The books are beside my bed and collecting around my desk - and I love it. Bill Hybel’s Just Walk Across the Room that I am hoping to finish is propped up next to my desk along with a collection of Robert Frost’s works and the History of the Reformation by J.H. D’Aubigne, who E.G. White quoted extensively in her volume The Great Controversy. The Great Controversy in turn is sitting by my bed on top of a stack that I am currently reading including Sanctified Life (that is just a great book to have handy), one of C.S.

“JESUS IS COMING TODAY!” If you’re reading this on May 21, 2011, then that is precisely what the followers of Harold Camping are declaring today—Christ is returning to this earth at 6 p.m. (presumably Pacific Time, since Camping lives in Oakland, California). With his return approximately two per cent of this world’s population will be immediately raptured to heaven, leaving the rest of earth’s inhabitants to be destroyed.

A dripping, blood-red X over the face of Osama bin Laden is the cover for the May 20, 2011, issue of TIME. Only four times in its publishing history has the magazine chosen to red-X the face of a notorious human being: Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi and now Osama bin Laden. The press is still abuzz over the stunning surprise and speed with which “the world’s #1 terrorist” was hunted and killed last week.

Did any of you graduates get up at 4 a.m. yesterday to watch the royal nuptials take their vows in Westminster Abbey? The whole world has gone gaga over the wedding of handsome Prince William and lovely Kate Middleton. And I suppose the Nielsen statistics will reveal that a billion-plus people on earth were glued to their televisions to oooh and aaah over this spectacular third millennial version of the ancient fairy tale. (Confession—I was sound asleep—I’ve already married the princess of my dreams!) God bless the queen and the prince and his new bride.

“FEAR FACTOR OPENS NEW MARKET FOR SEEDS” That headline two days ago caught my eye. What in the world do seeds have to do with fear? I read on. “The news is unquestionably frightening: political turmoil at home and abroad; worries over oil, gas, and food prices; earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear meltdowns . . . And that’s just in the last few months. Marketers are on high alert. Doomsday is nigh! they shout online and on late-night TV as they hype ‘survivalist seed banks’ and ‘apocalypse gardens’ to the nervous and fearful.

A friend of mine sent me a MoveOn.org communiqué. Please don’t judge my friend (or me) by that action! I realize it’s a bit risky even mentioning this national left-of-center organization of political activists. But I’m also going to risk alienating a generation of young activists (which most of “this generation” is—whether left-of-center, right-of-center, middle-of-center, wherever that is) by commenting on the particular cause-response for which this MoveOn.org email is recruiting.

On March 22, bbc.com released a story that has set the blogosphere abuzz. The headline reads: “Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197). Before examining that list of nine countries, here’s the logic behind that conclusion. The American Physical Society (APS), meeting in Dallas recently, released research based on non-linear dynamics, a mathematical model used to analyze data.

The western media have begun to banter about the suggestion that this winter’s political upheaval in the Middle East is like a spring thaw, warming heretofore rigid dictatorial or monarchical governments into pliable, receptive fields for democracy. The “Arab Spring” they call it. First Tunisia and Egypt—now Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Jordan and possibly Libya. Is it an Arab Spring, a new opportunity and season for the will of the people? Allah akbar! (“God is good!”) is their cry.

"O God, Japan!" The 9.0 magnitude earthquake and thirty-foot tsunami that decimated northeastern Japan’s coastal cities (just as spring break began here on campus) is not only the sixth strongest quake on global record, but is also the most costly natural disaster in earth’s history. However, it is the human toll that has broken our collective heart.

Whatever possessed a rich, well-to-do man like Zacchaeus to climb a tree just to get a glimpse of Jesus? Today’s sermon, based on the Bible story found in Luke 19:1-10, spins a tale of the way it might have been.

Come with me as we travel to the backside of the Roman Empire, into the sweltering, fly-infested land of Palestine. We continue our track across difficult terrain until we reach the fragrant field city of Jericho. Here is the home of the despised man, Zacchaeus, a tax collector.