“Why are ghosts such bad liars? Because you can see right through them.”

Ethan LyBrand has been supplying a “Joke of the Day” such as this one during the pandemic. His audience is part of what makes this such a terrific story: Ethan is filming his jokes to share through the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s (MDA) social channels.

Another aspect of the story is that Ethan is only ten, but he is finding a way to make a difference. Here’s yet another: Ethan has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Diagnosed two days before his second birthday, he tires easily and periodically uses a motorized chair for mobility.

Despite his challenges, Ethan intends to tell jokes “as long as the quarantine lasts.”

“Young trailblazers” who are “stepping up” 

Ethan is not the only young person taking the initiative to help others during this crisis: Forbes is reporting on eight “young trailblazers stepping up during the pandemic.” One built a grocery delivery robot. Another is making see-through masks for the hearing impaired. Another is 3D-printing face shields.

On the other end of the spectrum, an eighty-eight-year-old Air Force veteran named Bob Coleman is sharing his love for country music on a new online radio hour known as “Radio Recliner.” He is one of several retirees serving as DJs for the sixty-minute show. Listeners can send song requests dedicated to friends or family.

Volunteers are stepping up to serve seniors as well. For example, employees of the city of Plano, Texas, launched bi-weekly Senior Care Calls. City staff are asking how older people are doing and connecting them to community resources as needed. The AARP has a similar service for senior adults.

Loving God with “all your strength” 

Yesterday, we focused on the second Great Commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:31). Today, we’ll begin discussing the first Great Commandment to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (v. 30).

Continue reading Denison Forum – Ten-year-old’s ‘Joke of the Day’ is making a difference: A practical way to ‘know God’s presence’ →

Ed Jackson was a professional rugby player before a spinal injury in April 2017 shattered his career and left him paralyzed from the neck down. After months of therapy, he was able to regain some use of his body. However, he suffers from Brown-Séquard syndrome, a neurological condition in which his left side does not function well while his right side does but has no sensation.

This challenge has not deterred Jackson. To aid in his rehabilitation, he began climbing mountains. He started with Mount Snowdon, the tallest point in Wales at 3,560 feet. Last October, he climbed the Mera Peak in the Himalayas, an elevation of more than twenty-one thousand feet.

Jackson wanted to climb Mount Everest, but the coronavirus shutdown made that impossible. So he brought the mountain to himself: he decided to climb the equivalent of the world’s tallest mountain on his stairs at home to raise money for a spinal charity. His goal was 5,566 flights of stairs and 89,058 steps over four days.

Using his right leg to climb and dragging his left leg behind him, Jackson achieved his goal, raising more than $36,000 for spinal cord research. He posted later, “Right what’s next? Thinking Tour de France around the parents’ kitchen.”

Ten-year-old builds a “hug curtain” for her grandparents 

Researchers from Harvard Medical School and Emory University published a paper last week comparing COVID-19-related deaths in the US to the deadliest week of an average influenza season. Their conclusion: COVID-19 is killing twenty times more people per week than does the flu.

However, despite the pandemic’s ongoing devastation, people are finding creative ways to do what matters most to them.

For example, a ten-year-old California girl used a shower curtain, Ziploc bags, disposable plates, and a hot glue gun to create an ingenious “hug curtain” through which she could hug her grandparents. A judge in the District of Columbia is officiating virtually at weddings using her computer at home.

And a thirty-four-year-old man in New York City has created a charity to provide meals for some of the thirty-six thousand Holocaust survivors in the city. He states that 40 percent of them live in poverty.

“See, they say, how they love one another” 

Early Christians had no buildings of their own; during the pandemic, ours are vacant. Early believers had to be careful of public meetings, lest they arouse the suspicions of Roman officials; during the pandemic, believers are practicing social distancing or meeting virtually.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Quadriplegic climbs Mount Everest at home: A question I hope you’ll ask today →

Earlier this week, the body of a spent Chinese rocket became the largest piece of space junk to fall uncontrolled toward our planet in decades. According to the US Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron, the core passed directly over New York City before scattering debris on the west coast of Africa, though no injuries have been reported as of this morning.

If re-entry had been just a few minutes earlier, debris could reportedly have showered the Big Apple.

In other bad news that has not become news, the Asian “murder hornets” making headlines these days are apparently not as dangerous as their nickname suggests. An entomologist writing in the Conversation states that Asian giant hornets will defend their nests, but “in most cases they will not do anything if people aren’t aggressive toward them.” They are fairly common in Japan, where wasp and hornet stings kill less than 0.00001 percent of the national population.

In other bad news, a Red Sox reporter named Chris Cotillo found himself with a lot of spare time when the baseball season was suspended. Here’s the good news: he began auctioning sports merchandise to help charities in the area. He has raised $57,000 so far; others on the Boston sports scene have joined him, bringing the total close to $100,000.

And the website Travel Trivia lists “7 ways travel will change for the better in a post-pandemic world.” Among them: more travel close to home will cut carbon emissions; wildlife will thrive, and we’ll see it more often; and airplanes and hotels will be “cleaner than we could have ever imagined.”

When God’s call feels like bad news

Bad news that doesn’t become news is good news. Challenges can often be reframed as opportunities.

What is true in our culture is also true in our souls.

In my personal Bible study, I have been impressed recently with how often God calls us to complete, unconditional obedience to his word and will. For example, I noted this week that Caleb followed God “fully” (Numbers 14:24) and thus was able to enter the Promised Land.

I am reading Psalm 119 these days, where I found this testimony: “I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word” (Psalm 119:101, my italics). And this: “I consider all your precepts to be right; I hate every false way” (v. 128, my italics). Then I noted King Hezekiah’s statement to God: “I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight” (Isaiah 38:3).

Continue reading Denison Forum – Space junk that could have fallen on New York City and the risk of ‘murder hornets’: When bad news becomes good news →

Dr. Rick Pitera is an anesthesiologist at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey. Five years ago, he had a heart attack that led to a long recovery through physical therapy. His exercise therapist in the cardiac rehabilitation unit was named Danny Radice. The two worked together for several difficult weeks.

“He helped me get my life back,” Pitera said. “It’s not hyperbole to say I owe Dan my life.”

This March, coronavirus overwhelmed St. Barnabas with the state’s second-highest number of COVID-19 cases. One of them was Danny Radice. This time, it was Pitera who worked tirelessly to save Radice. After more than six days on a ventilator, Radice survived and finally left the hospital on April 17.

Before he left, however, Pitera took a selfie with him. The doctor had returned the favor by saving his friend’s life.

The couple who helped launch our ministry 

Much of the news this week has been dominated by the tragic death of Ahmaud Arbery and issues related to racial prejudice. On Monday, we discussed God’s ability to forgive every sin we confess, including racial discrimination, and to give us a “clean heart” (Psalm 51:10). Yesterday we focused on our side of this process and the need for greater awareness, cross-racial relationships, and commitment to systemic change.

Today, let’s broaden our discussion to focus on a lifestyle of relational inclusivity. My suggestion is this: treat every person you meet as though you will meet them again.

It may be that you save a life and then this person saves yours. Or it may be that your influence on them and theirs on you extends even into eternity.

In August 1973, two men knocked on my apartment door and invited me to ride their bus to their church. They could not have known that I would one day become the youth minister of their church and that one of their daughters would be in my youth ministry.

In September 1980, I was a lonely college freshman when the chairman of the Christianity department befriended me. He could not have known that one day I would speak at his funeral.

A few years into my pastorate in Dallas, a couple who was visiting our church asked my wife and me to dinner. We could not have known that they would eventually help us launch the ministry we have led for the last eleven years.

When coincidence is providence 

John 4 tells one of my favorite stories from the life of Jesus. Here we find his humanity and his divinity both on display in a remarkable balance.

Continue reading Denison Forum – A doctor saves the man who saved him: The best way to treat every person we meet →

Magnolia Earl is the 2020 Gerber Baby. I can see why the company chose her—the one-year-old is adorable.

Her mother agrees: “Magnolia has brought so much joy to everyone she meets. Her personality is beyond happy and joyful.” Here’s the historic part of her story: she is the first adopted baby to be named the Gerber company’s spokesbaby, a tradition that dates back to 1928.

You may not have been adopted by your parents or adopted your children, but here’s a theological fact: if Jesus is your Lord, you have been adopted by your Father in heaven. In fact, this was the reason he sent his Son into the world: “to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:5).

Magnolia Earl’s parents chose her to be their daughter. Your Father chose you to be his child (John 1:12).

He loves every person on our planet as much as he loves you. Now he is calling you to do the same.

Why Emmett Till’s memorial sign had to be replaced 

In yesterday’s Daily Article, we focused on the Ahmaud Arbery shooting tragedy, looking at racism with a focus on what God will do to give us pure hearts of love for each other. Since writing that article, I have updated my website white paper on this issue (read it here). I also conducted a podcast interview with a very dear friend, now published as “What does it mean to be black in America today? A conversation with Tyrone Johnson” (listen to it here).

Continue reading Denison Forum – What makes this year’s Gerber baby unique: Three steps that can change a life →

Ahmaud Arbery would have turned twenty-six last Friday. People across the US commemorated his life by running 2.23 miles, referencing the day he died.

A former high school football star, he was jogging near his home on the outskirts of Brunswick, Georgia, on Sunday, February 23. According to authorities, he was shot and killed after being pursued by two white men with guns.

The men were charged last Thursday with murder and aggravated assault, two days after a shocking video of the shooting of Mr. Arbery became public. This tragedy is raising once again the specter of racism in our culture.

Coronavirus as a metaphor for racism 

Administration officials announced Saturday that three members of the White House coronavirus task force, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, would self-quarantine after contact with a person who tested positive for COVID-19. Let’s take a moment to consider the pervasiveness of the SARS-CoV-2 virus as a metaphor for racism.

Both are unseen in a person’s life until they become symptomatic. Both can infect people who do not recognize symptoms of the disease in their lives and thus think they are free of infection. Both often produce symptoms that worsen over time. And both can infect people who become carriers who infect others.

A year ago, I wrote a white paper that examines the issue of racism in depth. I reported that slavery began in the New World in 1619 when the first group of African slaves arrived at Jamestown, Virginia. Many Europeans argued that Africans were inferior and declared that they were better off enslaved by whites than living in freedom in their homelands.

Planters also quickly realized that they could make enormous profits by importing and using enslaved laborers. Such laborers could be made to work longer and harder in the fields. Since they were so far from their African homes, they could not easily escape and return home. They came from a variety of nations and cultures, so they could not easily communicate with one another to organize resistance against their enslavers.

Continue reading Denison Forum – The shooting of Ahmaud Arbery: Eradicating the virus of racism →

If you’re looking for something unusual to give your mother this Sunday, you might consider a gift that is truly celestial: Christie’s auction house is selling a twenty-nine-pound lump of moon rock for $2.5 million.

The rock, technically called NWA 12691, was found two years ago in the Sahara Desert, where it probably crash-landed during an ancient meteor shower. It is exceedingly rare: less than 1,500 lunar meteorites have been discovered over the years, just enough to fit inside a small car. NWA 12691 is the fifth-largest piece of the moon on earth, dwarfing even those returned by Apollo astronauts.

“We should always think of helping others” 

You don’t need to spend $2.5 million, however, to give someone a gift they will truly appreciate. Thousands of American graduates are writing the slogan “Gowns 4 Good” on their mortarboards after donating their gowns to healthcare workers to use as personal protective equipment in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

Gowns 4 Good is the name of a charity begun three weeks ago by Nathaniel Moore, a frontline physician assistant in Vermont. He is asking graduates to donate their gowns to more than seventy-five thousand frontline responders. Such gowns worn backwards, with the zippered opening in the rear and the high collar in front, meet the CDC requirements for covering the body.

On the theme of selfless service, consider Galina Yakovleva. As a child during the World War II siege of Leningrad, she learned to make the best of fearful times. Today, she’s using these lessons as she delivers food and supplies to needy people locked down because of the pandemic.

The eighty-year-old drives a white minivan every day through the streets of St. Petersburg. She was helping others for a decade before the pandemic struck and continues to serve in these difficult times. One of her care recipients said, “I don’t know how I’d live here indoors for a month if not for Galina. She brings me milk, bread, everything so I won’t die from hunger. I’m amazed. This person lives only for others, not for herself.”

Yakovleva explains her motive: “We should always think of helping others, at least a bit. Not just lie on the sofa.”

We are often the answer to our prayers 

Yesterday was the annual National Day of Prayer. Millions of Christians across the country prayed for our leaders and for our nation.

Continue reading Denison Forum – A celestial Mother’s Day gift: How to go ‘through’ hard times →

Jacquie Benetua-Rolens is communications and engagement coordinator at Santa Cruz Community Health Centers. Her two-year-old son has become a fixture in her daily Zoom meetings with colleagues, waving at them in his pajamas.

Before the pandemic, she worked in a small cubicle back at the office. Now that she’s working from home, she told the New York Times, “There is this softened, unfiltered, more honest version of ourselves that I’m enjoying getting to know. There is room to be forgiving and understanding with each other and ourselves. And it’s because we’ve all had to juggle.”

She’s one of millions of Americans taking part in an unprecedented social experiment. A Gallup poll found that a majority of those now working from home would prefer to continue doing so “as much as possible” after the pandemic.

It’s easy to see why. They are spending less time on the road. (The Times article cites a report that the average American who drives to work spends fifty-four hours a year stuck in traffic.) A 2014 study found that those who work from home are more productive. They run less risk of being infected by colleagues. They have more time for fitness during the day.

And a 2005 study found that job satisfaction increased with each additional hour spent working remotely (though it stopped increasing after fifteen hours working remotely).

The relevance of location to happiness

Telecommuting is obviously difficult for those in manufacturing or service jobs. The healthcare heroes saving lives in this pandemic cannot work from home. Nor can the frontline workers delivering food to stores and homes. Or the police officers risking their lives to keep us safe.

The Times article also notes that problem-solving and creativity can suffer when workers are isolated from each other. Such isolation can also lead to loneliness and boredom. And as we noted in yesterday’s Daily Article, homeschooling while working can be very challenging.

Continue reading Denison Forum – We are witnessing an unprecedented social experiment: A powerful way to experience unity in community →

In 1980, the first Tuesday in May was designated Teacher Appreciation Day. In 1985, the day was expanded to a week.

Parents who have been homeschooling their children because of the coronavirus pandemic are probably ready to celebrate teachers for the rest of the year. In his now-viral YouTube series, Some Good News, John Krasinski stated: “We here at SGN would like to start a petition that all teachers get paid 1.71 million dollars. Per day.”

CNN notes: “If there has ever been a time when appreciation for teachers is sky high, it is now. With the coronavirus pandemic closing schools, parents are now de facto homeschool teachers, discovering just how hard it is to teach.”

The article lists socially distanced ways we can thank teachers for their work, from social media campaigns to yard signs, thank-you parades, purchasing e-gift cards, and funding school supplies online.

The challenge of these days, of course, is that teachers require students. Teaching is a means to the end of educating those who are taught. Teachers do not speak into the air as though their words had some independent value. They measure success by the degree to which those they teach are able to understand and apply what they learn.

Baseball games with robots playing drums in the stands 

Professional baseball games are being played in Taiwan. However, players must submit to temperature checks several times a day. Cardboard cutouts and plastic mannequins have replaced the fans in the stands. A five-member band of robots plays drums from the stands.

But it’s not the same. One team’s manager said, “It just lacks a bit of energy, that kind of excitement of a real game.” He offers his players “imagination training” in the dugout, encouraging them to envision fans watching the games from their televisions at home. He tells them, “Maybe they are not here but they are still in front of television and cheering for us.”

One could argue that baseball doesn’t need fans in the stands to be baseball. Nothing on the field has changed. Wins and losses are recorded; players get hits or pitchers get outs. Batting averages and pitching statistics are being compiled.

But baseball was never intended as an end in itself. It creates no objective good for society. The games do not produce food, energy, or other necessities. The purpose of baseball, like that of other sports, is to entertain the fans who watch.

Three essential facts about God

Like teachers and baseball players, you and I were made to serve others by a God who serves us. Jesus testified that he “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).

Continue reading Denison Forum – Observing Teacher Appreciation Week: Our lives are best lived for others →

Tom Hanks delivered a virtual commencement address last weekend for the graduates of Ohio’s Wright State University. He called them the “chosen ones” in part because of the pandemic that has changed our lives so dramatically.

The actor explained: “You are the chosen ones because of a fate unimagined when you began your Wright State adventures.” As a result, he predicted, “You will be enlightened in ways your degree never held in promise. You will have made it through a time of great sacrifice and great need. No one will be more fresh to the task of restarting our normalcy than you—our chosen ones.”

What Warren Buffett thinks about our future 

Yesterday was Star Wars Day with its annual slogan, “May the Fourth be with you.” But today is also special for Star Wars fans, since the fifth rhymes with Sith (the ancient enemies of the Jedi Order).

The Star Wars universe has been a cultural phenomenon for more than four decades in large part because of its assurance that “the Force will be with you, always.” This “Force,” however, is not a personal God but, as Obi-Wan Kenobi explained, an impersonal “energy field created by all living things.” It is available to us as we seek to defeat the “dark side.”

In this sense, the Star Wars worldview reinforces and amplifies our belief in ourselves. A single Jedi knight can destroy a Death Star. People passionately committed to good can defeat those committed to evil.

What Tom Hanks told the graduates of Wright State University is what Americans believe about ourselves: we can persevere through pain and triumph over tragedy. Warren Buffett made the same optimistic claim during a recent company shareholders meeting: “Nothing can basically stop America. The American miracle, the American magic, has always prevailed, and it will do so again.”

This can-do spirit fueled the pioneers who risked their lives and families to come to this New World, the settlers who pushed its frontiers from the East Coast to the West, and the entrepreneurs who built the greatest economic force the world has ever seen. Every time I travel overseas, I am deeply grateful to return to this country. My father and grandfather fought for our nation. I will always love America.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Tom Hanks’s virtual commencement address and Star Wars Day: Are you trusting the Force more than the Father? →

Wylie, Texas, is a town of fifty thousand people twenty-eight miles northeast of Dallas. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, none of the students graduating from Wylie High School will have a traditional graduation ceremony or other end-of-year events.

Since they could not come to the school, the school’s principal came to them. All 612 of them.

Virdie Montgomery spent 80 hours driving 800 miles over 12 days to visit each high school senior at their home. He explained, “The most valuable gift any of us can give anyone that isn’t replaceable is time. Where one spends one’s time says a lot about what they value.”

One of the seniors told CNN, “It kind of shows people that somebody does care for you out there. Most principals wouldn’t do that.”

Hiker posing for photo falls to her death 

COVID-19 is affecting everyone, even those it does not infect. Some responses are positive, as Principal Montgomery shows. Others are tragic.

A hiker celebrating the end of her area’s coronavirus pandemic posed for a cliffside photo in Antalya, Turkey. She climbed over a safety fence to take the picture on the edge of a cliff in front of its scenic waterfalls. She then slipped on grass and fell roughly 115 feet to her death.

The US aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman began its deployment last November before the coronavirus outbreak began. Its 4,500 crew members are thus free of infection. As a paradoxical result, they cannot go home to their families because their ship is too valuable to end its deployment.

The hope is that once the Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group is up and running, the crew of the Truman can finally come home. But no one knows when that day will come.

Continue reading Denison Forum – High school principal visits 612 graduating seniors: Reframing the depth of the pandemic to experience God in depth →

Joni Eareckson Tada went swimming at the age of seventeen with her sister in the Chesapeake Bay. She dove into shallow water and severed her spinal cord. As a result, she has spent more than fifty years in a wheelchair, unable to move her lower body or hands.

Joni has become a bestselling author, renowned speaker and painter (she moves the brush with her mouth), and beloved figure in the Christian world. In a podcast interview published yesterday, she was asked to explain a statement she made recently: “In the worst of times, Christians can and should be at their best.”

She replied, “I think we are at our best when we remain hopeful, confident in God and his hold on the future, and also prayerful and expectant.” Then she made this powerful statement: “I’m a big believer that God permits what he hates to accomplish things that he loves, and that’s been my mantra for almost fifty-three years in this wheelchair.

“God permits what he hates, this difficult, paralyzing injury, to accomplish something that he loves, and that is, of course, in me, a changed heart and a closer walk with my God. So, that’s it in a nutshell.”

How can we remain “confident in God and his hold on the future” in these uncertain days? I’d like to close the week by sharing help I found in a surprising place.

My “lesson from a leaf”

Numbers 4 defines the duties of the Kohathites, Gershonites, and Merarites. It is not usually identified as the most inspiring chapter in the Bible.

In fact, I read it yesterday only because I follow a plan that takes me through the Bible each year. As a result, I found this text: “When the camp is to set out, Aaron and his sons shall go in and take down the veil of the screen and cover the ark of the testimony with it. Then they shall put on it a covering of goatskin and spread on top of that a cloth all of blue, and shall put in its poles” (vv. 5–6).

I was in “skim” mode when this thought impressed me: if God cares about such minute details in our lives, we can know that he cares about the massive issues we face as well.

Continue reading Denison Forum – What Joni Eareckson Tada has learned from nearly 53 years in a wheelchair: A powerful statement that can guide us to God’s best →

Eric Johnson was asleep on March 3 when Bella, the family’s six-year-old miniature Australian shepherd, woke him up. She was behaving erratically, giving him the sense that “something just didn’t feel right.”

He turned on the television to learn that a tornado was headed toward his town of Cookeville, Tennessee. He put his wife and their three children in a bathtub and was looking for Bella when the tornado struck their house. Their home was destroyed; Johnson was thrown into his backyard. He suffered a head injury and his wife had broken ribs.

Bella was thrown into the yard and survived, but then went missing. Their family searched for her for weeks. A church friend and dog tracker finally found her in an alley four miles from their home. Johnson, his brother-in-law, and their pastor helped retrieve her.

After fifty-four days of living on her own, Bella was reunited with her family.

Using drones to deliver flowers 

Help in hard times often comes from unexpected places.

Delivery robots are bringing goods and medical supplies to hospitals and others in need while helping support workers remain safe. Socially distanced people are using drones to deliver flowers, give virtual tours of quarantined cities, and even walk their dogs.

Turkey, which has become far more dictatorial and undemocratic in recent years, nonetheless has vowed solidarity with the United States during the pandemic. They recently sent 500,000 surgical masks, 4,000 overalls, 2,000 liters of disinfectant, 1,500 goggles, 400 N95 masks, and 500 face shields to the US.

I’ve been doing radio interviews nearly daily across recent weeks. One of the most common questions I’m asked is, “How can Christians make a difference in these days?” We all want to do what we can to help people and to honor our Lord.

In a secularized culture that condemns Christians for our supposed intolerance, how can we surprise others with his love and our compassion?

Major on the majors 

I’ve been reading in Acts lately and came upon this odd statement: “We set sail in a ship that had wintered in the island, a ship of Alexandria, with the twin gods as a figurehead” (Acts 28:11). Why would Luke include this note?

Continue reading Denison Forum – Family finds the dog that saved them from a tornado: Surprising someone with God’s compassion today →

The Wall Street Journal broke the story that is now making headlines everywhere: “The Secret Group of Scientists and Billionaires Pushing a Manhattan Project for Covid-19.”

They call themselves “Scientists to Stop Covid-19.” Their group includes chemical biologists, an immunobiologist, a neurobiologist, a chronobiologist, an oncologist, a gastroenterologist, an epidemiologist, and a nuclear scientist. Biologist Michael Rosbash, a 2017 Nobel Prize winner, says that of all the scientists at the center of the project, “There’s no question that I’m the least qualified.”

Their work had not been reported before the Journal article. They are led by a thirty-three-year-old physician-turned-venture capitalist named Tom Cahill. He lives in a one-bedroom rental near Boston’s Fenway Park and owns just one suit. But his connections through his investment firm have made the group’s work possible.

The article describes scientific proposals from the group that are already being discussed or implemented by government leaders. They are now looking at ideas for the post-COVID-19 world.

No one involved with the effort stands to gain financially. Their desire is to add their expertise and connections to the coronavirus battle effort. Stuart Schreiber, a Harvard University chemist and member of the group, says, “We may fail. But if it succeeds, it could change the world.”

A teleconference that impressed me greatly 

One of the most hopeful aspects of the pandemic is the fact that the entire world is united in fighting it. Our best minds from around the globe are focused on our common foe. Unlike a war in which nations fight each other, this is a conflict in which our enemy has made us all allies.

We are seeing such collaboration not just in science but across our nation and culture. This is one way God is redeeming this crisis.

Jesus prayed in John 17 that his followers would be united “so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (v. 23). As the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27), we obey our head and fulfill his purpose far better when our members are working in unity.

I was asked this week to join a teleconference of Houston-area religious leaders. They crossed all denominational and cultural boundaries. Their common desire was to support and encourage each other as they sought ways to move forward together.

One example that impressed me was their concern for smaller churches meeting in area schools. These schools are closed into the summer, meaning that these congregations will have no place to meet once in-person services begin. So the larger churches began working on ways the smaller churches could use their campuses.

I am convinced that Jesus was smiling in heaven.

Competition and intercession 

Our free-market economy is based on competition. The theory is that the more companies and workers compete, the better their products become and the lower their prices. By contrast, I have seen the state-sponsored economy work in Cuba—or not work, I should say. When people own what they make and can advance based on their hard work and initiative, society benefits.

One downside of this competitive environment, however, is that it can so easily foster spiritual independence and conflict. Churches compete with churches for members. Pastors compete with pastors for acclaim and advancement. Church growth can be a zero-sum game: if the new family in our community joins your church, they did not join my church.

I have witnessed such competition across my entire ministry. But the common enemy we face today is being used by God to unify his people in transformative ways. The astounding evangelistic movement I profiled in yesterday’s Special Edition is one result of such collaboration. The pastors in Houston who discussed ways to help smaller congregations are another.

So, here’s my question: As we face the ongoing pandemic, could God’s people be united in prayer more powerfully and intentionally than ever before?

We have responded financially to crises in the past. For example, you were incredibly generous when I asked you to help us raise funds to support those devastated by Hurricane Harvey in my hometown of Houston.

As we face physical, financial, social, and relational challenges unseen in living memory, is there a better time for us to answer Jesus’ intercession for unity through united intercession of our own?

Find a movement and join it 

My purpose today is not to announce a prayer movement in response to the pandemic. God has led other believers to do this very thing. Some are centered on 2 Chronicles 7:14 and pray at 7:14 every morning and evening in response. Others are being supported by churches, denominations, and ministries.

The Lord might lead you to find and join such a movement. He might lead you to begin one. He might lead you to ask a handful of other believers to join you in specific intercession for each other and our world. Two believers in agreement are enough to pray in powerful unity (Matthew 18:20).

My purpose is to emphasize the urgency of prayerful unity today and tomorrow. Defeating our viral enemy will require medical and social collaboration. Defeating our even more dangerous spiritual enemy will require spiritual collaboration.

What step will you take to pray in unity today?

Denison Forum

Max Glauben was liberated from the Holocaust on April 23, 1945. His parents and brother were murdered by the Nazis.

He came to the US as an orphan, served in the US Army, met his wife Frieda, and started a family that now includes three children, seven grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. He helped launch the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum. Since 2005, he has returned to concentration camp sites fourteen times, leading March of the Living trips.

Each time, he goes to a mausoleum that holds seven tons of human ashes and recites a prayer for the dead. “I look at the ashes, the seven tons of ashes, and I wonder how many of the owners of these ashes, how many diseases they could’ve cured,” he says.

Mr. Glauben intended to spend the seventy-fifth anniversary of his liberation back overseas on his fifteenth March of the Living trip. But because of the coronavirus pandemic, the trip was canceled.

Last Thursday, he expected to spend the day at home with family but went outside to find an amazing surprise: a drive-by procession was held to celebrate him and his story of survival.

When asked how to move forward when you don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, Mr. Glauben said, “Never, never, never, never give up. Enjoy life and try to treat everybody that you are surrounded with the way you’d like to be treated.”

A vaccine by October?

You may not have heard of Max Glauben before today. However, every person he teaches about the atrocities of the Holocaust who then works to confront anti-Semitism will benefit the world as a result of his efforts.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Holocaust survivor honored 75 years after his liberation: How people you don’t know change your world →

The Jetsons were an animated television family in the early 1960s. Their space-age home was cleaned by Rosie the robot. They talked to each other via video and smartwatches and read the news on flat-screen televisions. Drone-like flying pods delivered their children to school. Voice-activated devices talked to them.

That was then, this is now.

As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, interior designers are busy planning the office of the future. Here’s a vision of what office workers may come back to (whenever that is).

The doors into our office building will open automatically so we don’t have to touch them. We will tell the elevator our floor so we don’t have to touch its buttons. Elevator occupancy will be regulated to enable social distancing.

Our office will have dividers separating workspaces that are spaced further apart. Break rooms and kitchens will have fewer chairs and signs documenting the last time they were cleaned.

All of this reverses the trend following the last recession in which companies were trying to do more with less space. Many packed their employees into open office spaces, a practice known as “densification.” This will likely be reversed now with more private spaces or personal offices for employees. Sensors will detect and warn of overcrowding; employees will take turns using private offices and will work from home otherwise.

One company is developing a concept called “Six Feet Office” with visually displayed foot traffic routing to keep employees six feet apart. Higher quality air filtration systems, UV lighting to sanitize surfaces, and more ubiquitous hand-sanitizing stations are predicted. So are infrared body temperature scanners and virus and antibody testing kits for employees.

We will need more space for fewer employees

All of this, of course, assumes we will return to our offices.

According to a new MIT report, 34 percent of Americans who previously commuted to work were working from home by the first week of April due to coronavirus. Prior to the pandemic, only 4 percent of the American workforce worked from home at least half the time.

Home offices are becoming more ubiquitous as a result. People are looking for ways to convert a closet or add a room to create more functional work-from-home space. They are buying desks, office supplies, and computer technology more frequently than before.

Does this trend mean that companies will lease less space? One way companies can lessen the financial impact of the pandemic is to reduce their rent obligations. However, while they may have fewer in-office employees, their social-distancing space may need to be larger, so that the two trends cancel each other out.

“Return, O my soul, to your rest”

As we look to the future with the pandemic, it’s vital that we look to the past with our Lord.

Psalm 116 begins: “I love the Lord” (v. 1a). This is a present-tense affirmation and experience. But here is why the psalmist makes this declaration: “because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy” (v. 1b). He trusts God in the present because God has been trustworthy in the past.

The psalmist makes his point again: “Because he has inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live” (v. 2, my emphasis). Once again, he bases his present faith in God on God’s faithfulness in the past.

He then illustrates: “The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the Lord: ‘O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul!'” (vv. 3–4).

This experience taught him that “gracious is the Lord, and righteous; our God is merciful” (v. 5). He knows that “the Lord preserves the simple” because “when I was brought low, he saved me” (v. 6). Now he can say, “Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you” (v. 7).

How to “cast all your anxiety on him” 

What pandemic-induced changes in your life today are especially difficult for you? Name them, then identify times in the past when God has been faithful to you when you faced related challenges.

If you’re struggling financially, remember previous times when God met your needs. If you’re worried about the future, remember days when such worries were met by God’s grace. If you’re concerned about your family or health, remember when God provided for your family and health.

Now trust your present fears to your ever-present Father. He promises that “he will not leave you or forsake you” (Deuteronomy 31:6). Jesus assured us, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). You can “cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).

1. C. Sproul observed: “The issue of faith is not so much whether we believe in God, but whether we believe the God we believe in.”

Do you?

Denison Forum

The National Football League held its first-ever virtual draft last night. As many predicted, the Cincinnati Bengals made LSU quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Joe Burrow their selection and thus the first pick in the draft.

Will Burrow become a superstar in the league? Or will he soon be forgotten?

In the fifty-three previous seasons since the AP Rookie of the Year award began, only six first draft picks have won the award. Burrow can enjoy his status until the season begins (whenever that is), but then he will become one of 1,696 players on NFL rosters.

What happened to me in 1958 

In our culture, who we are is measured by what we do. The Bible disagrees.

One of the earliest controversies in Christian history was whether Gentiles could become Christians without first having to submit to the rules and customs of Judaism. In other words, was there something they had to do to become who they could be in Christ?

Paul answered this question definitively: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (Galatians 4:4–7).

I was born in 1958. I did nothing to deserve being born. I did not choose to be born. Rather, this choice was made for me. Once I became the child of my parents, I would always be their child. There was nothing I could do to earn or lose this status.

In the same way, when we are “born again,” we become forever the children of God (John 3:3; 2 Corinthians 5:17).

Br. David Vryhof of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Boston writes: “Who we are and what we are is grounded in the truth that we belong to God. We are God’s children by adoption and heirs of God’s promises. This identity offers us a sense of value that does not come from anything that we have done for God, but rather from what God has done for us.”

Continue reading Denison Forum – Bengals make Joe Burrow first pick in the NFL draft: Who you are is not what you do, but what you do reflects who you are →

Gabe Scuderi has been working for twenty-four years at a Lysol factory in New Jersey but says, “It’s the first time I felt this isn’t only a job. We’re on the front lines now.”

A grandmother named Estelle Slon is emailing riddles to sick children forced into isolation as they undergo treatment for cancer and other dire illnesses. More than a thousand volunteer groups have been set up in the UK to help the most vulnerable during the coronavirus outbreak.

How are we to account for altruism?

Writing for the Federalist, Glenn T. Stanton notes the “extravagant beauty” in nature that defies evolutionary explanation. His article describes in detail the contradictory ways Charles Darwin and other evolutionists have tried to explain beauty that does not seem to serve any evolutionary purpose.

Yale University’s Richard Prum’s theory is “captured in his simple phrase ‘beauty happens.'” The bottom line is that naturalistic evolutionists have no compelling explanation for what Stanton calls their “most persistent problem.”

The same can be said of humans who perform deeds of sacrificial altruism. If evolutionary theory is right in claiming that survival optimization is our basic drive, then why is this person taking such risks? If survival of the species is the explanation, then why isn’t everyone doing the same?

Here’s the biblical response: when we care for others simply because we care for them, we express a vestige of the divine image in which we are created.

God loves us because “God is love” (1 John 4:8). He loves us because it is his very nature to love, not because we have done or can do anything to deserve his love. When we love through service that is not earned and comes at great personal cost, we act as creatures who reflect the nature of our Creator.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Lysol factory worker is ‘on the front lines now’: Evolution’s ‘most persistent problem’ and the privilege of knowing a personal God →

Have you heard of the “three blessings” exercise?

Yale psychology professor Laurie Santos teaches an online course on happiness that has reached more than a million people. She recommends something called the “three blessings exercise.”

Here’s her explanation: “Research shows that we really can benefit from counting our blessings even when it feels like there aren’t that many blessings to be counted. The simple act of scribbling down three things you’re grateful for can significantly bump your mood, in some studies as quickly as within a couple of weeks. It’s completely free. It takes five to ten minutes a day. At the end of your day, just scribble down a few things that you’re grateful for right now.”

Dr. Santos was asked for “final words of wisdom” and shared this: “If I had a last word to share, it would be self-compassion. It really is an awful time. There’s a reason we’re calling this crisis unprecedented. We’re dealing with a deadly virus that’s incredibly scary and uncertain. . . . Give yourself and your family members more self-compassion and more of a benefit of the doubt than you usually would.”

“Give thanks in all circumstances” 

Counting our blessings even in hard times is a biblical exercise: “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). No matter how the world changes, God’s love does not: “Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!” (Psalm 106:1).

However, there’s a way to experience our Father’s presence that transcends an occasional attitude of gratitude. The psalmist continues: “Who can utter the mighty deeds of the Lord, or declare all his praise?” (v. 2). Then he answers his question: “Blessed are they who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times!” (v. 3, my emphasis).

Continue reading Denison Forum – The ‘three blessings exercise’: The path to gratitude that changes our lives and culture →

If you’ve not been watching John Krasinski’s Some Good News YouTube show, let me encourage you to start today. Past episodes have featured a hilarious interview with Steve Carell (of course) and a performance by the Hamilton cast from their homes. To thank a group of frontline medical personnel in Boston, he arranged an experience I won’t give away here but that is worth watching with gratitude.

Now Krasinski has done something memorable for high school seniors: he hosted a virtual senior prom and was the DJ as well. He was joined by Chance the Rapper, Billie Eilish, and the Jonas Brothers. High school seniors and their families across the country were able to participate in a variety of ways.

On the other end of the generational spectrum, Captain Tom Moore is a ninety-nine-year-old British World War II veteran. He broke his hip and must use a walker with wheels for mobility. Did this stop him from doing what he can to combat the pandemic? Not at all.

He set a goal of walking the twenty-five meters around his garden one hundred times before his one hundredth birthday on April 30. He completed his task last Thursday. In so doing, he raised more than $31 million for the British health service.

When a new field hospital opens in response to the coronavirus outbreak next week, the retired army officer will be the guest of honor. Capt. Moore said in a statement over the weekend, “I am still amazed by the amount of kindness and generosity from the UK public who continue to give despite it being an uncertain time for many.”

Reframing in the light of God’s sovereignty

Tragedies always make us feel frustrated that we cannot do more to help. A gunman in Nova Scotia killed at least sixteen people over the weekend. A man hijacked a public transit bus in Dallas yesterday and wounded two officers. We can read the news and pray for the victims, but we want to do more.

In the same way, one of our frustrations with social distancing is that it feels so hard to help those in need. We cannot visit senior adults isolated in nursing homes, many of whom do not have the technological means to FaceTime or text with us. It’s hard to volunteer at food banks or rescue missions when we’re not allowed out of our homes.

Continue reading Denison Forum – John Krasinski hosts a national prom: What can you do that you couldn’t do before the pandemic? →