{"id":6492,"date":"2023-12-21T04:45:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-21T04:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=6492"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:32:44","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:32:44","slug":"2-handshakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=6492","title":{"rendered":"2 HANDSHAKES"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Maybe it&#8217;s a combination of end-of-year musings with the reality of now being in my mid-50s, but today I was thinking about how short history is.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I was younger, I thought 2,000 years was a super long time &#8211; in fact, a <i>suspiciously <\/i>long time &#8211; to pass without seeing Jesus&#8217; Second Coming.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nowadays, two thousand years seems quite a bit shorter.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Just as a thought experiment this morning I did some math and realized it would be possible to have only 2 handshakes separating me from George Washington.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Say Washington shook the hand of a 3-year-old boy even before the American Revolution. That boy could have lived through the Civil War and beyond. And what if he had shaken hands in 1879 with a 3-year-old girl who then also went on to live to a ripe old age and shook my hand when I was 3 in 1971?<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Just two handshakes could separate me from old George, the father of our nation!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Time flies.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No wonder God laughs at the scheming of the nations.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maybe it&#8217;s a combination of end-of-year musings with the reality of now being in my mid-50s, but today I was thinking about how short history is. When I was younger, I thought 2,000 years was a super long time &#8211; in fact, a suspiciously long time &#8211; to pass without seeing Jesus&#8217; Second Coming. Nowadays, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6492"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6493,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6492\/revisions\/6493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}