At Bill Bailey’s Winter Gospel Convention in Palmetto, Florida, earlier this year, I happened to meet Pastor Joe Sims of the Aripeka Baptist Church in Aripeka, Florida. Well, it happens that Aripeka is quite close to Spring Hill, where our daughter Patricia and her family live … and it turns out that, as I write this, we’re preparing for a trip to Spring Hill for the dual wedding ceremonies for two of our granddaughters.
So, my thought was that we should visit the Aripeka Baptist Church this Sunday. In checking on service times via their website, I came upon a daily Scripture quote posted there, which were these verses from Ecclesiastics, Chapter 4, Verses 9 to 12 … which suddenly touched me as being something so vitally true:
Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their work:If one falls down,
his friend can help him up.
But pity the man who falls
and has no one to help him up!
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered,
two can defend themselves.
Of course, this was written by King Solomon long before Jesus came along to hold our hand when we needed help. But, we all need at least one friend here on earth as well, don’t we?
Milestones . . .
It recently came to mind that this week will be the 50th anniversary of the first FM station in the Nation’s Capitol to begin broadcasting in Stereo … and one of the first handful in the entire nation to begin such transmissions. The station, WHFS, was a brand new FM station licensed to the suburb of Bethesda, Maryland … and yours truly was the Program Director. We were a small operation and at the beginning, I was the only fulltime employee.
Some 40 years later, and 10 years ago now … I was again a Program Director taking part in the launch of the next major leap in radio broadcasting technology … satellite radio!
As for enLighten … we are just days away from celebrating our seventh birthday, having begun as an Internet-only radio station, being included as part of the OnLine adjunct service that XM Radio was beginning on November 15, 2004 . . . in an effort to satisfy subscriber demand for this genre of music to be offered.
Then, three years ago, in mid-November of 2008, the merger between Sirius and XM was concluded and enLighten, based on the large amount of listenership that the channel obviously had, was included in the lineup of music channels that was to be carried on both systems.
Christmas Is Comin’ . . .
While there’s no way to satisfy the tastes of all 200,000 or so individuals who listen to enLighten when it comes to the programming of Christmas music, when to begin playing it and how much how soon … and what constitutes “acceptable” Christmas season songs for enLighten to include in its mix … we would love to have your comments, your input. So, if you have definite thoughts, please share them with us now. Thank you.
Marlin
