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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!