Dead Cattle and Broken Hearts
The weather is going mad. In South Dakota two days after temperatures were in the 80s, and before ranchers could move their cattle herds (some of which had been relocated here after the horrific droughts in southern states), a rainstorm hit and quickly froze. So cattle were drenched then frozen. Then snow fell hard and deep. Some cows retreated downwind as far as twelve miles. They broke through fences and crossed highways before they finally died, sometimes piling up on one another in culverts. As many as 100,000 heads of cattle died Most ranchers lost between 50 to 75 percent…
Look Beneath the Surface
The LA Times ran two stories side-by-side that spun my head around. Because the way people would see the men in each story is completely different from the way God would see them. The first was about “Sissy” Goodwin, a big guy in Wyoming–the cowboy state–who likes to wear pink dresses with bows in his hair. Locals mostly ridicule him and the Times, of course, supports his “gender independence.” But the Times noted one crucial point that subsequently they, and everyone, seem to overlook. When he was a kid his mother was drunk all the time, and his stepfather abused…
Nature: A Window onto God’s Glory
After an earthquake in Pakistan, people on the coast near Gwadar watched in disbelief as an island rose out of the sea. Seismic activity seems to have pushed this shallow area in the Arabian Sea above water. The new island was made of mud, coarse sand, and rock. Whether it will remain is unknown, since similar phenomena have happened before, sometimes slipping back beneath the waves. Geologists say it is part of the continuing process of continental drift. Those who went out to explore the island found dead fish and fissures of escaping gas. They put a match to the…
When Shopping Mall Turns War Zone
We’ve seen it in the USA, but not to the horrific extent of the upscale shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya. Al-Shabab militants, the Islamists trying to control Somalia, attacked innocent people at this commercial symbol of Kenya’s prosperity. They let Muslims go free and killed innocent men, women, and children. Sorry to talk about this kind of stuff so often these days. It just keeps coming, and I grieve every time. My mother lived in neighboring Tanzania for eight years (I was just a little kid at the time), and she said the Muslims and Christians all got along then….
The Prevailing Plan in the Middle East
As the USA and other countries debate bombing Syria, or getting them to give up their chemical weapons (do they really think so?), they may think they will change the course of things. Not likely. I’ll go so far as to suggest that whether the USA strikes Syria or not, it won’t change much in the big picture. Two reasons: First, the big picture is too big and too complicated and too intractable for any outsider to change without massive commitment and carnage. Americans have come to realize that from Afghanistan and Iraq. Second, neither our nation nor any other…
