Philippians 1: 20-30 (links validated 8/18/26a)

Max Hasting’s The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945 explores World War II’s combatants’ different perspectives on life and death that in some ways parallels 21st century contrasting attitudes about life and death. Hastings writes about how “The Germans and Russians had one attitude toward casualties, and the rest of the allies, besides Russia, another. “Stalin’s commanders looked forward to the last phase of their struggle for Europe with their customary indifference to death and suffering, save insofar as these influenced the Red Army’s ability to fight its next battle. “The leaders of Germany had conducted a romance with death for more than a decade. They still cherished hopes of final victory, though it was already plain that Hitler would settle almost equally willingly for a climactic bloodbath worthy of the Third Reich’s place in history.” “But the Western allies looked at matters quite differently. After Normandy … many soldiers wanted to take as few chances as necessary. Generals, too. So Ike moved his armies slowly East, protecting his flanks and softening up targets – a town, a bridge, a ridge, a field, a forest – with a great deal of air bombardment and mortar fire.”

always good insights!

In his book, Terms of Service, Jacob Silverman writes about a PayPal cofounder and early investor in Facebook (and another [Ayn] Rand disciple). Silverman notes that that person has “derided the inevitability of death as an ‘ideology’ while plowing millions into companies that might, as he said, ‘cure aging.’ Google’s own first foray into life-extension research, through a biotech subsidiary called Calico, reflects its belief that it can solve death — at least for a paying fee.”

“I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong.” Those words have come to symbolize Muhammad Ali’s opposition to the Vietnam War and, more specifically, his opposition to a government that would draft young black men and send them, in his words, “10,000 miles from home [to] drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam [while] so-called Negro people in [his home town of] Louisville [were] treated like dogs and denied simple human rights.” Ali knew that his service in the military would not put his life at risk—that, instead, he would be trotted out as part of the Army’s public relations game in the same way that his predecessor in the ring, Joe Lewis, had been used to drum up support for World War II. But Ali wasn’t willing to play their game. He wasn’t willing to accept the privilege of suffering on their behalf. On April 28, 1967, when he reported for his scheduled induction into the military, Ali refused three times to step forward when his name was called, and it cost him. It cost him his heavyweight championship belt, his license to fight in the ring, and the esteem of white America. Ali believed that the government was asking black men and boys to suffer for the sake of a country that would not even recognize their basic humanity, and he refused to take part. Though he is now celebrated as an accomplished athlete and a beloved hero, sports commentator Dan Le Batard has noted more than once that Ali only became popular when Parkinson’s Disease robbed him of his voice. Today, we hear what the apostle Paul has to say to those who suffer.

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If someone is suffering for Jesus, is Jesus not suffering with them? And if you are the cause of someone's suffering, then as sure as you make someone else suffer, you are making Jesus suffer. That was the reminder in the stained glass window called the Wales Window, given to the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL, in 1965. Following the 1963 bombing of the church and the deaths of Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Denise McNair and Carole Robertson, stained glass artist John Petts felt called to respond...

Joseph Ton was pastor of a Baptist church in Rumania while that country was ruled by Communists. The authorities hated him because of his preaching. They arrested him, and threatened to kill him. Ton said to the arresting officer: "Sir, your supreme weapon is killing. My supreme weapon is dying. Sir, you know my sermons are all over the country on tapes now. If you kill me, you will be sprinkling them with my blood. Whoever listens to them after that will say, 'You'd better listen. This man sealed it with his blood.' They will speak ten times louder than before. So, go on and kill me. Then I will win the supreme victory." The officer sent him home. Rev. Ton says, "For years I was a Christian who was cautious because I wanted to survive. I had accepted all the restrictions the authorities put on me because I wanted to live. Now I wanted to die, and they wouldn't oblige. Now I could do whatever I wanted in Rumania. For years I wanted to save my life, and I was losing it. Now that I wanted to lose it, I was winning it."...

A few years ago, I read a book about life planning called Living Forward by Michael Hyatt and Daniel Harkavy. The whole premise of the book was that you begin thinking about your life plan by imagining your funeral. In thinking about your funeral, you imagine two things: who is there and what they are saying about you. That’s the starting point in this particular system of life planning. You think about who you want to be at your funeral and what you want them to be saying about you and then from that point you work back to think about how you need to live now for that preferred future to come true. You see, eventually, we’ll just be someone that stories are told about...