Have you ever seen so much confusion? Today’s events and the decisions being made on a whole host of issues are frustrating. Far too often, our leaders’ actions defy common sense.

Opposing opinions and a divisive spirit result in social unrest in a wide variety of areas, such as education, health, masks, vaccinations, crime, policing, climate and the environment, energy, national borders and immigration, politics, voting, the approach of and limits to governmental powers, marriage, gender, sexual identity, race, economics, and a host of other cultural issues.

“I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?” Anyone who suffers from hearing loss has surely said this on more than one occasion. Hearing is a fascinating gift, and not to be taken for granted, for those who still possess it. Of the five senses (touch, taste, vision, smell, and hearing), hearing gives us continual input of dynamic and vital information. What can we learn from the miracle of hearing? Is there spiritual significance to this understanding?

Cartoon depictions of extraterrestrials have often shown them standing by their flying saucer, asking an earthling to “take me to your leader.” Such scenes have long characterized the idea of earth’s first contact with extraterrestrials.

For more than a hundred years, scientists have been looking for alternatives to the biblical account of the universe being created by an all-knowing, all-powerful God. This idea is threatening for secular scientists and others because it suggests that the Bible, with all its moral imperatives, would also be valid—and many do not want to be told that there is only one right way to live!

Tensions between Poland and the EU have been high for months. But Poland’s deputy prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, may have raised tensions even higher when he “accused Germany’s new government of wanting to turn the European Union into a federal ‘German Fourth Reich’” (Deutsche Welle, December 24, 2021).