Faith & Religion

As a very young child I watched each day as my father left for work and I happily understood that my dad was an engineer. Of course, my very young brain told me that he was the engineer of —what else? A train! How cool is that?! It wasn’t until he left for Cape Canaveral to work with the space program that I found out he was an electrical engineer. I wasn’t sure what that was but knew enough that I wasn’t going to be riding on a train any time soon! This example may be humorous but what’s happening to accuracy, reality, and truth in our society isn’t. It looks like real truth, as we have known it, is deceased - gone, kaputt. In its place we now have what is called “your truth.” It’s actually an artificial substitute for someone’s personal opinion.

Once upon a time, the US space program faced a major challenge in their Atlas rocket program. It seems they had a corrosion problem caused by moisture that needed to be fixed. The challenge was to create a formula capable of displacing water and thus preventing corrosion. So, one Norm Larsen went to work, concocting formula after formula until finally - after 39 failed attempts - he hit on a successful mixture on trial number 40 and - da-da - Water Displacement formula #40 was born - better known today as WD-40. It’s now estimated that up to eighty percent of us have a can of the stuff in our homes.

Many years ago when our youngest daughter Susanne was learning to drive, I was out with her at the wheel one day when we turned down Devonshire. It just happened to be one of those miserable hot days in Hemet where you could probably fry an egg on the sidewalk. About a block down the street I noticed an olive tree on fire. I glanced to the opposite side of the road and saw a man siting in his car, window rolled down, just staring at the flames. Further on down I saw a lady running to the door of a home - no cell phones back then - I thought she was probably calling the fire department.

Don’t you just love your brain?! I think it’s absolutely about the best thing God invented when He made us! Such a brilliant idea. And I believe He wants us to use it to be out-of-the-box creative whenever and however possible.

Black Americans attend church more regularly than Americans overall, and pray more often. Most attend churches that are predominantly Black, yet many would like those congregations to become racially diverse. There is broad respect for Black churches' historical role in seeking racial equality, coupled with a widespread perception they have lost influence in recent decades.