Year End; Time to Wake Up

It has become somewhat traditional for me to review the Spherical Model on the last post of the year. (Also at other times, such as early March, the anniversary of when I started the blog in 2011.) I’ll get to that eventually. But I want to lead into that by first talking about a podcast I was listening to the other day.

The host of Cwic Show is Greg Matsen, and the person being interviewed, Julie Behling, did her master's thesis on the underground Christian churches in the Soviet Union. She is the author of Beneath Sheep's Clothing and has a documentary with the same name coming out in January. 

screenshot from Cwic Show December 15, 2023

One detail I hadn’t known about the Soviet Union was that the KGB had infiltrated the churches. All of them. The clergy were either cooperating with the KGB, or they were KGB agents. Behling offers details about how they had done this, and why. But it came down to controlling what people believe, because that is what totalitarian tyrannies must do.

Then she added that, in her research, she was somewhat shocked to find that Communists had also infiltrated a solid half of American Christian churches, more than a century ago.

She mentioned Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor, who spent some time in the US in the 1930s (I wrote about him here), who was sad to come to the Union Theological Seminary only to find that they scoffed at the idea of Christ’s divinity and atonement for sin. Those were the same lapses he had found in the German clergy as they acquiesced to Hitler.

Back when I was attending homeschool conferences, more than a decade ago, I heard Pastor Voddie Baucham speak. He defined having a Biblical worldview as believing in Jesus, who lived a perfect life, died for us, and suffered for our sins as our Savior. That is what I believe, and that is doctrine in my religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So I was shocked when he told us that less than 10% of professed Christians have this Biblical worldview, and only 51% of pastors have it. I think that’s evidence of the infiltration.

I heard a talk recently—I think it was Ken Ham telling a story from his childhood, but I could be wrong about who it was. Anyway, he recalled the pastor had been telling the story of the feeding of the 5000 with the loaves and fishes. The pastor had explained that, once a young boy had pulled out his meager amount of fish and bread to share, it had incentivized everyone else to share what they had, and then there was plenty. The storyteller’s father went up to the pastor afterward and told him, “That’s not what happened.” The pastor had taken the miracle out of the story, along with Jesus’ divine power. And he’d made the story pointless. If enough people had brought food and to spare, there was never anyone in need of being fed, so why would the story even show up in scriptures? More likely, it was remarkably miraculous, and that’s why it got recorded. Church leadership that doesn’t believe in the divinity of Christ means they are not Christian, and they are leading the flock toward something else that is not good.

What Behling said had taken place in the infiltrated churches was a replacement of the divine doctrine with the “Marxist construct of oppressed versus oppressor”; in other words, social justice—even though it took until recent decades for them to start using that term.

Matsen and Behling got into a section where they were discussing some various flavors of authoritarian tyranny.

I’ll share some of the transcript here, so you can see the attempts to define various forms of authoritarian tyranny. [GB is Greg Matsen, and JB is Julie Behling.]

GM: I’ve noticed in reading your book—obviously I don’t know about the documentary yet—but in the book you use the term Communism quite a bit. That’s kind of a term that isn’t used as much. It’s Marxist, maybe, or, moving on to 2.0 here with woke, etc. You have a background in studying Communism, right?

He asks her about the terms, so she begins with some definitions:

·        Socialism is when the government owns the means of production and is in charge.

·        Communism is when the government owns the means of production, and this government is instituted through a violent overthrow of the previous regime.

·        Marxism is the oppressed versus oppressor construct that's the playbook for preparing a society to fall to Communism.

JB: So if you can identify a group of people who either are oppressed or who can be made to feel oppressed, you can rile them up to anger and stoke the grievance and say, “Hey there's your oppressor. Tear down that system of power.” The systems of power are torn down and weakened, and now the Communists can come in and assume authority.

This caught my attention, because I have this in my basic article about the Spherical Model:

People tend to be afraid of the chaos of anarchy. Lenin saw this. One way to gain totalitarian power is to create chaos and then promise to solve the problems of chaos (crime, poverty, lack of safety on all levels) by offering government solutions, until the revolutionaries have managed to get themselves installed as dictators. This was the purpose of Trotsky’s idea of perpetual revolution: Place power in our hands, and we will see that you are fed and housed and protected—that is, if the dictator was so minded once the power was achieved. Everywhere that Communism has been tried, it took hold because people gave in to this desire for government to provide protection and food and shelter. It works on a people who do not trust their own ability to provide, and it works especially well when chaos reigns to make it difficult for people to provide for themselves. Revolutionaries therefore cause anarchy so that they can implement their own totalitarian tyranny.

I think Behling is right when she is saying that the oppressed versus oppressor tactic is to create chaos that will allow the tyrants to step in and take control.

Behling says, “What we have brewing here, it's not exactly like the type of Communism that the Soviets had. It's worse.” Matsen asks her why it’s worse.

JB: Because it's more crafty. And it's more like the Communist Chinese system, where it's this weird marriage of Communism and Fascism and then, honestly, a little bit of Monopolistic Capitalism thrown in for good measure. It's the most abusive forms of government fused together with this—what they're hoping for—Global Leadership with all the technocratic controls that they— we now have with being in the 21st century, and it's truly frightening.

The Spherical Model allows us to see the relative badness or goodness of a philosophy graphically. You can determine how close the ideas bring society to freedom, prosperity, and civilization, or alternatively how close they bring society to tyranny, poverty, and savagery. For a fuller discussion see this summary. Or, for more detail, see all the articles on the website, starting with "The Political World Is Round."

The political, economic, and social spheres of the Spherical Model

There are slight flavor differences between Communism, Socialism, Fascism, the overarching philosophy of Marxism, as well as what Behling calls Monopolistic Capitalism—another way of saying Oligarchy or rule by businesses and controllers of money. These are all southern hemisphere on the Spherical Model, mostly on the statist side, or controlled by the government, although some (oligarchs and organized crime possibly) on the chaos or anarchic side of tyranny. But they’re all bunched together, down toward the bad pole of tyranny.

Fascism, Socialism, and Communism are all statist tyrannies,
and thus they take up approximately the same location
on the Spherical Model.

There’s discussion about the way tyranny—Marxism, Communism—is being presented here in the West, particularly in the US. It’s like a virus, or a cancer, that spreads. But, because the West was healthy (not a lot of abject poverty), it was hard to convince a poor class to rise up in rebellion, allowing for the tyrannical takeover.

JB: Communism—you can see it as a virus, or as a cancer, and it spreads to various parts of the—different organs and different systems, and eats it up, and takes it over. And, you know, Antonio Gramsci, his whole plot, you know, he was back there in Italy as a Marxist, and very stressed out that the West was not falling to Communism, in the 1930s. And so he’s the one who came up with cultural Marxism, and said, “OK, we’ve got to infiltrate these cultures—the West has this cultural hegemony that is resistant to Communism; we’ve got to go in and take those things over.”

I mean, before the businesses could be taken over, our culture was already taken over to a good enough extent that that was possible. So, yeah. We’re in a very late stage, because it’s far beyond the culture at this point.

There’s a part of the book of Revelation that I’ve been looking at, in chapter 13, about the beast that rises up out of the sea. This beast has multiple heads and crowns. Symbolically, it seems to be the various powers reigning around the world, and interconnected together as one “beast.” One of the heads is mortally wounded—but then comes back to life. I have looked at this and wondered if this is Communism, or one of the other words we’ve listed and defined above. We fought a World War to wipe out this attempt at controlling all the peoples of the earth. We said, “Never again!” And yet, here we are, with our college campuses preaching the Gramsci version, cultural Marxism, where everyone is either oppressed or oppressor. There’s an attempt to control our ability to make a living, or to buy and sell, based on whether we have bought into this party line. It’s as ugly as it ever was. “We’re in a very late stage,” Behling says.

"La Bete de la Mer," a French tapestry showing
John the Revelator, Satan the dragon, and the sea beast
of Revelation 13. Image from Wikipedia.

Matsen, at one point, adds this:

GM: I really like that you said that they’re using Fascism, because that’s 100% true. It’s so funny, because they call anyone who leans right of them, which is almost everyone, a Fascist. What a Fascist really means, they’re using business; they’re using the current institutions, right, that are not owned by the state. And that is Fascism. And they’re using it better than any Fascist has ever used it before. And so, again, that’s the idea of adapting to the West and using their system, where now they are the Fascists that are, again, infecting and using and coercing the free enterprises to—and free organizations and institutions in the West—to tow the party line.

So, again, it isn't what you call it; it's how far into tyranny the idea is. If people used the Spherical Model, they couldn't be fooled into thinking anything "right" of cultural Marxism is Fascist; cultural Marxism is just a way of being Fascist—or totalitarian tyranny. 

Behling tries to give us some hope. I mean, why point out these things if there isn’t any hope of recovery?

JB: And I really do have hope—I mean, I’m a little bit doom and gloom here—but I do have hope that there are so many good people, so many good Christians, so many good people who love freedom that, if we can wake up enough people, we have this window of time right now—if we can wake up enough people—that these agendas will not be able to come to full fruition. That is my hope.

There is some reason to hope. I know so many good people, as she does, so many good Christians and also good people of other faiths, who love freedom, and truth, and want to preserve our God-given rights. Governments are instituted to protect those God-given rights, but government is fire, and it seems to fuel itself and grasp power unto itself that it hasn’t been given by the people.

One purpose of the Spherical Model is to clarify. It isn’t necessary to understand all the nuances and differences among the various words we use for tyranny. It’s only necessary to know whether something leads to Freedom, Prosperity, and Civilization, or whether it instead leads to Tyranny, Poverty, and Savagery. Those things are ascertainable with a few basic questions—and a lot of truth.

May this coming year be a year where we bring more people to an awakening, with truth—offered with love and caring, but always by giving and sharing truth.

A Tree, a House, and Why There Is No Peace

It’s almost Christmas Eve. I wrote a bit about Christmas a couple of weeks ago. This piece isn’t as joyful. But it is also about that little part of the world we think about this time of year, because it is where our Savior was born.

This is something of a book review. A friend recommended the book The Lemon Tree, An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, by Sandy Tolan. There’s a house, with a lemon tree, that has a complicated history. It is a real place. The version I read was a young reader’s edition of an award-winning adult book. This one was 228 pages, so I didn’t realize it qualified as a “children’s book,” until well into it. Or maybe during the afterword. But this one will do.

book cover from Amazon

The original book was published in 2006, which started out in the form of a 43-minute radio documentary on NPR’s Fresh Air, in 1998, at the occasion of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The afterword of this version shows events up through 2013, and it was published in 2020.

The purpose of the story, I think, is intended to show that a friendship can exist between two natural enemies, when the people are willing to really listen to one another.

That’s the first impression of the story. But there were several niggling details that didn’t seem right. And an ending that didn’t coincide with that message. So I’d like to take a look at this story, particularly in light of what is happening in that place now.

The house was originally owned by the Khairi family, Palestinian Arabs. Their son Bashir is one of the two main people in the story. The house is later inhabited by the Eshkenazis, a Jewish family relocated from Bulgaria. Their daughter Dalia is the other main person in the story.

There’s a fair amount of history told at the beginning of the book. The book claims to be nonfiction in every way. Well-researched, we are told. There are maps at the beginning, showing various plans.

Left map is from the book. Upper right is from this Danny Ayalon video, and
lower right is from this Prager U video. These both show that the original
protectorate welcoming Jews to Israel was considerably larger than any later boundaries.

The maps match the history, but some details do not coincide with the history I know of this region. It’s a difficult thing to understand one another and come to some sort of agreement when we are dealing with “facts” that simply don’t match.

According to the book, the Israelis—the Jews—are always the aggressors. They are brutal and unfeeling, and aim for civilians. That is the story people tell when they want you to hate the Jews. In reality, it is hard to find a people anywhere in history who have gone more out of their way to avoid civilian casualties in their wars. And the wars on their part have always been defensive—including the one that started October 7, 2023.

Whenever you have someone referring to Israel as “occupying” the land, you know you are reading a biased, anti-Jewish source. No amount of pretending to be thoughtful passes the smell test.

So, what is the story of this house with the lemon tree? According to the family story, this is 1948, the war Israel had to fight one year into its existence following its creation by the United Nations, following the end of WWII and the holocaust. Jews, who were already living in Israel (some Jews had lived there throughout the centuries, but in growing numbers in the 20^th Century), were joined by refugees from many parts of Europe, where it was no longer safe for them to live.

Left map from the book. Upper right from Danny Ayalon video. 
Lower right from PragerU video. While the maps are essentially the same,
the book fails to note that these boundaries, while greatly shrinking
Israeli land, were accepted by Israel but rejected by the Arabs,
who went to war within the year to wipe out Israel. Israel won, but
the Arabs never accepted these nor any other boundaries.

They did not come to a nation called Palestine; they came to an area, given that name anciently by the Romans. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, this area was a protectorate of Great Britain. Much, but not all, was uninhabited. The Jews, coming from the diaspora, did not oust any current residents. They came and settled, building their own communities—buying land whenever it had an owner. The Arabs living among them started protesting their presence with terrorist attacks at least as early as the 1920s. But there wasn’t always animosity. Jews and Arabs mainly did business together, as they have done in other Mediterranean areas over the centuries.

But when Israel was made a state, with worldwide agreement and treaty, in 1947, the Arabs surrounding the newly birthed tiny nation rebelled. And started a war. Which Israel miraculously won.

During this war—as with others since then—the Arabs call for the Jews to be removed from the nation that has been their homeland for more than three millennia. Every time Israel has been willing to negotiate a partition—always with Israel giving up land—the Arabs have refused, insisting instead on Jewish annihilation.

So our story with Bashir’s family begins during this 1948 war. In the book, a Jewish neighbor rides into their fields and warns them the army is coming, and they need to get out or be killed. They grab what they can, as do their neighbors, and they flee. While they are concerned, they are certain the Palestinian Arabs will quickly win the war, and then they can return to their homes.

I have read about this before. I can’t verify that a neighboring Jew didn’t call out to them. But in general the Arab aggressors were the ones calling for the people to clear out, so they could go through the streets without having to separate out the enemy; they could just indiscriminately kill. The Jews were telling people, “You don’t have to leave. If you want to live peacefully with us, we will not harm you.” They kept their word to those who stayed.

But those who left—think about what they have done; and this includes Bashir and family. They have declared allegiance to the enemies of the nation. They have declared their desire for the annihilation of the people granted nationhood. Their side loses. And they have not changed their designs, but they think their enemies should let them back in, to fight them from within another day.

Refugees went several directions. They continued terrorist attacks from wherever they were. The neighboring nations that took them in could tolerate them only so long, and then they ousted them. So there are pockets of Palestinian Arabs, mainly in Gaza, west and south of the rest of Israel, and another portion to the north. You might notice that there were Jewish refugees at that time as well—who fled into Israel from neighboring countries. They aren’t still refugees, of course; they are Israeli citizens. I don’t know of another incidence in history where refugees have been kept in refugee settlements—temporary, subsistence level—without being allowed to become permanent anywhere, for decades on end. They are not held in these settlements by the Israelis; the Israelis only police their own borders, not the rest of the world, which is keeping those people trapped in poverty.

This point is important, because it’s what the story turns on.

After 20 years, Bashir, now in his mid-twenties, returns, along with his cousins, to visit their former homes. At Bashir’s home Dalia Eshkenazi decides to overcome her fear and open the door to them. They note that the lemon tree Bashir’s family had planted is still surviving. Something of a friendship ensues. Dalia believes the way Bashir tells it—that the Israelis forced his people out and then wouldn’t let them return after the war. Dalia is horror struck. She had always understood that the people had simply abandoned their houses, although she couldn’t understand why. This changes many things, she believes. Her people were in the wrong, although after all these years, what is there to do? She in fact does many things. After inheriting the house in adulthood, she turns it into a school for Arab children. And she continues a long correspondence with Bashir, and later with his family.

Left map from the book. Upper right from Danny Ayalon video. 
Lower right from PragerU video. The story of Bashir's first visit to Dalia's family
is about a year after the 1967 war, during which all the surrounding Arab nations
attacked, but Israel miraculously won. The Arabs continued to refuse to accept any borders
that acknowledged Israel as a nation.

Bashir, for his part, while supposedly trying to deeply understand, also tells Dalia that the Jews should all return to where they came from. He simply doesn’t hear, or understand, that there is nowhere but Israel for the Jews to return to. He thinks he is being generous to exempt those Jews who were born in Israel prior to 1947. But, of course, they shouldn’t have any right to rule in the land the Palestinians now claim to own—and accuse the Israelis of “occupying.”

Despite this peacemaking friendship, Bashir is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP—a terrorist group intent on ousting the Israelis and “returning” all the land to the Palestinian Arabs. Over the years he is arrested multiple times. I forget how long he spent in prison, but I think the longest stint was 15 years. In the afterword, in 2011, he is arrested and interrogated for several days, at age 69, following an attack a few weeks earlier in which an Israeli family was brutally murdered, and which had been linked to PFLP members in the vicinity. Up through this time, he answers as he always has: “I am a Palestinian who believes in the Palestinian cause. And I despise the occupation. The crux of the Palestinian cause is the right of return. Otherwise there will be endless bloodshed.”

By this time he has stopped his correspondence with Dalia, because she did not follow through with his demand—that she “petition the city of Ramla to return the old Arab houses to their original Palestinian owners.” This was not something she had either the power or ability to do. So he has shunned her.

As I look at the story, Dalia is the peacemaker. The Jewish peacemaker. Bashir is the violent, angry, demanding Arab, who never does understand either what really happened, or what is reality after all the decades. There can be no peace, because people like him do not want peace; they want the Jews disposed of.

The book doesn’t tell the story the author intended. It is, rather, a metaphor for the larger conflict. A Jew opens the door to peace; a Palestinian Arab makes unreasonable and irrational demands that cannot and should not be met.

In the afterword, the book gives this account of casualties:

Since Dalia and Bashir last saw each other, in 2005, multiple wars have devastated Gaza, killing more than 3,200 Palestinian civilians, including more than one thousand children, mostly killed by Israeli air strikes. During that same time, twenty-nine Israeli civilians died from Hamas rocket attacks launched from Gaza. None of those were children. Yet, despite the dramatic disparity in casualties, throughout Israel, and in the media, Palestinians are often portrayed as the aggressors, and Israelis, the victims.

The author fails to note that it was Palestinians who began every war, every attack. Every Israeli air strike was in defense, not offense. And Jewish leaders went to great lengths to warn civilians to get safely away from where the air strikes were targeted to land. Meanwhile, Palestinian leaders placed civilians in harm’s way, on purpose, to be able to blame Israelis. And their attacks have always aimed at civilians. The disparity in deaths is attributable almost entirely to Israeli military strength, including the Iron Dome defenses—not attributable to some gentle kindness by the Palestinian attackers.

The left map is from the book. The right is from a presentation by Victor Ludlow
that I attended in 2011. The point Ludlow made here was that this area has
numerous small pockets of the different ethnicities. Dividing lines to partition
Palestinians from Jews aren't really possible. This land is actually Judea and 
Samaria, part of Israel since the beginning. But this is where Palestinians cry out
that no Jews should be allowed to live in this disputed territory.

In a follow-up to the last time I talked about the war, I wondered what the casualty count is at this point. Oddly, it isn’t that easy to ascertain. There are a number of articles detailing casualties in Gaza. Getting an updated count of casualties in Israel, which has been under continual rocket attacks—except for a brief cease fire around November 21, in which there were negotiations for prisoner exchanges—has not been easy.

When the attack first happened, horrifying the world, we learned, “On 7 October 2023, 1,139 Israelis and foreign nationals, including 764 civilians, were killed, and 248 persons taken hostage during the initial attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip.”[i] Note that the Israeli casualties on that day equal a third of the Palestinian count recounted in the book that stretched over a couple of decades.

It took until about the first weekend of the war before the concern turned from the savagery of the terrorist Palestinians to concern that Israel might use its military might to stop their enemies—which might, as it turns out, cause casualties, including civilian casualties, despite Israel’s efforts to avoid them.

Let’s use an analogy, something like that house in the story, but here in Texas. Suppose there’s a house that is broken into; the intruders intend to take whatever they can get hold of, and they have no compunctions about killing any residents who might stand in their way. But, while they should be aware that homeowners are well-armed in Texas, they seem shocked, Shocked! that the homeowner pulls out a gun and shoots at them. One of the intruders is killed; another is wounded. The wounded thief calls on the media to condemn the homeowner who protected himself, his family, and his home. He had greater firepower—a hunting rifle, as it turned out—which overpowered the mere handguns carried by the intruders. Not fair! The homeowner valued his own life and property as more valuable than the thieves', who were only breaking into his home and threatening him, and hadn’t yet succeeded in killing him and his family.

That kind of argument might work in California or New York—places where people aren’t allowed to own guns to protect themselves. But it doesn’t make sense in Texas. We have what is called the Castle Doctrine, meaning a person has the right to protect himself—with lethal force if necessary—on his own property when under threat.

Do we feel bad for the intruders? One was killed. Another wounded. We would rather that hadn’t happened—but it was entirely preventable by the thieves; all they had to do was not to break into the home to rob and plunder.

We can feel bad for Palestinians, many of whom are trapped in poverty and bad circumstances—and yet are not terrorist aggressors. But they live among such aggressors. They vote them into power. And they continue to claim the Israelis have no right to live in their own country and to protect themselves.

There might be two points of view. But it might be that one side is completely in the wrong—and they are the ones who have the power to cause peace in the Middle East. If only they were willing.

---

[i] "Israel social security data reveals true picture of Oct 7 deaths." France 24. 15 December 2023. Archived from the original on 17 December 2023. Retrieved 18 December 2023.  The quote and citation were found on Wikipedia December 22, 2023.

Great Expectations

There’s a tune I play with other musicians, called “Hyfrydol,” which in my religion is sung with the words, “In Humility, Our Savior.” There are Christmas lyrics I like, with a lot of Alleluias. But the most common version is probably “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus,” which can also be sung as a Christmas hymn.

At the time of the Savior’s birth, people had been waiting already for a very long time. Every Old Testament prophet prophesied of the coming Messiah. So I’m trying to imagine what people like the shepherds thought, in their rejoicing at the wondrous news from the angels. And there were Simeon and Anna at the temple, when the infant Jesus was brought there, who were aging but had faithfully held on until they could see their Lord in the flesh.

Ken Turner's "The Nativity," from a gallery show in Columbus, TX, in 2022

In the book of 3 Nephi, in the Book of Mormon, the people on that continent are also awaiting the Savior’s birth. There had been a prophecy that in five years the sign would be given—a day and a night and a day with no darkness. The believers are waiting, aware that the time is ripe. The non-believers are persecuting them, and have made an ultimatum: deny your beliefs or die, with a set date after which come the executions.

Here's the scriptural telling of the story, starting in 3 Nephi 1:4:

for there began to be ^agreater signs and greater miracles wrought among the people.

5 But there were some who began to say that the time was past for the words to be fulfilled, which were ^aspoken by Samuel, the Lamanite.

6 And they began to ^arejoice over their brethren, saying: Behold the time is past, and the words of Samuel are not fulfilled; therefore, your joy and your faith concerning this thing hath been vain.

7 And it came to pass that they did make a great uproar throughout the land; and the people who believed began to be very sorrowful, lest by any means those things which had been spoken might not come to pass.

8 But behold, they did watch steadfastly for ^athat day and that night and that day which should be as one day as if there were no night, that they might know that their faith had not been vain.

9 Now it came to pass that there was a day set apart by the ^aunbelievers, that all those who believed in those traditions should be ^bput to death except the ^csign should come to pass, which had been given by Samuel the prophet.

 

The prophet, Nephi (one of many generations of prophets with that name in the Book of Mormon), is earnestly praying, that his people might not be killed:

12 And it came to pass that he cried mightily unto the Lord ^aall that day; and behold, the ^bvoice of the Lord came unto him, saying:

13 Lift up your head and be of good cheer; for behold, the time is at hand, and on this night shall the ^asign be given, and on the ^bmorrow come I into the world.

 

What a relief it must have been—in the nick of time! Some people say God likes to work in those last moments, when His people know they have no chance of rescuing themselves, and so any rescue must be attributed to God. Imagine the relief those early followers of Christ must have felt.

 

I’ve been thinking about expectations and waiting. One story that fascinates me is the story of Sarah, Abraham’s wife. Abraham too, but I’m looking at her perspective. Abraham has been promised a posterity—as numerous as the sands of the seashore, or as the dust particles of the earth (Genesis 13:16), or as numerous as the stars (Genesis 15:5).

 

But Abraham and Sarah are aging. He is 99 going on 100, and Sarah is 89 going on 90. In those days, people lived longer than today—not as old as before the flood, when 900 years wasn’t unheard of—but still, they are old enough that Sarah is well beyond her childbearing years.

 

So I think about Sarah. They had had this promise—from God, who does not lie. And yet, she knew enough of biological reality to know women her age, well past menopause, did not bear children. What must she have thought? Maybe asking, “Are my blessings really meant for this life, or are those blessings I’ll see in the next life?” She had wondered if, perhaps she could fulfill God’s word by having her handmaid, Hagar, marry her husband and provide a son. Thus Ishmael had been born and was now 13. But God came to Abraham and said that Sarah would bear him a son, and the covenant would go through that son—who would be named Isaac. And he would be born within the year.

 

A couple of chapters later (Genesis 18), three holy messengers come and verify that Abraham’s wife, Sarah, will bear a son. She laughs when she hears of it. With skepticism? With joy? I’m not sure what she thought at that point. But she did, in due time, bear a son, Isaac, who became the father of Jacob—renamed Israel, meaning God prevails. And Jacob/Israel bore twelve sons, the descendants of whom fill the earth.

Abraham and Sarah are blessed with a son in their old age.
I wasn't able to identify the source of this art. It was used in dozen of places,
without attribution. One place even used it to illustrate John the Baptist's parents,
which was the clearest image, found here. 

 

It happened, just as God said it would happen.  Even though it was later than could be expected. Even though it was impossible.

 

Waiting is hard. I, of course, prefer the time after fulfillment, when the waiting is over. But that choice isn't up to me.

 

I wasn’t particularly old when I got married, 23. But I was a year and a half out of college—at a church college where many many of my roommates and friends got married during our college years. So I was seen as late. There were times when it didn’t seem likely I would ever find someone. Looking back now, worrying about that at 23 seems silly. But that was the feeling I had at the time: maybe it would come someday, but it just didn’t seem possible that such a time would ever arrive. And then it did. Quite suddenly. We are coming up on 42 years married, this month. I still remember being surprised that marriage had come so soon—after all the waiting.

That's us in December 1981. I guess we've changed a little.
That olive tree behind us was taken out by a rare downtown tornado 
a couple of decades ago.

 

Then there was the desire for children. Our first child was born very premature and only lived a few hours. And then I found it hard to get pregnant again. And then I required bedrest to prevent another early delivery. My children were hard to get. And there were times I wasn’t sure they would come. Looking back, my waiting was short. My trials were something I can’t see myself volunteering for, but they were worth it. I was able to raise three beautiful, brilliant children. And suddenly I’m a grandmother, which I love.

Me with one of my grandsons; this one is 11 now.

 

There was waiting, and a sense that the anticipated end would never come. And then it came.

 

Christmas is a glimpse of that for children every year. It feels like it will never get here—even while parents are frantically trying to cram in all the required activities in the limited time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. But it comes. It always really comes.

 

We do well to remember the birth of our Savior, to honor Him for his supernal gift of atonement. We do well also to anticipate His coming again. For most people who have lived since His first coming, this has required going through death to return to Him. But the prophets all foretell a time when He will come again, and reign in glory on the earth. And it could be in our lifetime. It could be soon. This year, next year, this decade at the outside. (I prefer sooner.)

 

The lesson from His first coming is that, after all the long expectation, He came. So, after long expectation, He will come again.

 

The lights, the music, the celebration of His birth can also be a joyous anticipation. Because, one thing we know is, God keeps His promises. While we don’t know when, it will be in the nick of time to rescue this fallen world. That is worth thinking about in every expression of Merry Christmas!

 

A few days ago our Church did a beautiful presentation on the electronic billboards in Times Square. This video is an early Christmas treat. (Or view on YouTube here.)

Yes, Thanksgiving Dinner Did Cost More

Biden claims this year’s Thanksgiving dinner was the 4^th cheapest ever. (It is maybe the 4^th cheapest of his 3-year presidency). But facts are hard things to deny, and we’re all facing facts every time we go to a grocery store.

Thanksgiving dinner tasted great, whatever it cost this year.

On his Wednesday night program, Glenn Beck said, “No matter how hard the government tries to gaslight, these things we know. We experience them every day.” 

Beck listed a number of items, and the percentages or amounts they have risen during the Biden presidency:

·        Airfare up 25%

·        House purchase price up 42%

·        Mortgage rates up 4%

·        Rent up 24%

·        Water up 16%

·        Electricity up 25%

·        Electricity in California up 51%

·        Major appliances up 12%

·        Natural gas up 29%

·        Used cars up 35%

·        Car insurance up 33%

·        Gasoline up from $1.80/gal to $3.00/gal

·        Big Mac combo meal $10.00

·        Restaurant food up 24%

·        Ground beef up $2.00

·        Coffee up $2.00

·        Fruits and Vegetables up 14%

·        Dog and cat food up 17%

He compared the weekly grocery bills:

·        2020 $238/week on groceries

·        2023 $315/week on groceries

So groceries overall are up 25%.

Glenn Beck went over some rising prices on his chalkboard,
November 29, 2023, screenshot from here
(also on YouTube here)

That seems to be about what I’m experiencing, but I wondered whether there was data beyond my gut feeling.

It so happened that last week, during the three days before Thanksgiving, without my usual assignments, I cleaned and cooked like crazy. I even took care of the jar where I stuff my grocery receipts (in case I need the receipts later). I hadn’t cleared that out in quite a while—it turned out, more than a year. I had thrown away some from time to time, but there were quite a few there. Since some of our trips to Sam’s Club this year surpassed $400, I wondered if I might see what really happened. So I organized the receipts by store and date and put them in a bag, to look at later.

When Glenn Beck talked about grocery prices rising on his Wednesday night show, I thought, what better time than now to go through those receipts. So I spent some time putting them on a chart and doing some math.

The way I shop is pretty regular—so regular that I have printed up grocery lists, arranged by how I walk through Kroger (weekly) and Sam’s Club (every other week), so I just have to highlight what I want that week, and check them off as I go through the store. In other words, I buy the same stuff over and over. I don’t buy vegetables that I let die in the fridge (except sometimes cilantro, which doesn’t last long, if I don’t get around to making pico de gallo). I eat vegetables regularly. We have a routine, and not a lot of waste. Our pantry is pretty well stocked, and so is our freezer.

The point is, I can compare many of the same items over time.

It also happened that I came across a couple of receipts, stuck behind some cookbooks, from February and March of 2020—just before the shutdown that so badly messed with a thriving economy. Those were shorter trips to Sam’s Club, with only a few items. But I can compare those to the same items today.

A few items have stayed essentially the same:

·        Almond milk up 0% from 2020

·        Canadian bacon up 0% from 2022

·        Sweet potatoes up 0% from 2022

·        Toilet paper up 0% from 2022

·        Mixed nuts up 2% from 2022

·        Romaine lettuce up 3% from 2022

·        Tomatoes down 2% from 2022

Vanilla went down, by 45% from 2020. We were, back then, dealing with a sharp rise in vanilla prices (related to a shortage I’m assuming) that has since subsided.

But many items went up significantly:

·        Avocadoes up 39% from 2020 (45 months: .87%/month)

·        Baby carrots up 46% from 2022 (12 months: 3.83%/month)

·        Frozen chicken tenderloins up 36% from early 2023 (10 months: 3.6%/month)

·        Clementines (small easy peel oranges) up 43% from 2020 (45 months: .96%/month)

·        Navel oranges up 35% from 2020 (45 months: .78%/month)

·        M&M peanuts up 46% from 2020 (45 months: 1.02%/month)

·        Raisins up 9% from 2020 (45 months: .2%/month)

·        Strawberries up 26% from 2020 (45 months: .58%/month)

I was trying to find a way to measure general prices. So I looked at the number of items and divided that into the cost for that shopping trip for an average price per item. I then divided these into manageable time periods and averaged the cost per item for those periods.

Sam’s Club cost per item:

·        Sam’s Club 2020: $7.32

·        Sam’s Club 2022: $9.03

·        Sam’s Club 2023 first half: $10.21

·        Sam’s Club 2023 second half: $10.59

Sam’s Club cost per item is up 45% from early 2020 (45 months: 1%/month).

Kroger cost per item:

·        Kroger 2023 first quarter: $3.98

·        Kroger 2023 second quarter: $4.31

·        Kroger 2023 third quarter: $4.63

·        Kroger 2023 fourth quarter: $4.61

Kroger cost per item is up 16% from the first quarter this year (8 months: 2%/month).

So, I’m convinced I haven’t been imagining it; prices are rising (while our income is not). I don’t know what Biden is imagining, but it isn’t related to hard reality.