2019 July

Almost every time I’ve heard God speak, it changed me (not others). I hauled hay for a living in 1979. I had given my life to Christ in May of that year. My new life in Christ was changing me. The old was passing away and I was being renewed. One day, we had put one load of hay into a barn and were driving back to the field for another on the open-air hay machine. As we drove, an alfalfa stem blew into my mouth. I started to chew it. But it wasn’t hay. It was a Yellowjacket (wasp). It was like I had just licked lightning. I spit him out in a nanosecond, but the damage was done. I hadn’t used the words that came out of my mouth since my salvation. I couldn’t hold them – they would have come out if Mom and Jesus had been…

Some of us were discussing the recently released National Threat Assessment Center (2019), Mass Attacks in Public Spaces – 2018, by U.S. Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security. The study defines mass attack as when, “three or more persons were harmed – were carried out in public spaces.” Houses of Worship were one of the five environments specifically listed. In 2018, the study said, nearly one-third of the attackers “appeared to have subscribed to a belief system that has previously been associated with violence.” It singled out one of those beliefs, “Incels, or involuntarily celibates, are members of an Internet-based subculture of heterosexual males who view themselves as undesirable to females and therefore unable to establish romantic or sexual relationships to which they feel entitled.” The New Life killer was angry at Christianity about the doctrine of abstinence. He turned 24-years-old on Wednesday before he started killing that Sunday. By…