the perfect gift for someone on your list. Perhaps it will fit that hard-to-buy-for person who "has everything." But hurry! Time's flying, and Christmas will be here before you know it!
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