I Must Declare (Part 2)

             Did you have younger siblings when you were growing up? I did. Did your younger brother ever taunt you by throwing his dirty socks into your bedroom? Mine did. Did you ever complain to your mother about your younger brother’s shenanigans, only to have her tell you, “Never mind him”? I did.

            Now imagine a more annoying scenario. Imagine a neighbor who decided to allow her dogs – who were kenneled outside 24 / 7 – to bark and snarl and attack each other at any time of the day or night. They would start to bark at midnight, or at 3 a.m., or even in the middle of the day. They would not stop after a few minutes; they would sometimes continue for hours. What’s more, these dogs inhabited a backyard that was seldom mowed, so that when you were mowing your own property, these animals often lunged at the fence, trying to attack you (but luckily could never quite manage vaulting the fence). I had such a neighbor.

            Now put yourself in the place of hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have to run to shelters daily, sometimes hourly, because their Arab neighbors are lobbing bombs at them! Bombs that were not being provoked by military action on your part, or on the part of your government. The bombs that come randomly, but they come daily. Imagine being in the middle of cooking dinner when the alarm is sounded for an incoming rocket. Imagine being in the middle of changing your baby’s diaper; imagine being in the middle of a well-deserved nap. Now imagine that this scenario has been going on for years in the place where you have been peacefully co-existing with the people who live and work in your neighborhood. There is no other reason for the rocket attacks against you, except that you are a member of a certain religion. You are Jewish.

            I ask my fellow Americans if they can imagine such a thing. I ask them when a rocket landed in the parking lot of their grocery store. I ask them when they have had to interrupt their church service to head for the nearest bomb shelter. (Note: By law, every Israeli house or building has to have access to a nearby bomb shelter[i].) I ask when an explosion has rocked their favorite bakery or coffee place.

            No one in my state has ever experienced the scenario that I have just described. However, many, many people – even in America – blithely pass over the facts of the daily existence of thousands and thousands of peaceful, law-abiding Israelis, simply because they cannot imagine that such Jew-hatred exists. But it does.

            According to Wikipedia and the Jewish Virtual Library[ii], at least 6,000 rockets have been fired at Israel since 2005 (the year when Israel officially turned over the Gaza Strip to Palestinian self-government). None of these rockets were fired in retaliation of aggressive moves on Israel’s part. All were sudden, unprovoked events. Some of these rockets fell in unoccupied fields; some were intercepted by new technology that targeted the missiles in flight and destroyed them while they were in the air. Some hit houses, places of worship (including Christian monasteries), and shops. Some actually landed in the Gaza strip itself – so bad was the aim of their launchers!! Why are there not daily reports of these events?

            More importantly, why was there not universal outrage exhibited after the report of the slaughter of innocent Israeli (and foreign) men, women, children and babies on October 7, 2023? Why were there not cries of condemnation over the murderous, gleefully-filmed atrocities? Why did not more people immediately call for their governments to condemn Hamas in the strongest possible terms?

            I will suggest an answer: indifference. The same indifference that prompted an oft-weary mother to say to an aggrieved child: “Forget about it.” The same indifference that led a local government to ignore complaints of a years-long un-neighborly, unfriendly scenario that deprived innocent people of their right to sleep and the peaceful enjoyment of their property. The same indifference that has ignored rocket attacks and other destructive, anti-Jewish events (such as Hamas-supporting mobs on the streets of America) in the name of “getting along to get along.”

            I must declare that truth-denying indifference is headed your way shortly! And it will be worse than having to cope with stinky socks or forever-barking dogs!

---

[i] “Merkhav Mugan.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkhav_Mugan

[ii] “Rocket & Mortar Attacks Against Israel by Date (2001 – Present). Jewish Virtual Library. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/palestinian-rocket-and-mortar-attacks-against-israel#2015

I Must Declare (Part 1)

Next week, the Christian calendar commemorates the Massacre of the Innocents. As you will recall, King Herod the Great (I hesitate to use that title, but that is how history remembers him) sent his soldiers to Bethlehem to slay every child under the age of 2 in order to "catch" the Baby Jesus and eliminate Him as a threat to Herod's throne. (I have often wondered whether girl toddlers were slain along with the boys -- or even how rough soldiers knew a 2-year-old from a 3-year-old!) The event is often passed over during the festivities of the Season -- but the ancient Church placed it there on the calendar for a reason. I will leave you to contemplate why, in light of what I am about to say.

For weeks -- ever since October 7th to be exact -- I have been contemplating my response to the unprovoked, coordinated attacks by triumphalist terrorists who lately committed unspeakable acts of depravity in the country of Israel (please note: they did not commit these acts on their own soil!). Too many people have sanctioned – even praised – these atrocities, and I was at first speechless at the mindless, animalistic response of so many. But I am beginning to formulate my rejoinder, and here is the beginning:

• v When have you ever seen a baby roasted to death in an oven, and thought it a “good thing”?

• v     When have you ever rejoiced to see the remains of a dead, raped woman?

• v     Would you sanction seeing a girl publicly beaten and thrown into a car on any street in America?

• v    Would you approve of a young, terrified teenager witnessing the deaths of his parents in any neighborhood near yours?

If you are revolted by any of these actual recorded (filmed by the terrorists themselves) acts, why do you not cry out?

Why do you not demand that the perpetrators be brought to justice?

Could it be that the baby’s demise is less shocking to a nation that regularly kills its unborn progeny – and hides these acts behind impenetrable walls of legalese and claims of “women’s reproductive rights”? (Note: The baby’s right to life is never mentioned!)

Could it also be that the dead woman’s defilement is less in your eyes than a porn star’s submission to actual rape (and sometimes, murder)? (After all, don’t we want real-life entertainment?)

Do gang members’ actions hold so much sway with you that “it’s no big thing” if you watch one more bloodied civilian? (You’re not the one feeling the pain, after all!)

Would you stand by if a child from your own children’s school were forced to submit to a beating on the playground – even one that led to death, as recently happened in a school in California?

I will pause to allow you to think about what I’ve just said.

_ _ _ _ _

Now that you’ve thought about how uncivilized all of this violence is, let me ask you a few more questions:

•       Who actually killed the dead hostages who are being returned to Israeli Defense Forces (IDF)? Would they be dead – or even in harm’s way – if Hamas hadn’t kidnapped them in the first place?

• v   Why do you not see any factories, farms, or businesses among the building blown up by the IDF? (Hint: People deprived of hope are much more malleable in the hands of terrorists, so no entrepreneurial endeavors are allowed in the Gaza strip, despite billions of our dollars invested in “humanitarian aid.”)

• v   When have you last seen rocket launchers and suicide vests stored in your church’s fellowship hall or downstairs janitorial closet, as they are in mosques and schools in the Gaza strip?

• v   Would you be happy if your local “leader” told you to stay in your house – and not get out of the way of an advancing army – because it would serve your leader’s purpose if you got killed?

Wake up, people – and start to speak out against this modern-day barbarism! If you were ever repulsed by King Herod's unfathomable murders, you must be repulsed by what happened two months ago!

I will say more another day.

 

 

My Testimony, Part 3

OK, this is the best part. For some reason, I didn’t get discouraged that Allen wasn’t as enthusiastic as I was about Who Saul saw so many years ago. Once we got home, he ate a meal, and then we went to bed.

I do not remember how long I was in bed before I suddenly felt a Presence in the room – very holy and very pure. It was, in fact, a glimpse of the holiness and purity of God. It overwhelmed me, and I started to cry because I knew I was covered in sin and shame. Allen asked what was wrong, but I couldn’t articulate what I was experiencing. In what seemed like a moment, I saw in my mind’s eye the Cross of Christ. A cleansing wave of water gushed from it, and it washed over me. The next thing I knew, I was crying tears of joy and happiness, because I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I had been cleansed of my sins, and it was Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross that had accomplished that feat. I cannot tell you what Allen said at this time, because all I could do was focus on the divine Presence that seemed to be at the foot of our bed. Then the Presence spoke to me in my mind.

“Come with Me,” He said.

I protested immediately. “I can’t,” I silently told Him. “I can’t keep any of the laws.” (By this time, I knew that the Old Testament had 613 laws, many of them still taught in Catholicism.)

The Presence smiled – or laughed, I don’t know.

“I’m not asking you to obey laws. I’m asking you to put your hand in my hand. First, I will take a step, and then you follow in that step. It’s very easy, really,” He continued.

I thought it over briefly. The choice was mine – I knew I was completely free to accept Jesus or to reject Him. But by this time, I also felt the irresistible love of my Redeemer so completely, so utterly, that I knew I would be a fool to refuse. Reluctantly, I said, “Yeah, OK” – a rather informal answer to the King of kings and Lord of lords.

But that answer was all God was looking for. I suddenly felt the joy, the happiness, the contentment of Jesus. He seemed to be smiling at me. And then He was gone – as suddenly as He had first come into the room.

I was awed by what had just happened. In fact, I was incredulous. What had just happened? Was it real? Would this feeling of euphoria last? “I’m dreaming,” I said to myself. Then I turned over in bed, and fell right asleep. I don’t recall speaking to Allen about it that night, but he certainly heard me speak about it in the years after that!

As soon as my eyes opened the next day, I knew a profound change had happened inside me. That evening, we would be attending a Bible study in Allen’s Chief Petty Officer’s home (I can give you the details about that at another time), and I wanted to be sure and read the assignment in preparation. We were studying the Gospel of Mark, and the words “Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee” in Mark 1:16 jumped out of the page at me. I knew that Jesus! I had met Him! I don’t remember if I shared what was happening to me with Allen that day, but I do remember being completely engulfed in a new passion for reading and absorbing the Gospel. And soon after that day, two friends stopped me in the street and said, “What’s happened to you? You’ve changed!” And so I had.

I’m going to end my story here. I could go on and on about learning more about Jesus, leaving the Catholic Church, buying theology books and testimonies and prayer books and so on, but you’ve stayed awake this long, and I don’t want you to fall off your chair from fatigue! So I’ll just make these few last points, and be done.

Here they are:

1)    My encounter with Christ was my own, individual encounter. I am not asserting that it is any sort of standard, or any pattern. It had nothing to do with my gender, ethnicity, or disposition. God did not visit me because I was a girl, or an American, or a confused Catholic, or a depressed wife. He came to me because I was – and am – God’s own creation, and because He loved me. He knew I would be forever lost without Him.

2)    God’s purity was beyond words. It penetrated every dark corner of my soul. I knew then, and know now, that no sinner can stand in the presence of this awesome purity without the direct intervention of Jesus Christ.

3)    Christ’s Cross was solely responsible for my transformation – nothing more, nothing less. I saw and felt the wave of divine mercy from the Cross wash over me. It changed everything about me. My sin and shame were gone; I felt a magnificent love being showered upon me.

4)    All I did was say “yes” to Jesus Christ’s compelling invitation. He did everything else. No church or denomination – no formula or rote prayer – “saved” me. My response to Jesus Christ was very important – and it was all God required of me.

5)    I have known for these past 50 years – and it will be 50 years sometime in August of this year – that this encounter was absolutely and totally real. As I have stated several times, it changed my life. Soon after, BTW, Allen’s heart was drawn to Jesus in a fresh way. His transformation was not like mine, but we nevertheless became a solidly Christian couple. You already realize that I’ve been through trials, and I’ve had moments of great joy. I have changed in my ways and my knowledge. However, the truth about my encounter with Jesus Christ has never faded or changed.

6)    My testimony, as I said at the beginning, is a true record of how Jesus Christ came into my life, and – when I responded to Him – how He began the change that has grown in me for 50 years. (If you want more, be prepared for several hours more of me sharing – just kidding!)

7)    I have shared all this with you because a long, long time ago, I realized, as the Scriptures I read earlier state, that Christ had appointed me as an ambassador of His saving power. If you can testify that there has been a point in your life where you, too, realized all that Jesus has done for you – then embrace it and celebrate it and speak it out loud to everyone. If you are not there yet, I hope you will seek out Jesus and pursue Him until He breaks into your heart and mind, too. I know He will, if you ask Him.

My Testimony, Part 2

Back to Spain. Before we went to that country, I had read The Exorcist, and was thoroughly frightened by its content. I realized that if the devil and evil were real – and that book convinced me about all that – then God Himself – the source of all goodness and beauty – was real as well. It surely wasn’t a solid foundation, but it was a start.

Being in Spain with Allen didn’t dissolve my depression. In fact, a day or two after Allen picked me up from the Seville Airport, I learned something that I dreaded: Allen was to be sent off regularly on a ship (BTW, he was a “land sailor,” so this was not good news), and these deployments could last weeks, or they could last months. No one told you anything, and – as you might have guessed – this was the era when low-ranking seamen’s families were all but forgotten. We were treated as appendages, and very little was done to keep our spirits up. We had no television or phone in Spain, and so I turned to reading and sewing while Allen was at work.

The bookstall at the Navy Exchange (our local store on base) was pretty thin and uninspiring. However, in my aimless pursuit of some truth, I picked up a book by Taylor Caldwell entitled Great Lion of God. It was a novel about the life of Saul of Tarsus, later Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles. I did not know it at the time, but this book would introduce me to the Savior.

The first part of the book was mostly fictionalized, but much of it was plausible and interesting. Miss Caldwell worked in the idea of sin and guilt quite well – and, as a Catholic, I identified with all that. At first, it offered me no answers, but I kept reading – what else was there to do? One evening, I came to the part of Saul’s life when he was on the road to Damascus.

The effect on me was electric. It suddenly dawned on me that Saul (later Paul) had encountered Someone Real. Having listened well in school and church, I knew exactly Who Saul met. I also knew the effect that his encounter with Jesus Christ had had on him – he was completely transformed!

Something lit up inside me. If Saul had changed – radically changed – on that road and with that vision, it stood to reason that Saul had met the actual, physical, risen Jesus! I knew that no one’s life had ever been changed by ghostly encounters; instead, one wants to forget such encounters as quickly as possible! So I worked my way back to the Resurrection – I realized that it had actually happened! That meant that Jesus had defeated death! It also meant that Jesus was the Savior of the world!!!!!

About the time I had worked this out in my mind, it was time to go pick up Allen from work (we only had one car, and I had needed it that day to run errands). He was on the evening shift, so this was about 11 p.m. As soon as Allen got into the passenger seat, I began to relate to him my amazing discovery. I vividly remember him asking me, “What’s in the fridge?” He didn’t seem interested in what I had to say, but I kept going on and on about how excited I was.

The 3rd and final part will be posted next.

My Testimony. Part 1

 ^{My brothers and sisters, would you turn with me to 2 Corinthians, Chapter 5, beginning at verse 11.}

¹¹ Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. ¹² We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart. ¹³ If we are “out of our mind,” as some say, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. ¹⁴ For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. ¹⁵ And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

¹⁶ So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. ¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! ¹⁸ All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: ¹⁹ that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰ We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. ²¹ God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.                        (2 Corinthians 5: 11 – 21)

May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart, be pleasing and acceptable in Your sight, LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.

Before I begin telling you my testimony, I want to make one thing absolutely clear:

I am not an expert in anything, except this one thing: I am an expert in how Jesus Christ has changed me these past fifty years. That is all I am going to talk about today.

Most of you know that I was married to a wonderful man for nearly fifty years, before his untimely death in November of 2020. We were married in 1971, when he was 19 and I was 18. He had already joined the Navy, and that fact led us to Spain in 1972. We had been separated for a year due to Allen’s being posted in Adak, Alaska – an unaccompanied posting.

The year that we were apart was quite traumatic for me. I sunk into a deep depression, and only survived by keeping myself super-busy. I attended my second year of college, and I got a job at a department store. When Allen was posted to Rota, Spain, I was elated, because it meant that he and I could be together.

Well, so I thought, anyway. Although the military did not pay for my trip to Spain, I paid for my own trip and arrived in Spain the day after Allen did – quite a feat (for another time). I only wish to explain that the day I arrived at Madrid Airport was a terrible beginning for my life in that country. I could only speak about four or five words of Spanish, and I also had the misfortune of being stuck at that airport for a very long time. I was hungry. (I didn’t know where to eat, and anyone who looked “official” did not seem to understand my English.) I was frightened. I had no way to contact Allen to let him know where I was. At one point, wandering around the airport, I stumbled upon the chapel – which was, of course, a Catholic chapel. Being Catholic myself, I went in, searching for a moment of peace.

But a terribly depressing thought gripped me: God may have been in America, but He certainly wasn’t in Spain! It was oppression from the enemy of our souls, but I didn’t know it at the time.

Let me explain a little of my faith journey up to that moment. I was born and raised in the Catholic Church and she educated me in the basic tenets of the Christian faith. This knowledge kept me from making serious mistakes once my mother died (when I was 12), and I became a latchkey kid at 14. But my faith in God was practically nonexistent. Oh, I went to Mass, and even went to Confession occasionally, but I was unsure where the God of my religion was. I loved the saints, and prayed the rosary (sometimes), but Jesus was a total mystery to me. When Allen and I started courting, each Sunday he attended his church first and then came to Mass with me. We talked a lot about Who Jesus was (or so I thought), but he didn’t share his own faith journey with me. I just thought it was cool that we were on the same page – we understood each other. And that led to marriage.

Part 2 will be posted tomorrow.

My Summer of Tom Hanks

             Except for a few posts in the past, I have avoided writing so-called “movie reviews.” Such reviews tend to focus on “favorites” rather than the message of the film or movie. With this post, I intend to reflect on the messages I have received from several of Tom Hanks’ most recent movies. In my view, the messages are profound, and the movies I will be mentioning have very valuable themes.

            The first movie I want to mention is the new-ish film entitled A Man Called Otto. The script was patterned after a European book by a Swedish author, Fredrik Backman, where the name of the main character was “Ove,” not “Otto” – and where various other cultural references were changed in the American version. When I went to see it in the movies, I was prepared to see an aging Tom Hanks interact with a rather adorable cat (that was all the previews alluded to). I was not prepared for the hard-hitting nature of Otto’s circumstances, to wit that he had lost his beloved wife a mere 6 months before the opening scene of the movie, and that…well, I will furnish no spoilers. You will have to see it for yourselves, and you will have to furnish your own box of hankies! I myself was fortunate to have brought a pack of Kleenex with me (because I am regularly prepared for emotions bursting upon my consciousness), and very glad that I also had purchased a large Coke with which to refresh my dry throat. All in all, the movie furnished me with a cathartic experience in my two-and-a-half-years of widowhood. Without preaching at me (nothing wrong with that, but I shy away from God’s-got-this deus-ex-machina’s), the movie demonstrated a real way forward for widows and widowers adrift in a cultural wasteland.

            My next experience with Tom Hanks was quite by accident – although, in the grand scheme of things, I don’t believe in “coincidences.” I was flipping through my Prime choices, and the movie Sully came into view – based on the miraculous ditching of US Airways Flight 1549 by Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (with his excellent copilot, Jeff Skiles, assisting) into the Hudson River after a catastrophic bird strike. The astonishing fact that all of the crew and passengers escaped (with only a few minor injuries) has been celebrated over and over in the media. Naively, I clicked on the movie, expecting a wonderfully detailed exploration of this great captain’s leadership, courage, and skill in keeping his plane intact until the last minute, and delivering his passengers a well-thought-out plan of escape instead of a nearly-certain tragic ending. Instead, I was horrified and scandalized to discover through a riveting script the shame and nearly-disastrous accusations heaped upon him by a rigidly judgmental NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board). Based solely on computer models which were considered “infallible,” the members of this board repeatedly hounded and harangued Sully and Skiles over the men’s “premature” judgment to ditch the plane in the river rather than “safely” return to the airport. The board asserted that a well-respected “computer simulation” had “demonstrated” that the left engine had not been damaged by the bird strike and was still functioning when the plane hit the water – only to later have to admit, upon recovery of the (severely damaged) engine from the Hudson, that the bird strike had indeed incapacitated the entire engine, and that Sully and Skiles were courageous heroes who deserved thanks, not ridicule. It was a tough movie to watch, but it helped to know the ultimate outcome had vindicated the two men. One of the strengths of the movie was Tom Hanks’ uncanny ability to impersonate Sullenberger, whom I had seen in numerous interviews.

            Having watched A Man Called Otto in the movie theater, I decided that I wanted to add it to my movie collection. (It has been my philosophy for a long time that “buying a movie online” is a short-sighted convenience. In order to possess the movie for an extended period of time, one has to keep subscribing to the streaming service(s) that provides it. Once a person unsubscribes, the movie is “lost” and reverts back to the original providers.) I watched the movie again (yes, I used up more hankies!), and noticed that another Tom Hanks movie was previewed. This one was called A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which I recognized right away referred to a biopic about Fred Rogers, the beloved children’s television character. I ordered it; once again, I was wrong about what I expected the movie to be about. Instead of a from-birth-through-life-to-death biography, the movie was a clever exposition of the impact one simple man had on several generations of people – both young and old. Fred Rogers was a God-given gift to the American viewing public; he used his talent and hope and insight to give his viewers a gentle way to work through some very thorny problems facing children: divorce, anger, grief, etc. Besides Mr. Rogers, the other main character is a hard-bitten, cynical journalist who – up to the time he meets Rogers – considers it his “duty” to tear down everything and everyone who is respectable and noteworthy. His first encounter with Mr. Rogers turns his perspective upside down, and causes him to eventually come to terms with his own dysfunctional life. I admit that several scenes in the movie, which tend to be “surreal,” almost “supernatural,” threw me for a loop at first. However, given enough patience, the viewer comes to understand what the script attempts to do, and the result is quite satisfying. In the “Special Features” section, the viewer can compare Tom Hank’s performance to the real Fred Rogers (another noteworthy aspect of the DVD package, I might add), and the overall assessment must be pleasure in the finished product.

            What now? Well, I have Toy Story 1 & 2 (and possibly 3 & 4 somewhere), and I can re-watch them. There’s always Forrest Gump available somewhere for free, as well as Big and some others. This quick review is meant only to voice my appreciation of Tom Hank’s choices of films in his latter years – proof that no matter what one’s age and skill set, one can meaningfully contribute in one’s field of endeavor to bolster another person as he or she struggles with life’s challenges.

            By the way, did you hear about Smith’s College’s ban of the word “field” throughout its programs? Supposedly, it has something to do with slavery and cotton and all that tripe (a British slang word). Until next time, folks…!

The Mystery of Life According to James Tour

Those of you who have been following my blog these past years know that, generally speaking, I have commented on everyday issues, comparing what society says to what Scripture says, and giving my best interpretation of the Word – all to give enlightenment wherever and whenever I can. It’s not that I am veering away from that course, but I have been fascinated with what other people have to say on similar topics – especially on You Tube.

Now, many people are of the firm opinion that YouTube is a complete waste of time (except for the odd old-time movie that one can locate now and again). But something led me to explore YouTube in an entirely different fashion and for a different reason (which I will explain in my next blog). And I have discovered a wealth of Christian material for the inquiring mind.

Today I would like to highlight a scientist by the name of James Tour. He was brought up in the Jewish faith, but Jesus broke into his life, and he became what is now called a “Messianic Jew.” Fifty years ago, people like James Tour were called “completed Jews,” but do NOT get hung up on terminology. We change phrases in our language all the time – some because we like to be deemed “woke,” and some because we aim for accuracy in a world that spills words on to a page that have no essential purpose or meaning.

Back to James Tour. He is a respected scientist, with many different credits to his name and many different “titles” in his jobs – entrepreneur, inventor, teacher, etc. I actually learned of him through a “Jews for Jesus” video, and was won over immediately by his first assertion: God is an awesome Creator – yes, Creator. Everything that Tour uncovers in the field of science amazes him more and more, and lifts up his spirit to the Holy Spirit Who first moved upon “the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2). His video “James Tour: The Mystery of the Origin of Life” is available on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU7Lww-sBPg . I recommend that you start with that, and then explore his own testimony about Jesus on the “Jews for Jesus” YouTube channel.

Why do I mention this person at all? Because, despite my protestations that I am a well-read individual (and the British still “read” for a degree in this-or-that, rather than “study” the subject), I do not have an “Ed.D.” after my name (another story for another time). This seems to indicate to certain people that I cannot possibly understand a concept unless I have been awarded a degree in it. How absurd! How many of my readers have no degrees in cooking – and yet, despite having no degree, turn out excellent dishes? How many people have no degrees in farming, and yet expertly bring meat and / or vegetables to market? The idea that a degree confers confidence in learning is certainly overblown! Yet I present to you a person who has satisfied the requirements of several degree-conferring institutions, yet he loves to poke fun at himself. He asserts (humorously) that he is a “practicing scientist,” and his audience in the video I have mentioned appreciates his declaration in light of his humility.

I do not wish to give a brief summary of this brilliant person’s lecture. If I did, you might think it OK to skip really listening to his points. The object of his talk is not to convince his audience of the truth that is rooted in God the Creator; rather, it is to affirm your own faith in a mighty God Who is personally involved in the universe that He took the “time” to create. I invite you, as one would invite a friend, to settle in on sofa or recliner, refreshments at the ready, and spend an hour with this personable speaker. No one is too busy to feed the mind or the soul. Go do just that.