The least aggressive in a group is sometimes the most formidable, when he has the power of God behind him.  I know Pres. Biden sounded hollow today, but time will show him effective against the Taliban when the God of our Judeo-Christian civilization is at his back.

Will Joe Biden, God’s representative, or Joseph Biden, the human, show through?  It’s hard to know.  In medieval France, a maiden took charge of the French army, and rode at their head to victory.  Well, Joe, our prayers are behind you; good luck.  And Godspeed!

In the darker depths of the ocean lives a beautiful, multi-chambered mollusc (shell fish) known as the nautilus.  I have a shell, sawn in half, to reveal the many chambers of its life off the shores of Papua, New Guinea.  But I have bad news.  The lives of these nautiluses are threatened by climate change.  The water is becoming too warm.

Could the longing of the early Christians be coming true—the final days are here?  Christ said he was coming back in glory, the days of the omni-present resurrection.  I look forward to that day when all of life’s sufferings count for something, when we step out and up.  When the clouds are stepping stones, when friends who have endured join the happy throng.

Many years ago—it must have been a thousand—I was in a precarious situation, and instead of accepting it as the will of God, I reacted with panic and unreason.  I only realize now I should have gone with what was ostensibly the flow of Him for whose sake I had done it, and ridden it out.  When we’re young we know so little.

This wise appraisal of the situation only came to me one morning of my retirement, and there was little I could do about it now.  What’s done is done.  Had I only been as assiduous about prayer.

I don’t say I’d handle it better now, but at least I learned a lesson.  Onward, I say onward!

I am now $99 richer than I would have been.  Writer’s Digest, God bless them, offered a contest for the best e-book, a $5,000 prize.  All my books came out as e-books, too, and I avidly filled out the entry blank.  My best chance was with The Last Torpedo, but that had a co-author, which might not be permitted.

Anyway, I got my entry blank filled out, and then I came to the entry fee.  Ninety-nine dollars!  Well, they have to get the prize money somewhere.  So I still have that $99 and my wife will love it.  Life turns out so well, sometimes.

You can’t always wake up to a good day.  There are days when the important things go wrong, and days when the devils seem to have their way.  But those are days when you establish yourself as a man or woman of tenacity, of guts.  It’s not always easy to do.

Do you have something to fall back on, like faith, or past success?  I choose faith, which is something you can build over the years.  And it is a foundation of character.  It makes you dependable, and people know they can rely on you when things get tough.

I always wanted to be the man my wife and sons would turn to in those situations.  So I use what a beneficent God gave me.