Sunday begins the season of Advent, which is a time of preparation intended to make sure that our souls are set to receive the Christ Child as Christmas draws near. Each of the Sundays in Advent will focus on one of the “gifts” of Christmas: hope, peace, joy, and love.

I doubt I’m the only pastor who’s ever been accused of being a “parrot head,” but I don’t know of many other pastors who have a deeper appreciation for the music of the legendary American country, folk, and rock fusion icon Jimmy Buffet than I. Part of it is because so many of his “island tunes” capture my love of the coastal lifestyle. But part of it is also because so many of the lyrics to his songs speak to our need as humans to learn how to accept both the happy and sad aspects of life as best we can.

Harry Coover is a name you probably have never heard, but his invention of Super Glue has most likely come to your rescue a time or three over the course of your life. As the story goes, Coover, an engineer at Eastman Kodak, came to this invention quite by accident. While working on a project to make clear plastic gun sights for Allied soldiers during WWII, one of the products his team devised was a bust as far as gun sights go, but turned out to be a truly remarkable quick bonding adhesive. Put on the market in 1958, the product was launched publically and the rest is history. The story makes you wonder how many things in life have come to us by accident.