I’ve always had a hard time with Easter. Maybe it’s that I don’t do well when I eat too much candy, which I inevitably do on Easter Sunday. But I find Easter a difficult day to celebrate. I feel a lot like the disciples who, even after Jesus’ Resurrection, scurried back to the upper room uncertain and confused.

Why should we be thinking about what has perhaps been the most popular movie ever of the season—the Christmas season, that is, It’s a Wonderful Life? Sure, its heartwarming, climactic ending occurs next to a Christmas tree and snow is falling and Jimmy Stewart is singing “Auld Lang Syne” off key. But in reality, it is a movie made more for what Easter is all about than Christmas.

A few weeks ago, I watched a documentary film about a woman named Sonia Warshawski. Sonia is 91 and she is a survivor of the Holocaust. After the war, she moved to the United States with her husband, John, who was also a death camp survivor.

Labeled the most corrupt cop in Chicago history, a former Chicago police officer was sentenced a few years back to life in prison.

Movie screens are getting bigger. Special effects create worlds beyond our imagination. Hit movies need to be reviewed and labeled as “spectacular” and have stars of international status. Bigger, louder, more spectacular always seems better.

How do you pass on a living faith to the next generation? Some years back, Robert Wuthnow, sociologist of religion, conducted research among people who considered themselves religious and asked what influences from childhood had helped their faith take root.

One of the secrets of successful businesspeople is, invariably, balance between their personal and professional lives. They’ll say that their weekends are sacrosanct or maybe it’s the nine-hour day. Whatever their terms, the rest of us in less rarified air often fail miserably at balance.

Talk shows have become a staple of American daytime television, for better or worse. Some try to gear themselves toward helping people help themselves. At the other end of the spectrum are those shows that try to show people at their titillating worst.

Most parents want their children to grow up to be good and moral people. So parents can find some consolation in today’s reading from Jeremiah, “I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts.”

Last December, the night before I was to leave for a cross-country trip to see my sister’s family for Christmas, I woke up at 3 a.m., realizing with a start that I hadn’t packed their presents. It’s amazing how many last-minute things I luckily remember in the middle of the night.