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It is the “Second New Year” of 2011.
With the start of school, there will be another
chance for beginning again. We probably need this second chance, after
working on committees for numerous summer events. It is not easy to work
around short tempers, low budgets, lack of volunteers, etc. Perhaps in
the past year, you have said, “I have gotten my feelings hurt. You saw
what happened. Don’t I have the right to be mad about this? How can I
forget what (he/she) said to me?”
Every day something occurs that can cause you to be
offended, like someone jumping in line before you in the cafeteria or
cutting you off in traffic. It is much harder to handle when a “friend”
gossips or doesn’t give credit for the hours you have slaved on a
project. The initial reaction of hurt is probably justified, but we do
not have the right to let those feelings take over our lives.
The Bible has instructions in Matthew 18:22 about
how to handle forgiveness--how often we would need to be forgiven. We
are not told to deny our hurt feelings, just to forgive.
Forgiveness is not saying the actions were right.
It is taking you out of the position of judging and leaving it in God’s
hands. I would want them to do the same for me.
Forget what is behind. Look forward to what is
ahead and accentuate the positive.
Have a blessed second beginning of 2011!
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Reaction to
Tuesday’s earthquake, which was centered in
Virginia, from former residents:
Joe Morris, CCHS graduate, Pittsburgh,
Pa.:
A little perspective on the situation, since I know
that many of us consider earthquakes to be unusual in the east. The fact
is that we live in an area that is laced with numerous faults, both
small and large, but which have mostly been dormant over recent history,
but with occurrences of minor movement over the years (Braxton Co., for
example.). These faults run through the states of
Tenn.,
Ky., W.Va., Va.,
Pa., and N.Y., among others, primarily
associated with the collision of the continents that created the
Appalachian Mountains. Most earthquakes in the east are
found along lateral ramps. One of the guys at our office checked and
found that this quake was centered along a CSD (cross-strike
discontinuity), which we have mapped that continues into central West Virginia.
This is the largest quake in Virginia since 1897, but there have been
several small quakes in recent history in Virginia, almost 20 since the late 1700’s
with a Richter reading of 4.0 or above. Many more are recorded all over
the U.S. that are
under 3.0 on the Richter scale (1.3 million since 1900)--these are
barely discernable.
A history of earthquakes in Virginia can be read at the following
website,
www.geol.vt.edu/outreach/vtso/VA-Eq.html (an older paper from 1989
that doesn’t even reference the three earthquakes reported in Virginia since 2000).
Additional information on earthquakes can be found
at the following website:
www.earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states.
Carleen Webb, CCHS graduate, Haymarket,
Va.:
I certainly did feel it. I had never experienced an
earthquake before and didn’t really understand what was happening
initially. But fortunately the assistant rector at my church (we were in
a staff meeting) knew this was a pretty significant one and yelled,
“Everyone outside!” So we all dashed out. It was pretty exciting. There
was no real significant damage that I’ve heard of in this area other
than, unfortunately, some damage to the Washington National Cathedral.
The federal government released all its employees at the same time, so
we had major traffic jams all afternoon!
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