On April 29, 1865, 50,000 people stood in line to pass through the Ohio Statehouse rotunda to pay their last respects to the recently slain Abraham Lincoln. As America mourned the assassination of its President, Ohioans reflected the gratitude of this country in that outpouring of affection. Hanging overhead in the Statehouse was a banner with an excerpt from Lincoln’s second inaugural address: “With malice toward none, with charity for all.”

Never mind that the Alpha Centauri star system is 4.367 lights years away—some of the world’s richest and brightest minds have announced a new collaboration to get there. From here!

Look—I don’t mean to sound incredulous and I’m not wanting to be cynical. But when I learned just this week that an organization called “UnitedCry” is planning to hold a prayer rally for 30,000 pastors this Saturday (April 9) in front of the Lincoln Memorial in the nation’s capital, I admit to being a bit skeptical. It’s not that I don’t believe pastors pray. I joined 5000 other praying pastors last summer in Austin, Texas, at a convention they called “Called.” Pastors pray—trust me.

One of our team came hurrying in to breakfast two Tuesdays ago with the news. Thirty-one of us from the seminary at Andrews were wrapping up our evangelistic mission to Santiago de Cuba. We’d just spent our only night (and the last one) in Cuba in a hotel (a change from the generous kindness extended to us by the Cuban families who boarded all of us in their small living quarters during our mission). Lisandro had been watching the news in his hotel room and hurried in with the announcement, “There’s been a terrorist bombing in Belgium at the Brussels airport!”

I'm squeezed into the very last window seat on this American Airlines jet, ready to taxi away from the Frank Pais Holguin international airport in Cuba on our flight back to Miami, Chicago, and home. The lady beside can't speak a word of English, and after ten days in Cuba my Espanol has only increased by a dozen formal you-can-say-this-from-the-pulpit sentences.

Humans have been fascinated for millennia with the thought that there are other intelligent alien life forms in our universe. Most recently from the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) project decades ago to the $100 million ten year Breakthrough Listen Initiative today, science continues to act on this numinous sense that “somewhere out there” are intelligent creatures with whom we might yet communicate.

When the news first broke, my reaction was a they’ll-never-get-Apple-to-buckle dismissal. True, the FBI possessed a cell phone belonging to one of the San Bernardino terrorist-killers. And yes, government law enforcement agencies have significant cause to seek information encrypted inside that Apple cell phone. But isn’t this a matter of free speech, civil liberty, and customer privacy? Tech giants Google/Alphabet, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Twitter all agree with Apple’s refusal to comply with either the FBI or the court order to unlock potential incriminating evidence inside the phone.

I read a fascinating piece from the Wall Street Journal this week (thank you, Don Wilson)—“ISIS Is Guilty of Anti-Christian Genocide” (2-12-16 A11). Written by Bishop Demetrios of Mokissos, chancellor of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Chicago, the essay is a one-year anniversary reflection of the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians by Islamic State terrorists. “These Coptic Christian hostages were executed for no other reason than their faith in Jesus Christ.

5,700 feet underground is enough to stir up anybody’s latent claustrophobia. Although I suppose that if you’re used to being that far down and are doing it for a living (as miners do), it’s pretty much old hat to you. Unless, of course, your way back up to the surface has been blocked, as was the case with South African miners in the Harmony Gold mine west of Johannesburg.