Inflation on Gas Prices

The New York Post reported today on President Bidens speech today.  Biden praised high gas prices saying “[When] it comes to the gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, God willing, when it’s over, we’ll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels when this is over.”

Also, from NYP:

The president then insisted that his administration’s actions, rather than increasing the price of gas, had actually been able to “keep it from getting worse — and it’s bad.”

Now hold on there a second, Sparky!  I have two problems, and first is his flip-flop on prices.  First, high gas prices are a good thing, an incredible transition.  Second, he tries to look the hero for keeping the, down.

The main problem I have is that transition thing.  To what are we going to transition?  100% electric cars?  I’ve got some news for everyone who think they’re helping the world by getting an electric car.

First, you’ve only moved the carbon emissions from your tailpipe to the nearest smokestack.  Electricity comes largely from carbon fuels.  Windmills are highly inefficient.  The only reason they seem to be financially viable to end users is that the government subsidizes them.  Without that, PFFFT!  Solar panels are nice on homes, but they too are not enough to completely replace carbon-based power plants.  The only truly viable alternative is hydroelectric power, but not everyone has a Niagara Falls in the neighborhood.

Second are those marvelous lithium batteries.  Some of the largest lithium deposits are in Africa where most everyone buys it.  Unfortunately, those mines are worked by forced child labor.

From my Christian perspective, I don’t think God approves of that child labor.  I also wonder about where those depleted lithium batteries go.  I Googled for information on lithium batteries.  Here is what I found:

The latest research by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates 40,000 children are working in DRC mines. British Sky News also investigated the Katanga mines and found children, aged eight, and four.

Most lithium-ion batteries that are recycled today go through a process called “shredding”, where the battery is shredded up into very small pieces. After shredding, this so-called “black mass” is processed to extract valuable metals like cobalt and nickel.

The entire lithium extraction process contributes to an increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Lithium miners cut down trees and remove all other life forms from their targeted mining areas to eliminate obstructions.

(Kinda like fossil fuels, yes?)

Lithium mining is a source of pollution and can have negative environmental impacts. However, there is no reason to think it will have a worse impact than the ongoing one caused by pumping oil out of the deep soil, by refining it and by transporting it to petrol stations all around the globe (by boat and car).

Well…at least it won’ be any worse than drilling for oil!

That seems to be what Biden thinks, anyway!

The Father

And some of the Pharisees called to Him from the crowd, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.”  ⁴⁰ But He answered and said to them, “I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.”    Luke 19:39-40

I spoke to our unborn first child every night before my wife and I went to sleep.  Every night I said the same thing.

“Hello.  This is your daddy.  I hope you’re doing well in there.  We can’t wat to finally meet you and see who you are.”

My wife finally went into labor, but things weren’t going too well.  She had to have an emergency Cesarean.  It went well for both mother and child.  I went to the nursery shortly after to see my new daughter.  She was wrapped in blankets with a cute, little stocking cap on her head.  She was fussing, so I leaned close to her and started talking to her.  Her fussing stopped, and she cocked her head listening.  She then relaxed and fell asleep, secure having heard my voice.

She had a dad-shaped “hole” in her life, which was filled when she heard my voice.  It calmed her…put her at peace.

Sadly, too many people have a God-shaped “hole” in their lives, their souls waiting to be filled.  They try to fill it with drugs, sex, and whatever else they can find.  With any mention of God banned from schools, with generations not attending churches, because most do not boldly preach God’s word, they don’t know where to find God.

And yet His voice is present.  Jesus said that if His disciples fail to preach, even the stones would cry out!

And they do!  Think about how all the geologic layers are identical all over the world.  No matter where, each geologic layer can be identified by its contents.  That would not be possible if not all formed at the same time during some global event – like Noah’s flood!

Think about how complex life really is.  Even the smallest cells in our bodies are incredibly complex.  That shear complexity screams intelligent design, God’s voice calling to our souls!

Let’s talk about our eyes.  Evolutionists say they and everything else happened by chance.  Some accidental proto-eyeball thing occurred in one animal – one – and eventually and became eyes.  But what about the optic nerve that sends the eye signal to the brain as well as the region in the brain that’s devoted to sight?  How is it that all three structures could accidently develop independently and connect?  That single system is so complex only intelligent design can account for it!

God’s voice is speaking to us through the rocks and through every living thing on earth.  He is the only, perfectly shaped entity that will fill the God-shaped hole in all our lives!  His voice is in the Bible and everything around us.  Listen!

Abortion Debate

The current flap over the Supreme Court leak about possibly overturning Roe v. Wade has filled the air with misinformation and lies couched in all the euphemisms surrounding abortions.

I saw a video of a girl dancing and twirling around at a protest favoring abortion.  She kept chanting, “I’m killing babies!  I’m killing babies!”  Obviously, she’s mocking pro life’s correct position that the unborn are people created by God and not inhuman fetuses.  How can I assert that fetuses are every bit as human as you or I?

See an article I wrote in 2021, Earliest Surviving Preemie.  From the article:

Curtis Zy-Keith Means has been named the most premature baby to ever survive by the Guinness Book of World Records.  He was born only 21 weeks and 1 day into his mother’s pregnancy on July 5, 2020 at the neonatology division of the University of Alabama.  He is healthy and energetic with no problems from his early birth.

Then there’s my article Fetuses are People Too.  From the article:

This from the London Daily Mail – Identical Twin Daughters Born at 22 Weeks. Makayla and Makenzie were born on December 8, 2019 at 22 weeks, making them the second most premature babies to survive.

Another article I re-posted from another blog, The Trick Baby.

Dr. Ron Archer is a Best-Selling Author, A Business Executive, NFL Consultant, Military Leadership Consultant, Corporate Leadership Trainer, Presidential Advisor, TV Pundit, Envoy to Latin America, Africa, Europe and Korea. He is also the leader of a Global Human Rights Movement throughout Africa and Latin America. Awarded the Martin Luther King Leadership Award for his work developing the hears, hearts, hands and habits of third world leaders to transform their nations from chaos to collaboration. Countries like Korea, Singapore, Kenya, Colombia and India credit him for his work in their countries to build improved schools, clinics, business models and governments reforms.

He is truly a Human Success Story. Born prematurely to a 16-year-old single mother in the ghetto of Cleveland, Ohio with a learning disability, stuttering disorder, and molested.

He was conceived when she turned a trick for money.  He’s what’s known as a “Trick Baby.”  One might have expected his teenage mother would have aborted an accidental pregnancy from her prostitution.  For whatever reason she did not.  Instead, her baby grew to be a great, positive force in the world.  How much worse the world would have been if Dr. Archer had been aborted!!

Then we have the story of Melissa Ohden in An Amazing Life.

Now, you might say that Melissa Ohden had a good life, above average, but amazing? Everybody gets married and has a family.  There are tons of college grads and married mothers with good families.  Melissa’s life sounds like a pretty good one, but not amazing.

Oh…did I mention that she was aborted and thrown in a garbage can?

The pro-choice group is protesting the possible overturn of current abortion law.  Some carry placards showing coat hangers and their contention that abortions will become unsafe.  The reference is that before abortions became legal, women would have dangerous abortions where the tool of choice was a wire coat hanger.

My response is that abortions are always unsafe – for the human being in the womb.

They also talk about a woman’s right to decide what is done with her body, which completely ignores the fact that the unborn children get no say about what’s done with their bodies!

I wrote about this sort of lying in Weasel Words and Wiggle Room.  From the article:

This is a phrase I’ve always remembered from a legal clinic I attended years ago. It’s using language that is deliberately vague enough to allow for reinterpretation later, if need be. In short, it’s carefully planned lying under the guise of truth.

There’s also the very real argument that abortion is inherently racist.  Did you know that most Planned Parenthood centers are located in predominantly black communities?  Malcolm Gladwell documented this in his first book, The Tipping Point.  The abortion analysis was one chapter in this book.

I found independent confirmation of this fact from some research I did on Planned Parenthood.  See my article Planned Parenthood: The Beginning.

Indeed, most Planned Parenthood clinics are in minority neighborhoods.  Consider that black women make up 13% of the female population while abortions of black children made up 38% of all abortions tracked in 2016.

Indeed, Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger, was deliberately targeting the black community with abortions.  From the same article:

Sanger urged Dr. Gamble to enlist the help of spiritual leaders to justify their deadly work, writing, “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

One last thought – If you are pro-abortion, do you know who you’re in bed with?  From Abortion Ritual:

If Satan’s worshippers think abortion is a great idea and have created a ritual for it…do I have to say it?  It’s a freaking bad thing!!!

I hope you can see that I’m not using euphemisms and buzz words as a basis for my anti-abortion stance.  Everything you’ve just read are factual accounts regarding what the unborn can become and the origins and current workings of Planned Parenthood.  When you leave all the rhetoric behind and do some digging, the truth will become apparent!

Parenting

Bring up a child in the way he should go, and he will not depart from it.

My favorite blogger, Caralyn Collar, a.k.a BeautyBeyondBones, was recently engaged.  She and her fiancé are looking forward to their wedding and then starting a family.  We’ve messaged each other a few times this week about parenting.  The biggest part of it is modeling good behavior to and around your children.

I’ve seen too many parents treat their kids more like annoying pets than their own flesh and blood.  Children should not be drug along like unwelcome baggage or shunted out of the way.  Let me give you some examples.

Our first daughter was a mere toddler when she started trying to be part of the “team.”  For example, she wanted to help doing the dishes after dinner.  I’d wash and dry while she stood on the counter by the cabinet with mom spotting her.  I’d hand her a dry dish, and she learned to put it in the right place.  It was something she clearly liked doing.  Sure…I could have finished that chore quicker without her help, but it was important to include her!

After my father died, my mom had to downsize from a huge, five-bedroom bungalow to something less expensive to maintain.  Cleaning it out was a lot of work, especially when we decided to rip out all the gold carpeting to show the wood floor beneath.  We dragged yard after yard out to the alley to be picked up over many hot summer days.  Once again, our daughter, still a toddler, wanted to help.

She wasn’t content with small scraps.  She went after the bigger pieces and struggled them to the alley as we guided and helped her just a bit.  She wasn’t a big help, obviously.  But we let her be part of the team!

It wasn’t all work.  My wife and I put a lot of effort into play too.  I’d be the “monster” under a big blanket on the living room floor.  The girls would try to sneak by without getting grabbed and yet hoping that they would!

Julie played dress up with them and show them…novel…ways to play with their Barbies.  They’d tie strings to them and have them “rappel” over the staircase railing on some adventure!  They eventually realized they could play that game from the second floor down the laundry chute to the basement.!

Almost every day I’d take them on a short bike ride in the morning before I took them to grandma’s and went to work.  Weekends we took longer rides, miles long.

We had the biggest house in the family and so usually hosted Thanksgiving and other holiday feasts.  We never had a kids’ table.  We figured the best way for them to learn what being an adult meant was to let them eat and interact with everyone at the same table.  They learned conversation and to ask questions.

The biggest things in parenting are inclusion and modeling the behavior you want them to grow into.  Your kids aren’t annoying pets unless you make them so.  They are God’s blessing upon your union, your marriage!

After-School Satanism?

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!    Isaiah 5:20

Northern York County Elementary School in Pennsylvania considered having a Satanism club for students after school hours.

Um…

From the article:

The local Satanists’ Chapter has previously explained that their club will only be to promote scientific ideas and secularism. They say that if a district has approved Christian Bible study during class hours, then secularist ideas should be given a platform too. 

Spokesman Lucien Greaves says the school could now be in breach of the Constitution. 

Public school curriculum favors science and evolution last time I checked.  Christian Bible study would be the counterpoint to that.  You don’t need to let Satanists into little kids’ heads as young as five to teach science.  Secularists have their platform already in the curriculum!

It was voted down 8-1 while angry parents protested in the halls hours ahead of the meeting and gave the local TV news an earful.

While the local Satanic temple declares that they will not be teaching Satanism, just science and “rational” thought, such teaching hacks away at the Bible’s authority and validity.  For more information on this, check out my category “Science & History and the Bible” at the bottom of this page.  I have many articles in there debunking evolution, misrepresentation of carbon dating and more.

For Satan to achieve his goal of seeing as many people damned as possible, he doesn’t need anyone to believe in him so long as they don’t believe in Jesus!  John tells us everything we need to know about Satan:

You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.    John 8:44

When Satanists start trying to educate people, they are dressing lies as truth.  You can bet on it!

37 Years

This picture was taken 37 years ago last March.  We were young and giddy to start our lives in marriage.  Like all newlyweds, we were only thinking of the great adventure before us and all the wonderful things we would do together.  Little did we know.

There were indeed great things, the easy times of success and prosperity.  I had a job, the best job I ever had, that afforded the family a couple European vacations.  We raised two wonderful girls who became successful in their fields.  We had a nice house in the suburbs.  There were good times and much to be thankful for.

My health has been an issue since bypass surgery in 2003, but God was merciful, maneuvering me to the best hospital and surgeon around.  Julie was my angel and my nurse…the biggest factor in my recovery.

My life melted down along with the economy in 2008-2009.  There were tensions and fights between me and my wife.  I finally got a job that put me back in a position to rebuild our lives.  It required a move to Memphis, which was very hard for me personally.  A few months after moving in, my gall bladder developed gangrene.  I have no idea how.  When it perforated, they had to open me up all the way to makes sure no gangrene “juice” remained.  They almost lost me.

I’m semi-invalid now after my bout with Covid.  Again, Julie has been my protector, my nurse, and remains the love of my life.

Even though our 37^th anniversary was last month, it seems appropriate to commemorate it now, this Easter weekend.  I’ve skidded to the brink of the grave several times now, and God has seen fit to “resurrect” me every time so far to His glory.

37 Years.  How did we make it?  God.  Wedding vows.  Choosing to love, especially when we didn’t feel like it.  We did it by not saying “What’s in it for me?”  We did it be saying “How can I lift YOU up?”  The only way that really works is when we extend to our spouses the same selfless love Jesus extends to us; when He is our model!

For all of you whose marriage is on the rocks, make the decision to ask, “what’s in it for my spouse – not me.”  You’ll be surprised what genuine care and sacrifice can do for a relationship!

For those of you who are sitting in your limo like we were or are about to, remember that bad times will come.  Go ahead and bask in the joy of today and be excited about this adventure.  Just remember two things.  First, adventures are adventures because there are trials along the way.  Second, make Jesus your Lord and Savior and your example of selfless love for your spouse!

Below is the link to the song my best man and I recorded and played on his Bose system at the reception. Lyrics by me. Music, arrangement, singing and recording all instruments on a synthesizer by my best man, Rick. What can I say? He attended the New England Conservatory where his nickname was “The Whiz.” Me sing it? Um… No!

My Miracles

For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, And His ears are open to their prayers;  1 Peter 3:12

God gave me two miracles to come back from my Covid Pneumonia.  First is my wife who came every day and stayed with me throughout all visitor hours.  I was comatose all of January, but she would talk to me and massage my arms and legs.  She queried the doctors on my care with the help of her RN sister and a few other nursing friends.  She stood up for me when she and her friends told her that I need X when the doctor was wanting Y.  They were right every time!

She did this along with holding down a full-time job and making the house ready for my return.  She rearranged furniture to make it easier for me to get around the house.  All of it on her own!  I see her as my hero who sacrificed pieces of her self on this battlefield for my sake.  Her tenaciousness to protect and care for me was heroic and it cost her a lot.

So, she is my first miracle, a gift from God to be my wife and, recently, my protector.

The second miracle that unfolded was this.  She stepped out of the ICU one day for a short break to gather herself.  She was in the hall by the chapel when the hospital chaplain happened by.  He stopped and asked her why she was there.  She told him about me.  He asked her if she is a woman of faith.  She said yes.  Would she like him to pray with her?  Again, she said yes, and they prayed in the chapel.

The next morning my lungs were clear. Tests showed no scar tissue. They were as good as new!

Does prayer work?  I had my pastors and church family praying as well as people from work, some whom I hadn’t seen or talked to in years.  Perhaps the chaplain’s prayer with my wife put it over the edge.  All I know is that the great majority of people who are put on a ventilator don’t survive.  Yet, here I am, telling you my story!  All I can do is give glory to God for that miracle

God does not always say “yes”.  I’m just grateful He said it this time!

Finally Home

In case you were wondering, I have not decided to quit blogging.  I caught Covid pneumonia in early January and have been in the hospital till last week.  I as on a ventilator most of January and comatose.  Waking up was a slow process as is regaining use of my body.

I’m lucky to be alive!!

I still need lots of therapy but I’m well enough to be home.  I still have trouble with my hands for fine things…like typing, but I intend to share with you all the miracle of my survival.

That’s it for now.  God bless you all!

Quote for 12/28/2021

And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful.    Colossians 3:15

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Fear seems to be the constant in life, and especially for the last couple years.  There are real things to fear and other things over which fear is exaggerated for the sake of money and power.

Whatever your fear, God is love, and perfect love casts out fear.  Love is peace.  We too often allow fear to penetrate us and infect us.  Our defense is God and His promises.  Either we learn to push fear away as Jesus teaches us in Matthew 6 – “Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day” or we trust God and His strength to get us through whatever happens.

Give thanks.  God provides and deserves our thanks. 

Quote for 12/27/2021

Oh come, let us sing to the Lord! Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms.    Psalm 95:1-2

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This psalm is the basis of the Te Deum Laudamis, which is part of both the Lutheran and Roman Catholic Order of Matins, a morning church service.  This verse serves as the opening lines:

“Oh, come let us sing unto the Lord! / Let us make a joyful noise to the Rock of our salvation!”

I went to a Lutheran grade school.  Every Wednesday morning was a chapel service.  Pastor Beuschline spent several weeks teaching us about each part of Matins; what it meant and its purpose.

Matins still exists in our hymnal, but churches too often print customized liturgies in the bulletin instead of using a traditional liturgy.  I miss Matins!

It is so familiar, so ingrained in my memory that I can use those familiar words and songs as my basis for praise, repentance, and the rest.  I don’t have to struggle with choosing the right words or reading something unfamiliar in the bulletin.

That’s me.  However you worship, whatever means you use, sing to the Lord and make a joyful noise to Him!