At your favorite restaurant a delightful waitress brings your refreshing glass of iced tea. But you see lipstick on the edge of the glass. I’m sure you would request a new glass of tea. Then you unfold your napkin finding your knife has dried food on it. You would demand a new set of silverware. You might even leave in disgust.

Referees in the Super Bowl coming up February 11 are not there to be popular, but to make sure the rules are followed. They will get booed, but that’s OK because they are not there to please the crowd. The true Church is not called to be popular, but holy. We will get booed for obeying the Bible, but that’s OK, because we don’t work for the culture of this world. The church is here to please the Father in Heaven.

My Dad had one of the first rechargeable flashlights back in the 70’s. It really was not a flashlight. It was mounted on a hardhat with a cable going down to a heavy battery on his belt. The battery was about two inches thick, six inches wide, and eight inches tall. He hunted at night. It would shoot a beam into a tree to search each limb for racoons.

UFOs are now classified as UAPs or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. NASA has convened a group of 16 experts to review how data about UAPs is collected across the government and private sector, and issue recommendations for how the space agency can contribute to investigations into their origins. The group released its final report on Sept. 14. The group found no evidence that UAPs are "extraterrestrial," but said a small subset of reported encounters still defy explanation. (CBS News, Stefan Becket, Sept. 14, 2023)