Our Jewish friends and neighbors are celebrating Passover this week—from the sundown that welcomed Sabbath (April 4) to the sundown that concludes Sabbath (April 11). Included in their festivities will be the solemn but joyous celebration of the Seder. Replete with candles, the unleavened matzah bread, the maror bitter herbs, and a sumptuous dinner, this annual ritual Seder gathering of family and friends around the supper table is unlike any other Jewish celebration.

The Wall Street Journal this week reported the story of Sandra Ladra of Prague, Oklahoma. She was sitting in a recliner at home when the earthquake struck. As she describes it, the ground shook, her chandeliers “swung wildly” and the stone chimney in her house disintegrated, sending blocks through her roof and onto her legs. “‘I was screaming. I was trying to keep the blocks from hitting me’ said Ms. Ladra, 64 years old.

Maybe it’s because I just returned from a week-long preaching mission (nine sermons) in Serbia—that land torn by the pincers of war through much of its recent history. Or perhaps it was this week’s reporting on the 70^th anniversary of the Battle for Iwo Jima, the site of one of World War 2’s bloodiest onslaughts and the setting for the iconic picture of U.S. Marines hoisting their wind-whipped American flag atop Mt Suribachi.

I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised that last Sabbath afternoon’s panel/audience conversation about race relations in the Seventh-day Adventist church in America was a standing-room only event (here at Andrews University). The conversation was candid, but the spirit that prevailed was both healthy and essential to any future change in our national church. What I’m especially proud of, however, is the prayerful, cogent thinking evidenced by the team of Andrews University student leaders who organized the event.

The flap this week over Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu (whom I bumped into once in a department store in Helsinki, Finland—albeit at a secure distance), addressing the U.S. Congress without the invitation or approval of President Obama is no doubt more about personal chemistry than political protocol. But it certainly has raised among the chattering class the question of this nation’s historic ties to Israel.

That’s the headline of a Wall Street Journal piece last weekend, reporting the startling demise of the family as we know it, not only here in the United States but in Europe and Asia as well. “All around the world today, pre-existing family patterns are being upended by a revolutionary new force: the seemingly unstoppable quest for convenience by adults demanding ever-greater autonomy. . . .

How many more videoed ISIS murders will the world tolerate? It isn’t a pleasant conversation to have; but the tragic brutality notwithstanding, one can’t help but wonder how horrific the scenes must become before there is a global, collective rising up of the human race to halt the butchery. The extermination of six million Jews during World War 2 began with a handful of murders here, another box-car-full there—but all of it (at least initially) beyond the eye and knowledge of an unsuspecting world.

OK—so he’s from Battle Creek instead of Benton Harbor. But he certainly is a hero down here in southwest Michigan! The two families, who were both celebrating birthdays this last weekend at the Silver Beach hotel down by the lake in St Joseph, didn’t know each other from Adam. But given the winter outside, the hotel’s heated pool was a popular hang out Saturday evening. That’s when something caught the attention of 29 year old Tim Rose. Sitting poolside with his family and friends, he had observed a 10 year old boy from another family party darting like a fish under water, doing fine.

One writer has observed that of all the chapters in Scripture, John 17 is “the easiest in regard to words, the most profound in regard to ideas” (SDA BC 5:1051). The entire chapter is a prayer, the longest prayer of Jesus on record. He will be dead in less than twenty-four hours.

I don’t want to sound like the Apostle Paul, who couldn’t resist reminding his shipmates, “I told you so!” (see Acts 27:21). But last Sabbath in “Why I Believe We’re Running Out of Time,” we wondered together whether bloody terrorist attacks like the one in Paris can be the catalyst for setting our civilization up for strong, coercive, authoritarian control of the masses—as both Daniel 12 and Revelation 13 portend will happen just before the return of Christ.