Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning

By Mario Vittone, Slate, June 4, 2013

The new captain jumped from the deck, fully dressed, and sprinted through the water. A former lifeguard, he kept his eyes on his victim as he headed straight for the couple swimming between their anchored sportfisher and the beach. “I think he thinks you’re drowning,” the husband said to his wife. They had been splashing each other and she had screamed but now they were just standing, neck-deep on the sand bar. “We’re fine; what is he doing?” she asked, a little annoyed. “We’re fine!” the husband yelled, waving him off, but his captain kept swimming hard. “Move!” he barked as he sprinted between the stunned owners. Directly behind them, not 10 feet away, their 9-year-old daughter was drowning. Safely above the surface in the arms of the captain, she burst into tears, “Daddy!”

How did this captain know—from 50 feet away—what the father couldn’t recognize from just 10? Drowning is not the violent, splashing call for help that most people expect. The captain was trained to recognize drowning by experts and years of experience. The father, on the other hand, had learned what drowning looks like by watching television. If you spend time on or near the water (hint: that’s all of us) then you should make sure that you and your crew know what to look for whenever people enter the water. Until she cried a tearful, “Daddy,” she hadn’t made a sound. As a former Coast Guard rescue swimmer, I wasn’t surprised at all by this story. Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing, and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for is rarely seen in real life.

The Instinctive Drowning Response—so named by Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D., is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water. And it does not look like most people expect. There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind. To get an idea of just how quiet and undramatic from the surface drowning can be, consider this: It is the No. 2 cause of accidental death in children, ages 15 and under (just behind vehicle accidents)—of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult. In some of those drownings, the adult will actually watch the child do it, having no idea it is happening.* Drowning does not look like drowning—Dr. Pia, in an article in the Coast Guard’s On Scene magazine, described the Instinctive Drowning Response like this:

“Except in rare circumstances, drowning people are physiologically unable to call out for help. The respiratory system was designed for breathing. Speech is the secondary or overlaid function. Breathing must be fulfilled before speech occurs.

Drowning people’s mouths alternately sink below and reappear above the surface of the water. The mouths of drowning people are not above the surface of the water long enough for them to exhale, inhale, and call out for help. When the drowning people’s mouths are above the surface, they exhale and inhale quickly as their mouths start to sink below the surface of the water.

Drowning people cannot wave for help. Nature instinctively forces them to extend their arms laterally and press down on the water’s surface. Pressing down on the surface of the water permits drowning people to leverage their bodies so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.

Throughout the Instinctive Drowning Response, drowning people cannot voluntarily control their arm movements. Physiologically, drowning people who are struggling on the surface of the water cannot stop drowning and perform voluntary movements such as waving for help, moving toward a rescuer, or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment.

From beginning to end of the Instinctive Drowning Response people’s bodies remain upright in the water, with no evidence of a supporting kick. Unless rescued by a trained lifeguard, these drowning people can only struggle on the surface of the water from 20 to 60 seconds before submersion occurs.”

This doesn’t mean that a person that is yelling for help and thrashing isn’t in real trouble—they are experiencing aquatic distress. Not always present before the Instinctive Drowning Response, aquatic distress doesn’t last long—but unlike true drowning, these victims can still assist in their own rescue. They can grab lifelines, throw rings, etc.

Look for these other signs of drowning when persons are in the water:
Head low in the water, mouth at water level
Head tilted back with mouth open
Eyes glassy and empty, unable to focus
Eyes closed
Hair over forehead or eyes
Not using legs—vertical
Hyperventilating or gasping
Trying to swim in a particular direction but not making headway
Trying to roll over on the back
Appear to be climbing an invisible ladder

So if a crew member falls overboard and everything looks OK—don’t be too sure. Sometimes the most common indication that someone is drowning is that they don’t look like they’re drowning. They may just look like they are treading water and looking up at the deck. One way to be sure? Ask them, “Are you all right?” If they can answer at all—they probably are. If they return a blank stare, you may have less than 30 seconds to get to them. And parents—children playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, get to them and find out why.

Read More

Edward Snowden comes forward as source of NSA leaks

By Barton Gellman, Aaron Blake and Greg Miller, Washington Post, June 9, 2013

A 29-year-old man who says he is a former undercover CIA employee said Sunday that he was the principal source of recent disclosures about ­top-secret National Security Agency programs, exposing himself to possible prosecution in an acknowledgment that had little if any precedent in the long history of U.S. intelligence leaks.

Edward Snowden, a tech specialist who has contracted for the NSA and works for the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, unmasked himself as a source after a string of stories in The Washington Post and the Guardian that detailed previously unknown U.S. surveillance programs. He said he disclosed secret documents in response to what he described as the systematic surveillance of innocent citizens.

In an interview Sunday, Snowden said he is willing to face the consequences of exposure.

“I’m not going to hide,” Snowden told The Post from Hong Kong, where he has been staying. “Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.”

Asked whether he believes that his disclosures will change anything, he said: “I think they already have. Everyone everywhere now understands how bad things have gotten—and they’re talking about it. They have the power to decide for themselves whether they are willing to sacrifice their privacy to the surveillance state.”

Snowden said nobody had been aware of his actions, including those closest to him. He said there was no single event that spurred his decision to leak the information, but he said President Obama has failed to live up to his pledges of transparency.

“My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them,” he said in a note that accompanied the first document he leaked to The Post.

The Guardian was the first to publicly identify Snowden, at his request.

The White House said late Sunday that it would not have any comment on the matter.

In a brief statement, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the intelligence community is “reviewing the damage” the leaks have done. “Any person who has a security clearance knows that he or she has an obligation to protect classified information and abide by the law,” said the spokesman, Shawn Turner.

Snowden said he is seeking “asylum from any countries that believe in free speech and oppose the victimization of global privacy,” but the law appears to provide for his extradition from Hong Kong, a semiautonomous territory of China, to the United States.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the revelation of Snowden’s role in the leaks will lead to a sweeping reexamination of security measures at the CIA and the NSA, and they described his decision to come forward as a stunning conclusion to a week of disclosures that rattled the intelligence community.

“This is significant on a number of fronts: the scope, the range. It’s major, it’s major,” said John Rizzo, a former general counsel of the CIA who worked at the agency for decades. “And then to have him out himself … I can’t think of any previous leak case involving a CIA officer where the officer raised his hand and said, ‘I’m the guy.’”

A half-dozen former intelligence officials, including one who now works at Booz Allen Hamilton, said they did not know Snowden or anything about his background. Several former officials said he easily could have been part of a surge in computer experts and technical hires brought in by the CIA in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as its budget and mission swelled.

“Like a lot of things after 9/11, they just went on a hiring binge, and in the technical arena young, smart nerds were in high demand,” a former U.S. intelligence official said. “There were battalions of them.”

Officials said the CIA and other spy agencies did not relax their screening measures as the workforce expanded. Still, several officials said the CIA will now undoubtedly begin reviewing the process by which Snowden may have been hired, seeking to determine whether there were any missed signs that he might one day betray national secrets.

More broadly, the CIA and the NSA may be forced to reexamine their relationships with contractors, who were employed in roles ranging from technical support to paramilitary operations before concerns about the outsourcing of such sensitive assignments prompted a backlash in Congress and pledges from the agencies to begin thinning their contracting ranks.

Snowden expressed hope that the NSA surveillance programs will now be open to legal challenge for the first time. This year, in Amnesty International v. Clapper, the Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit against the mass collection of phone records because the plaintiffs could not prove exactly what the program did or that they were personally subject to surveillance.

“The government can’t reasonably assert the state-secrets privilege for a program it has acknowledged,” Snowden said.

Snowden’s name surfaced as top intelligence officials in the Obama administration and Congress pushed back against the journalists responsible for revealing the existence of sensitive surveillance programs and called for an investigation into the leaks.

Clapper, in an interview with NBC that aired Saturday night, condemned the leaker’s actions but also sought to spotlight the journalists who first reported the programs, calling their disclosures irresponsible and full of “hyperbole.” Earlier Saturday, he issued a statement accusing the media of a “rush to publish.”

On Sunday morning, before Snowden’s unmasking, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) had harsh words for the leaker and for the journalist who first reported the NSA’s collection of phone records, the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald.

Greenwald “doesn’t have a clue how this thing works; neither did the person who released just enough information to literally be dangerous,” Rogers said on ABC’s “This Week,” adding: “I absolutely think [the leaker] should be prosecuted.”

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) agreed that whoever leaked the information should be prosecuted, and she sought to beat back media reports suggesting that the Obama administration overplayed the impact of the programs.

After opponents of the programs questioned their value last week, anonymous administration officials pointed to the thwarting of a bomb plot targeting the New York City subway system in 2009. Soon after, though, reporters noted that public documents suggested that regular police work was responsible for thwarting the attack, rather than a secret government intelligence program.

A chief critic of the efforts, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), said he is considering filing a lawsuit against the government and called on 10 million Americans to join in.

“I’m going to be asking all the Internet providers and all of the phone companies, ask your customers to join me in a class-action lawsuit,” Paul said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Read More

Keep On Believing

By D.Brandt Berg

Download Audio (12.6MB)

I had this beautiful dream about faith. Maria and I were walking along hand in hand, but strangely enough we were out on a deserted highway that passed through barren, desolate, semi-desert country.

We seemed to be somewhat lost and searching for something, searching for our destination or at least some sign of civilization, and we were almost a little bit concerned, worried, fearful and apprehensive because we seemed to be so far out in the middle of nowhere and getting nowhere. We were walking along hoping to see some sign of life and traffic, but there was none.

Then suddenly we came upon this beautiful little white roadway, like white concrete, narrow and looking more like a private drive leading off to the left and down a slight slope. And there just a hundred meters away or so was a beautiful sort of ornamental gate which was a building in itself, somewhat like you would see a castle gate with the castle built around it and the gate passing through it like a tunnel.

Immediately I recognized that it was a clubhouse, sort of a country club. We had stumbled on to a beautiful country club with a lovely golf course, stretching, it seemed, almost as far as the eye could see. So we were very happy to find some sign of civilization, and we walked down the little white paved road toward the open gateway, finding yet no sign of life, no one around.

As we walked across the parking lot and onto the beautiful grassy green, we saw a long row of trees along this beautiful tree-lined roadway with all trees on each side leading off into the distance toward a beautiful little country town which looked as if it was only a couple of miles away.

But by this time I was very, very tired because we’d apparently walked a long way, and even a couple of kilometers or a mile-and-a-half or two just seemed like an awful long way to go. So I looked longingly at that beautiful distant little country town and looked at Maria rather wonderingly, like, “How are we going to still walk that much further and get there?”

Then for some reason it dawned on me that surely in a place this civilized and with a country club out here, they ought to have some kind of public transportation, and somehow drawn by that leading or faith, I looked around toward the clubhouse. Sure enough, just as I turned around and looked back, here came this bus, sort of a city or country bus, rural or interurban bus maybe, coming in from the same highway that we had been on, and driving down the pretty little white paved roadway into the arch of the club, and there it stopped to discharge and take on passengers.

Our hearts leaped with joy to think, “Thank God, a bus. Now we won’t have to walk all the way into town; we can catch that bus.” So we started to walk quickly toward the roadway along which it would drive toward the little city. But apparently we had not acted soon enough! We had stood there too long contemplating the bus and looking to see what the sign said on the front of the bus, to see where it was going. We had stood there studying it a little too long and the bus was picking up speed more rapidly than we had expected.

We began to run, but just as we were approaching the beautiful roadway to town, the bus suddenly disappeared out of sight down this slight grade behind a little green knoll of the fairways, and our hearts sank because we realized we had not started for it soon enough and it was getting away from us.

We thought about yelling and hailing it, but we were almost too late by the time we got to the roadway, and it had already gone by. We looked down the roadway and there it appeared again, going down the beautiful tree-lined roadway between the trees and disappearing off into the distance toward the little town.

Suddenly a voice seemed to say, “You didn’t have enough faith.”—Just like the Lord speaks in your heart, but so clearly sometimes it almost seems as though it’s out loud. “You should have had more faith.” We should have hailed the bus. We should have flagged it down. We should have reacted more quickly and had more faith that it was a bus that we could catch that was going into the little town.

By the time we made up our minds that the bus was going to come our way and go down the little country roadway toward the beautiful little country town, it was too late. We hadn’t made up our minds soon enough, we hadn’t run fast enough, and we hadn’t called loud enough to catch it, so it disappeared off down the little road toward the country town and our hearts sank.

Here we’d lost our golden opportunity to finally get some transportation so we wouldn’t have to walk any further when we were so weary and just virtually exhausted, and I was so disappointed about missing that bus I was ready to sink down onto the grass in tears. I was so, so sad, frustrated, and discouraged.

But suddenly I heard these voices sounding just like my father’s and mother’s, just the way they used to sing these two beautiful choruses together:

Keep on believing, God answers prayer,
Keep on believing, He’s still up there.
Troubles and sorrows will soon disappear.
Nothing can harm you when Jesus is near.

Keep on believing, the storm will pass,
Look for the rainbow, ’twill come at last.
Trust in His promise, ’twas written for you,
Keep on believing and praise your way through.1

And the other little chorus which begins with the very same words:

Keep on believing, Jesus is here,
Keep on believing, there’s nothing to fear.
Keep on believing, this is the way,
Faith in the night as well as the day.2

Well, if it hadn’t been for those two songs, I think I would have almost given up. But I was encouraged not to give up and not to be discouraged, that the Lord was still with us and He would help us even though we had been weak in faith and had not had enough faith to act quickly and seize our opportunity and God’s provision—that the Lord would still take care of us somehow. I recall my mother and father singing these songs together many times during my childhood to lift our spirits and encourage us.

I got to thinking how like life that dream was and how many of us have gone through such desert experiences, wandering about in the wastes of this world, dry, rugged, rocky, and harsh, and long and lost, wandering out yonder over the hills seeking something, you knew not what, but feeling lost, knowing that you needed to find someplace, to go somewhere and not be wandering out there in the middle of this desert of a lonely life away from friends and loved ones and humanity and almost seeming separated from God Himself.—When suddenly there appears in view a beautiful little white road, which to me symbolized the road of salvation.

We stumbled down the right pathway and through the right gateway, through the door—which of course is only Jesus—and we were so saved, in a way, and so relieved and happy that we had found the way out into this beautiful new world of God’s gorgeous creation and that almost divine country roadway that led off between the trees toward the beautiful little distant country town, which looked almost like heaven to us at the time in the dream, and possibly did represent heaven.

But we were weary, very tired, and seeking the right way to go, hoping for some kind of a lift or transportation, and there it came! We were too slow to believe. Sometimes we can see the will of God and we can see His hand ready to help us, and yet we don’t catch on soon enough, we’re not prayerful enough, we don’t have enough faith, and that’s what the voice said to us as we missed the bus:

“You didn’t have enough faith. You should have had more faith.” We should have hailed him, flagged him down. The moment we saw that bus, we should have run to catch it and called out loudly to have him wait for us, because some opportunities knock but once and then they’re gone.

In a way, it seemed that the bus represented the will of God, the fastest way to get to our destination, the easiest way in the power of His Spirit and not the energy of our flesh.—Pulled along by the powerful motor of that bus, the will of God, instead of stumbling along on our own poor weary legs in our own pitiful weak strength of the flesh.

If we’d have had more faith, we could have run and called out for help and jumped on the bus of God’s will going in the direction He wanted us to go, and we could have caught the bus of the will of God and it would have whisked us away easily and powerfully to our heavenly destination of that little country town in the distance. It looked like the hills and the rolling grassy expanses of heaven itself, and this little country town in the distance a beautiful little city representing a heavenly destination.

So this dream certainly was teaching a lesson: that even though you have left the desert wastes of sin and your past life and passed through the beautiful open gate of salvation along the narrow white way of His way to salvation, and through that gate, the open door of Jesus, into the whole new heavenly world of our lives in Him, you can still miss God’s golden opportunities of service by not having the faith you should have to act quickly in time of opportunity to run and seize the golden opportunity of the open doors that He gives you, waiting too long, hesitating until it’s lost, standing there debating as to whether that really was the right thing to do and whether that was the right direction and whether you should act on it and run and seize the opportunity and climb aboard and go in that direction.

If you have somehow missed God’s will and you have somehow missed His highest and best and it seems that the golden opportunities that He’s offered you have all passed you by and disappeared into the distance and left you alone and lonely and sad and downhearted and discouraged and defeated and almost in despair at the end of your rope, don’t give up! Lift an ear to those heavenly voices that are singing to you to encourage you that all hope is not gone. There’s still hope. There’s still opportunity. Maybe God’s going to send alonganother bus and maybe you can still catch one that’s coming on a little later schedule.

Maybe you missed the first one and didn’t get there as soon as you should have, but maybe you haven’t missed the last one, thank God. He’s still going to be merciful to you and send along another one so that you can follow His direction to your destination in His service, carried along by the power and the love and the will of God to where He wants you to go with the ease of the power of His Spirit. Your Savior is the overcomer and will help you to overcome and triumph over the grave and over all. Perhaps you need to simply bury yourself more in the Word of God to encourage your faith. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”3

So keep on believing; don’t ever give up. Keep on believing; don’t be discouraged. Keep on believing; don’t quit. Keep on keeping on. Keep on holding on to His promises. Keep on standing on the promises, and whatever you do, keep on going on for Jesus. Don’t ever quit, don’t ever give up, don’t despair. Don’t lose faith just because you feel like you’ve missed the last bus. Keep on waiting on the Lord a little longer and He’s bound to send you another bus, another chance, another opportunity.

If you really want to find His will, He won’t fail to send along His bus of opportunity to pick you up and lift you up and lift your spirits and encourage you and inspire you and strengthen you and heal you and carry you along in the power of His Spirit to the glorious victory of your heavenly destination. Keep on believing! Hurry! Have faith. Catch the bus!

Originally published September 1982. Updated and republished June 2013.
Read by Jerry Paladino.


1 From "Keep On Believing," by Frank C. Huston (1871–1959).

2 Adapted from "Keep On Believing," by Lucy Milward Booth and Mildred Duff, 1901.

3 Romans 10:17.

Read More

Facing Disappointment

by Peter Amsterdam

In each of our lives there have been times when we’ve felt that bitter sting of disappointment. When it occurs, it’s so hard to bear. The Bible says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” Hope deferred, or disappointment, is really difficult to recover from.

When things don’t turn out as we’d hoped, either career-wise, or financially, in relationships, with our children, with missed opportunities that you were hoping for, it’s so difficult, so disheartening, and you can feel very alone.

It can hurt your faith. You can begin to doubt the Lord’s love and care for you when you don’t get that job that you wanted so much, or your relationship that seemed to be going so well suddenly comes to a painful end, or you have some unexpected setback like failing a grade on an important test, a bad performance review at work, or some funding for a mission project falls through.

In the midst of times like these, the present is not only difficult, but the future seems so bleak as well. You may wonder, “Lord, where are You? Are You aware of my situation? Do You even care?”

And then to make matters even worse, it’s easy to look around and wonder why some people—people who don’t even believe in God—seem to have it so good. It can all seem really mixed up sometimes.

Being in the depths of disappointment can cause worry, stress, and loss of sleep as you toss and turn all night, pondering what’s going to happen next and how you are going to make it. At times like these you desperately hope for some sign, some sort of breakthrough or good news to prove to you that God is watching out for you.

The deferred hope or disappointment can lead to discouragement, depression, and despair. When you’re under that heavy, cold blanket of disappointment, the place to turn is to God, even if at the moment you feel that He’s abandoned you. You may be angry with Him. You might feel neglected or cast off. You might be riddled with questions. Talk to Him. If you’re angry and feel like venting will help you, then vent to Him. You can tell Him how you honestly feel. He won’t be offended. And when you’re in that spiraling whirlpool of disappointment and despair, the place to go to is to Him. Don’t shut Him out. Rather, let Him in and let Him know how you feel, and look to Him for help. Give Him your disappointment and then praise and thank Him for the victory which will come even if you don’t see it or feel it, even if you feel you’ll never get over this disappointment.

Listen to how King David tells God his problems when he was in despair. I’m reading from Psalm 31.

My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak. Because of my enemies, I am the utter contempt of my neighbors; I am a dread to my friends—those who see me on the street flee from me. I am forgotten by them as though I were dead; I have become like broken pottery.

I hear the slander of many; there is terror on every side; they conspire against me and plot to take my life. But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hands; deliver me from my enemies and from those who pursue me. Let your face shine on your servant; save me in your unfailing love. Let me not be put to shame, O Lord, for I have cried out to you.

David then continues on speaking faith and praising God. He says:

Praise be to the Lord, for he showed his wonderful love to me when I was in a besieged city. In my alarm I said, “I am cut off from your sight!” Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help. Love the Lord, all his saints! The Lord preserves the faithful. Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord (Psalm 31:10–17, 21–24 NIV).

God loves us. He hears our heartcries, and He has the power to do something about our problems and lacks. He expects us to take our needs, our hardships, our disappointments to Him in prayer and in faith.

There are different ways of reacting to disappointing events. We can say, “Why, Lord? Why me? I don’t deserve this.” Or we can look beyond the present circumstances and trust that He may be working in our lives in ways that we don’t understand. So instead of, “Why me, Lord?” the better response might be, “What next, Lord? What is it that You are doing in my life? What should I do now?” Remember, often when God closes a door He opens a window.

A dear friend of ours was telling Maria and me about her son, who needed to move his large family out of the house that he was renting. He and his wife had decided to buy a house, and they found just what they were looking for. The owner liked them and he seemed very open to receiving their offer. He said that he would like them to make an offer on the house, even though it was clear that they didn't have the full amount that he was expecting. Over the next day they were praying about whether this house was the right one to get, and the Lord showed them that this was the house that He had for them.

No sooner had they made the final decision to get the home than the real estate agent called them on the phone and said that the owners had accepted another offer. Uh! They were crestfallen. What had happened? God had showed them that this was the one, and the owner had virtually said that he would accept their offer, yet he’d accepted one from someone else. Disappointment filled the air.

But the story didn't end there. The owner called a few days later and explained that he thought that the offer he accepted was their offer. Once he realized it wasn’t, he rescinded his acceptance of the other offer and wanted them to officially send their offer, as he wanted to sell it to them. Some other possible deal-breaking events involving the bank arose, which came close to sort of closing the door on the house, but these were eventually worked out and they were able to move into their new home. Doors closed. There was disappointment. But then God opened windows.

Here are some helpful responses and mental attitudes to maintain when things don’t turn out as you had hoped:

Face disappointments head on and in faith. Don’t be afraid of hard times; rather, see them as a challenge. Remember, you often grow the most during difficult times.
Don’t get upset. Don’t start complaining and griping. Don’t develop a self-pitying attitude and verbalize your frustrations to everyone you know. Have patience, and voice faith. God can and often does turn disappointment around for our good.
Keep an attitude of gratitude as well as an attitude of trust. “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts … and be thankful” (Colossians 3:15 ESV).
Don’t give up. Don’t let your enthusiasm be snuffed out. Keep working towards your goals. As we often say, the greatest darkness is just before the dawn.


Someone recently told me that God had spoker on this subject when she cracked open a Chinese fortune cookie and looked at what it said, and it said, “Life is hardest before the summit.” Sometimes it really amazes me how the Lord speaks to us in funny and different ways, like Chinese cookies.


God makes it clear that “In this world we will have tribulation,” which is, of course, also known as troubles and disappointments (John 16:33). But that’s not the end of the story. Sure, there are disappointments in life, but those disappointments aren’t dead ends. The road of our lives keeps moving, and as we travel it, we move beyond our disappointment, our tests, and our trials.


In one of ancient Israel’s most difficult and discouraging times, God said to them, “The plans I have for you [are] to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11 NIV).


The nation of Israel whom God had given the Promised Land to, and whom He said were His people, and whom He set up His temple in which He dwelt and where they were able to worship Him, were all defeated by the kingdom of Babylon. The land was taken away, the temple was destroyed, and the majority of the people were forced to relocate to Babylon. The promises of God seemed to be rescinded due to their sins. They no longer possessed the Promised Land. They were without a temple and they didn’t know how to worship and how to find forgiveness of sins without the temple. They struggled with the question of whether God still loved them. Were they still His people? Their dreams and their faith and their hope were all totally shattered.


During this defeat and disappointment, the prophet Jeremiah wrote them a letter and sent it to Babylon, and he told them what God had to say to them at this time when their faith was in crisis. He told them to carry on with life, to build houses, plant gardens, get married, have children, and that in His time He would deliver them from their situation, that He would bring a change for the better. He didn’t promise that it would happen today, but He did promise that it would happen. He said, “I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. You will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart” (Jeremiah 29:11–13 ESV).


Shattered hopes and dreams are not final destinations. God says He has plans for you, plans for good and not for evil. One Bible version translates it as, “For I know the thoughts I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11 NKJV).


God doesn’t desert us in our times of disappointment. Instead, He’s there. He’s thinking good thoughts of us. He has plans for our future. He wants us to carry on with life and not give up, to have hope for what’s ahead, even if things seem so awful today. The key is to look to Him, to know that He loves and cares for us, that He will carry us into the future. We aren’t meant to stop living, to give up hope, but rather to carry on in faith and trust. He will heal. Things will change. Life will continue on, and there is hope ahead.


It’s good to remember that there are times when something looks like a great defeat, a terrible and permanent loss, which makes you feel you can’t possibly recover it, but often there’s more to the situation than meets the eye. Sometimes God works very mysteriously, in ways that we can’t comprehend.


A lot depends on how we respond to His disappointments. Do we rise to the occasion and fight?—Trusting to see good and blessings from a God who loves us? Or do we wallow in pity and whine? As Rick Warren talked about in The Purpose Driven Life, during times of tribulation, we should “pray fewer ‘Comfort me’ prayers”—you know, the kind, “Lord, help me to feel good” type prayers—“and more ‘Conform me’ prayers.” In other words, “Use this to make me more like You, Jesus.”


Billy Graham said, “The Christian life is not a constant high. I have my moments of deep discouragement. I have to go to God in prayer with tears in my eyes, and say, ‘O God, forgive me,’ or ‘O God, help me.’”


Also, let’s not forget that God might even have some surprises up His sleeves. He may very well be working behind the scenes in ways that you don’t see or understand. So we simply have to trust Him, to know that He knows what He’s doing, even if we don’t


In one of his sermons, Bret Toman told this powerful story:


Ruby Hamilton, a businesswoman in her fifties, was stunned at the loss of her husband of 32 years in a car accident. Her anger and disappointment went deeper than a more typical expression of grief, though. She had become a follower of Christ in her late twenties, but her husband didn't share her newfound interest in spiritual things. Nonetheless, she had set about praying for him fervently and unceasingly, that he would come to know the Lord. One day when she was praying, she felt a wave of peace wash over her, and that still small voice assuring her that her husband would be okay. She eagerly awaited the day when her husband would surrender his life to Jesus. And now, this—he had this untimely death.




What do you do when faith doesn't make sense? When God doesn't seem to be answering or opening doors? Ruby Hamilton stopped living for God.

Roger Simmons was hitchhiking his way home, and he would never forget the date—May 7th. His heavy suitcase was making him tired and he was anxious to take off that army uniform once and for all. Flashing his thumb at the oncoming car, he lost hope when he saw it was a big, black, sleek Cadillac. But to his surprise, the car stopped.

The passenger door swung open. He ran to the car and he tossed his suitcase in the back and he thanked the handsome, well-dressed man as he slid into the front seat.

"Going home for keeps?"

"Sure am."

"Well, you're in luck. I’m going to Chicago."

"Uh, not quite that far. Do you live in Chicago?"

"I have a business there,” the driver said. “My name is Hamilton."

They chatted for a while, and then Roger, a Christian, felt a compulsion to share his faith with this fiftyish, apparently successful businessman. But he kept putting it off, till he realized that he was just 30 minutes from his home, and that it was either now or never.

"Mr Hamilton, I would like to talk to you about something very important." Then he simply told Mr. Hamilton about the plan of salvation and ultimately asked him if he would like to receive Jesus as his Savior and Lord.

The Cadillac pulled over to the side of the road. Roger expected that he was about to get thrown out of the car. Instead, the businessman bowed his head and received Christ. And then he thanked Roger. He said, "This is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me."

Five years went by. Roger married, had a couple of kids and a business of his own. Packing his suitcase for a trip to Chicago, he found a small white business card that had been given to him by Hamilton five years previous. In Chicago, he looked up Hamilton Enterprises. The receptionist told him that it was impossible to see Mr. Hamilton, but he could see Mrs. Hamilton. A little confused, he was ushered into a beautiful office where he found himself facing a keen-eyed woman in her fifties.

She extended her hand and said, "You knew my husband?"

Roger told her about how Hamilton had picked him up while he was hitchhiking home after the war. "Can you tell me what day that was?"

"Sure. It was May 7th, five years ago, the day that I was discharged from the army."

"Anything special about that day?" she asked.

He hesitated, not knowing if he should mention about how he shared the message of Jesus with her husband. "Mrs. Hamilton, I explained the gospel to your husband. He pulled over to the side of the road and wept against the steering wheel. He gave his life to Christ that day."

Explosive sobs shook her body. Finally getting a grip on herself, she sobbed, "I had prayed for my husband's salvation for years. I believed that God would save him."

"Where is your husband, Ruby?"

"He's dead. He was in a car crash after he let you out of the car. He never made it home. You see, I thought God had not kept His promise. I stopped living for God five years ago because I thought God had not kept His word!"[1]

This is a touching reminder that we don’t always see all that God sees. He may very well be answering our prayers in ways that we don’t yet comprehend. Don’t lose faith. God will not fail; He will keep His word. His plan might be different than what we expect, but He does all things well. (See Mark 7:37.)You may not see your answer for some time, as in Ruby’s case it took five years, but nevertheless we should keep our faith and trust in God and not give up. His plans for those who love and follow Him are plans of good and not evil.

Remember:

God loves you.

He’s on your side. He has your best interests at heart.

He will comfort you and draw you close to Him.

He’s working for you, and you can trust Him no matter what, in good times and in bad times.

No one’s more powerful than God, and no one loves you more than God does.

You can fail, I can fail, the whole world can fail, but God never fails.

Jesus said: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” even in the face of disappointment (John 14:27 ESV).

(Prays:) Lord, we all face disappointment in our lives and oftentimes more than once, and it can feel so defeating, so difficult, so discouraging. It can lead us to despair and lack of hope. But, Lord, whenever we face this disappointment, when we find that our lives aren’t on the path that we planned, or that different things have come up that have changed everything and will change our future, help us not to despair, help us not to be disappointed, but rather to look to You, to know that You are there, that You love us, that You care for us, that You have our best interests at heart.

We may not understand and we may be angry and disappointed and feeling terrible and even questioning You, but Jesus, help us to trust, to know that You are always there. You are in our darkest times, not just when everything is going well, but when things are deeply difficult. Help us to put our trust in You, Jesus. Help us to put our love in Your hands, and our hearts in Your hands, and to know that You will carry us, You will take us through, that You will bring us through this dark time, that the valley of the shadow of death has an entrance but it has an exit; it’s not forever. And if we can hold on to You, we may very well see some beautiful things come out of the things that we think are so ugly and awful today.

Give us faith to trust You, Jesus. We love You. We need You, and I really pray for anyone who is facing these difficult times right now, that You speak to their hearts, that You cause them to look to You, and to realize that You are with them, that You’re holding them in Your arms, that You care for them, that Your thoughts toward them and Your plans toward them are for good and not for evil, that You will bless them and that You will bring them through, in Jesus’ name I pray. Thank You, Lord.

God bless you.

[1] Considerable influence for this message came from John Piper’s “The Spring of Persistent Public Love,” DesiringGod.org. From a sermon by Bret Toman, “Power to Live the Golden Rule,” 1/3/2011en to h.

Read More

After the Tribulation- Alex Jones

Read More

Phillip E. Johnson on Assumptions of Evolution!

Read More

Dragons or Dinosaurs? Darek Isaacs

Read More

Living Fossils. Dr. Carl Werner

Read More

The Pentagon May Be Paying a Billion Dollars a Year to the Wrong People

By Richard H.P. Sia, The Center For Public Integrity, June 7, 2013

The Pentagon has been paying hundreds of millions of tax dollars a year to people and companies that don’t deserve it, but its financial management shortcomings are so severe that it’s made little progress in halting the errors or even measuring their magnitude, according to a report released by a Senate committee Thursday.

Although the Defense Department reported making over $1.1 billion in overpayments in FY 2011 to military personnel and retirees, civilian defense workers, contractors, and others, investigators from the Government Accountability Office said that figure is not credible due to missing invoices and other flawed paperwork, as well as errors in arithmetic.

The Pentagon is required by law to ferret out programs susceptible to significant payment errors and then use statistical sampling to estimate the size of those errors, so that Congress can determine the size of the problem. But the GAO found defense finance officials didn’t have procedures in place to collect and maintain the data they need to come up with a credible estimate.

Even when the department could find and document mistaken payments, it frequently did not take cost-effective steps to recover the money, GAO said. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, for example, has spent $256,000 since 2009 on an automated overpayment-detection program that has recovered just one improper payment of $20.79, GAO said.

The Pentagon’s payment system is so weak that sometimes it doesn’t pay what’s owed. By its own estimate, for example, the Pentagon made $238.2 million in overpayments and $48.4 million in underpayments related to travel alone during fiscal 2011, for a total of $286.6 million in incorrect payments.

But when pressed by GAO, defense finance officials were only able to identify $1.6 million, or less than 1 percent, of the program’s estimated overpayments as recoverable, explaining that they lacked supporting documentation for a significant portion of the total.

The Defense Department “is at risk of foregoing the detection and recovery of potentially substantial funds owed to the government,” the GAO report said.

Instead of conducting cost-effective audits to identify funds that can be recovered, GAO said the Pentagon relies on such methods as self-reporting by defense contractors and other recipients of the money, random sampling of payment records, and findings by the Defense Department inspector general or other auditors.

Members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which released the GAO report, expressed anger and frustration over the findings. Several accused the Pentagon of failing to comply with a 2010 law requiring federal agencies to identify, prevent, and recover payments made in error.

“The Department spends about a trillion dollars annually, but officials have no idea how much of that money it loses to waste and fraud. This is simply unacceptable,” said Committee Chairman Tom Carper, who co-sponsored the law with Sen. Susan Collins and others.

Sen. Tom Coburn, ranking member of the committee, cited the GAO’s conclusions while promising to reintroduce legislation requiring the Defense Department to conduct an accurate audit of its books, as required by federal rules the Department has repeatedly flouted.

“When our largest federal agency cannot produce a viable financial audit, it should be no surprise DOD cannot account for how much money it wastes on improper payments,” said Coburn, who vowed to use all the oversight tools at his disposal to expose and prevent defense finance abuses.

The problem is an old one at the Pentagon. Twenty years ago, GAO delivered a scathing report to the same Senate committee documenting a military payroll system that was so badly managed the Army had inadvertently paid $6 million to 2,269 troops who had already quit the service, were absent without leave, or had deserted their units. In one case, a dead deserter was sent a paycheck.

A separate probe at the time revealed that managers at a defense finance and accounting center had miscalculated the pay of more than 201,000 Air Force retirees in 1986, giving them an extra dollar or two each month. It took nine years for managers to correct the error, which ended up costing taxpayers $16 million. Officials said they decided not to try to recover the money because the some of the retirees were probably dead, and the effort to collect would be too expensive.

In the report released Thursday, GAO said the Pentagon acknowledged overpayments in military active-duty and retirement pay as part of the $1.1 billion in erroneous payments in FY 2011. In addition, the Pentagon made overpayments of military health benefits, civilian pay, travel pay, commercial pay to vendors and contractors, and Army Corps of Engineers travel and contractor fees.

GAO faulted the Defense Department comptroller not only for these mistakes, but for doing a poor job of reporting on the issue to Congress. In one instance, the department claimed it would recover $67.6 million in improper military retirement payments while estimating that only $18.8 million in overpayments had actually occurred, GAO said.

Read More

Is the price of 'security' worth it?

By Dan Murphy, CS Monitor, June 7, 2013

The revelations of the extent of National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance on US telecommunications this week bring up a chicken and egg problem: Are Americans so safe from terrorist attacks because the surveillance program works, or are they sacrificing privacy so that the government can protect them from a statistically marginal and rare occurrence?

The NSA is very good at electronic surveillance, so good that smart terrorists avoid using phones and the internet to conduct their business. That’s one reason that Osama bin Laden stayed alive for so long and why his former number two and current Al Qaeda boss, Ayman al-Zawahiri, remains alive today.

The fact is, domestic terrorism is an exceedingly rare occurrence and miniscule cause of death in the US, notwithstanding the outsized response attacks draw from citizens and politicians. It’s very difficult to count alleged terrorist plots that may have been thwarted by the snooping effort, but nevertheless, terrorism has been rare in America throughout the sweep of US history.

President Barack Obama defended the program today. “My assessment and my team’s assessment was that they help us prevent terrorist attacks,” he told reporters. “And the modest encroachments on privacy that are involved in getting phone numbers or duration [of calls] without a name attached and not looking at content, that on net it was worth us doing.”

Obama also said “you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience” and “we’re going to have to make some choices as a society.” Both those points are so true as to almost be tautological—though it’s simply not possible to have 100 percent security under any circumstances.

America and its politicians have consistently chosen “more security” and “less privacy” in recent years, but the fear of terrorism, and what’s being given up in the service of that fear, seem all out of proportion to the actual threat.

In 2011 there were zero domestic US victims of “terrorism.” In 2012 there was a single incident of domestic terrorism, when a white supremacist shot and killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. This year, there has been a single incident so far, when two Muslim brothers, apparently motivated by hatred of the US and inspired by Al Qaeda-type thinking, murdered 3 people and injured 260 others at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

The government’s spying powers aren’t supposed to be turned on US citizens, so the program was irrelevant to the 2011 attack. President Barack Obama says that US residents are also exempt, so presumably the program wasn’t relevant to the marathon attack either.

As Micah Zenko wrote last year, a comparable number of Americans were killed by falling televisions as were killed by acts of terrorism in 2011. How bad has terrorism been in recent decades?

In the 1990s, there was an Al Qaeda linked attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 that killed six and the 1995 attack on the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, carried out by two militia movement sympathizers, that killed 168. There were a few other minor incidents in the 1990s that brought the decade’s toll of deaths from terrorism on US soil to about 180.

In the 2000s there are only really two terrorist incidents to speak of. The Al Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001 that killed 2,977 people; and Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s rampage at Fort Hood Texas in 2009, that claimed 13 lives, for a total of 2,990 for the decade.

Of course, this is horrific enough. And violence designed to terrorize in search of a political goal is, in fact, something different than crime, or accidents. But a sense of proportion is sorely needed in considering the danger. Stephen Walt wrote a brief post yesterday taking writer Andrew Sullivan to task for saying that the “consequences of its absence” could be “terrible,” which I think is spot on:

This claim depends on the belief that jihadism really does pose some sort of horrific threat to American society. This belief is unwarranted, however, provided that dedicated and suicidal jihadists never gain access to nuclear weapons. Conventional terrorism—even of the sort suffered on 9/11—is not a serious threat to the U.S. economy, the American way of life, or even the personal security of the overwhelming majority of Americans, because al Qaeda and its cousins are neither powerful nor skillful enough to do as much damage as they might like. And this would be the case even if the NSA weren’t secretly collecting a lot of data about domestic phone traffic. Indeed, as political scientist John Mueller and civil engineer Mark Stewart have shown, post-9/11 terrorist plots have been mostly lame and inept, and Americans are at far greater risk from car accidents, bathtub mishaps, and a host of other undramatic dangers than they are from “jihadi terrorism.”

Over 100,000 people died in drunk driving accidents in the US in the 2000s (the decade with the lowest number of drunk driving fatalities in US history; in the 1990s the toll was over 136,000). About 26,000 Americans die from unintentional falls a year, and about 33,000 from accidental poisoning.

Americans don’t live in fear of those dangers, nor should they. Excessive, exaggerated fear of terrorism is something that, perhaps, the US will get over as it considers the prices being paid.

Or as James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1798:

The management of foreign relations appears to be the most susceptible of abuse, of all the trusts committed to a Government because they can be concealed or disclosed, or disclosed in such parts and at such times as will best suit particular views; and because the body of the people are less capable of judging and are more under the influence of prejudices, on that branch of their affairs, than of any other. Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

Read More