Irony. Simply defined it is when the expected outcome is totally opposite of what actually happens. Sometimes irony is laughable and sometimes it is profound. In the book of Esther we find a little bit of both.

At the time of writing this, I have been two weeks with little to no secular media contact—no TV, no radio, and only sporadic minimal connection to the internet for work purposes. (I've been at Michigan camp meeting.) My only reason for commenting on the lack of media infiltration into my life is to let you know that this will not be a commentary on what has been happening in the world—but more of what is in THE WORD. It seems the secular media is always full of bad news—telling you what the devil has been up to all day long.

Ever feel like the flight you’re on is going down? Karen and I just returned from two weeks in Europe—taping a Waldenses documentary (for the Andrews University School of Architecture) in Torre Pellice, Italy, and celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary in Grindelwald, Switzerland. After the recent Air France Flight 447 tragedy, travelers are even more sensitive to the possibilities of midair trouble.

Until the black boxes can be retrieved, the cause of the crash of Air France Flight 447 over the Atlantic Ocean Sunday night will remain unresolved. Some have speculated that the aircraft suffered a midair disaster related to what scientists call the "intertropical convergence zone"—a nearly continuous band of colliding weather systems that stretches across the Atlantic at the equator from South America to Africa. The ICZ is the hotbed of some of earth's strongest storms, with massive thunderheads at times towering up to 60,000 feet above sea level.

The CNN.com headline caught my eye: "Americans not losing their religion, but changing it often." The lead story was of Ingrid Case, a 41 year old freelance writer and editor in Minneapolis, who grew up an altar girl (acolyte) in her Episcopalian church. But after college, she drifted away, uncomfortable with her church's theology, eventually meeting and falling in love with a man who himself was searching for religion. Eventually the two of them joined the Society of Friends and became Quakers. She told the reporter, "It wasn’t so much 'You people stink and I'm out of here,' as 'I like this better and this is what I want to do.'"

"Where do they all come from?" You can't help but wonder when you drive the freeways of southern California—which we were doing last weekend for the wedding of my nephew, Vaughn Nelson. As we drove back from San Diego to my mother's home in Banning late Sunday evening, the stream of red taillights flowed ahead of us like a winding crimson river, matched only by the yellow-white streak of headlights flowing toward us on the opposite side of the night median.  "Where do they all come from?" California boasts more licensed drivers (nearly 23 million) than any other state.

I sat in on a conversation with His Royal Highness King Hussein of Jordan the other day. It wasn't in person, of course—audiences with a king aren't even a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But I listened as the king and David Gregory, of NBC's Meet the Press, discussed the precarious challenges of a new Middle East peace. Jordon on one side of the river that bears the same name, and Israel on the other side. And in between and throughout both kingdoms the Palestinian people. And I try to imagine how deeply the God of the universe desires a lasting peace accord.

What do the swine flu outbreak and this year's graduating class have in common? For over a week now global news outlets have made the North American Human Influenza A (H1N1) virus their lead story! And when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and the World Health Organization in Geneva both weigh in on the headline and declare varying states of emergency, who doesn’t take notice? Costa Rican health officials are now discouraging the traditional kiss-on-the-cheek greeting.

Paul Hawkens in his "green" book, Blessed Unrest, tells of an old rabbinical teaching that if we hear that the world is ending and the Messiah is coming, we must first plant a tree and then go and determine if the story is true or not. For Seventh-day Adventists, who champion the seventh-day Sabbath as God’s creation memorial and who celebrate the return of the Creator one day, planting a tree isn’t such a bad idea, is it—Earth Day or not?

Did your parents ever say to you, "Don't let the Cimex lectularius bite!" Probably not. After all, a bed bug is just a bed bug, isn't it? Not to the federal government that convened this week in Arlington, Virginia, the first-ever National Bed Bug Summit! Topics included: "Bed Bug Perspectives," "Bed Bug Basics," and "Government Response to Bed Bugs." Never mind the Somali pirates and the Afghan terrorists—apparently we're under a bed bug attack! But why all this fuss about an insect barely the size of an apple seed with a painless bite and not known to spread disease?