Energy

One of the most used words, vocally or in-print, is the word “energy.” If, when I was in Zimbabwe, about 25 years ago, I had accumulated $10,000 in Zimbabwe fiat currency, and hid it in the ground, today the sum would be worth pennies, if anything. If I had bought $10,000 in gold coins, and hid them in the ground, today they would be worth many times what I paid for them. If I had enough ground to hide $10,000 of crude oil, it would be worth many times what I paid for it, almost as much as the gold, because oil is truly liquid gold. We realize this every day as we witness the Middle East aflame, sending up the price of crude oil, sending up the price of gasoline at the pump.

I was reared at a time when there was little need for oil, gasoline. I remember my cousin's service station had a hand-pump gasoline tank into which he pumped gas for the few cars in the entire area. My family, everyone in the community, depended on animal power for turning the soil and crop production. We had mules on the farm, my favorite mule was Nell, she taught me to plow. Even today, in most of the world, donkeys, horses, buffaloes are used instead of the combustion engine. The world's economy depends on oil, food, plastics, transportation, warfare. I remember the first plastic, we never thought it would so monopolize our lives. I saw a water buffalo pulling a small lawnmower, cutting the grass at a Maharaja's palace in India. Oxen walking a circle all day long, pumping water. As a child, I remember water running under the grist mill, turning the wheel to grind corn, entire buildings built without a power tool of any type. Ferry river crossings using mules to pull the line.

In books and later in movies, we saw slaves rowing Greek ships in time of warfare and in commerce. You never heard the sound of a boat motor on a lake or even the ocean, boat paddling was some of the best exercise in the world. Students actually walked to class, families walked to church. At the beginning of the 20^th century when 90% of the American population lived in rural areas, obesity and diabetes were almost unknown because people worked, gardening, care of grounds, raising crops, etc.

Today, the sissy-prissy politicians, academics, spoiled walmart-aristocracy, resent dispelling energy anywhere except at the gymnasium. God, please help the man who must ride a golf cart in order to get his golfing exercise. God, please help the woman who must have an electric beater or blender to prepare everything in the kitchen. God, please help young men and women, who find it hard work to push a lawn mower, and probably hard work to push the buttons on a video game. With all the new technology, laptops, iPads, the television set, please don't tell me I must push buttons on a remote. Let me just think, and the cameras on the iPad, and the channels on the television will change, without any energy on my part. Slowly but surely, we have become a lazy, spoiled, extravagance of human existence.

The greatest energy conceivable to the mind, was expended when God created the universe, the world and everything in it. He placed here, everything that mankind would ever need for living...the gold in every mountain is his. Every mineral, every element, every herb, we would ever need for living or healthcare, was placed here. God, in his infinite mercy and wisdom, large lakes and rivers of water, lending to such energy producers as the Hoover Dam, the Aswan Dam, most of the crust of the earth filled with crude oil, natural gas, coal. With the dependence on the combustion engine, great reserves of oil near the surface of Saudi Arabia, we have become spoiled to the use of oil.

With the gulf oil spill, we have discovered just how much oil is available right on our own backdoor. The ludicrous theory that oil was produced by dead animals and dead plant life (how did they all get down there?). Questions are asked, with the abundance of cheap, plentiful natural gas, why not liquify it and use in so many places. Coal was the main stay of industry for a long time, and we know about smoke stack cleaning.

America's greatest problem, a Marxist Sunni Muslim in the White House, who knows nothing at all about energy or anything else. His only experience with energy is perhaps bouncing a basketball. Supporting him, “pea-brained” politicians who cannot face the reality of energy, they had rather talk green...production of energy meeting present needs without jeopardizing the needs of future generations: renewable, solar, wind, wave, experimenting with equations which will not balance such as electric cars, wind turbines, solar panels, all these things costing more energy than they will ever produce or save.

These people who know nothing about conservation in their life habits or their nation's survival need to experience humiliation before jubilation. Bomb shelters are being built around Moscow, China is training 10,000 carrier pidgins to deliver messages in time of war, if as expected, all electric utility grids are wiped out. Purveyors of ignorance, Washington and the state-controlled news media have not realized that if Saudi Arabian oil is cut off, every financial system in the world will shut down...we are that dependent on Saudi oil. Everything we buy or sell because of the stupidity of world leaders, particularly Japan and Europe, dependent on oil, energy from oil. Saudi Arabia's princes, royal family got richer than Midas when crude oil was $5 a barrel. Wikileaks states that the Saudis have overestimated their reserves by 40%. King Abdullah and all his brothers (successors) are old and sick.

The height of stupidity, we should be accustomed to such from Washington, putting ethanol in the gas tank, producing food shortages and empty stomachs. One of the saints of long ago said, “God is more anxious to save us and help us than is a mother taking her child out of a burning building.” When will we learn that every thing we do is spiritual? We do what we do because we believe what we believe. I believe it time to end “stinking thinking” about energy.

Painting by the Number

I heard blind Dr. Helen Robinson of the University of Chicago say one time, “I wish I could see well enough just to walk from one room to another without walking into things.” Only a fellow blind person can understand this. God left me with a shadow of vision in one eye for many years, which enabled me to maneuver through airports and get around without walking into things. This was about 40 years ago, since then, it has been a world of blackness. I remember, when I could still see, visiting the world's great art museums, the Louvre in Paris, El Prado in Madrid, etc. When you look at the great works of art, those that sell for millions of dollars, analyzing brush strokes with a magnifier, you can hardly imagine one with the patience, talent, tenacity to give such majesty even to the smallest leaf. Later, someone gave me a painting for my office, painted by number, there is a tremendous difference. So it is with life and death.

It bothers me that some take life so casually, by the number, while others, every minute, every second is a challenge. I believe those that wear the “Roman collar” are not subjected to the same plateaus of indifference as the rest of us. As my father would say, “the preacher came riding up to the church in a nice car, well dressed, associating with the best people in the area, while on Sunday morning, about the time he got his Sunday shoes on, a cow jumped the fence, or hog rooted under a fence, and he had to get outside and get the animal back in. The preacher got paid whether the crops drowned or dried up. Everywhere the preacher went, people were on their best behavior, put the best flatware on the table, tastiest food on the platter.”

Every time I visited the Vatican, I was humbled by Catholics who were there for the first time, the tears that came so quickly. They didn't mind seeing all that opulence, gold, paintings, wealth beyond compare. Why would any member of the Catholic hierarchy want to die and go to heaven? In some of the poorest cities of the world, I always visited the cathedral, I would peek around some of the locked gates, and there were always limousines in the parking lot. Wealth inside the fenced grounds, absolute poverty among the people, young ragged Catholics begging from the tourists.

On July 18th, from his summer palace, Castel Gondolfo, Pope Benedict XVI spoke on essentials of life, he said, “[we must] rest from our daily labors so that we may give time to the one thing that is truly necessary in our lives -listening to the word of God in attentive stillness. God is that 'inner light of love and truth' that gives every action meaning, value, and joy.”

It is easy for a man to speak of joy who eats from golden utensils off of golden plates, the best food which high-paid chefs can prepare, unchallenged by the risk, deceits, decadence of world, who has people bowing to him all day long, kissing his ring, and a billion people in absolute servitude. Can you imagine Christ living in such splendor here on this earth? Christ, God incarnate, born in a borrowed stable, buried in a borrowed tomb.

I found Francis Thompson's grave site in London, this wonderful British poet wrote, “Love is a many splendored thing.” God is love, and Christ told us that he is truth. (John 17:17, John 14:6)

Our blessed Lord never owned a house, a bed, more than one pair of shoes, yet the cattle on a thousand hills were his (Psalm 50:10). All the gold, all the silver, every element in the earth, all made by Him (John 1). Is it not wonderful to know that we are His “workmanship” (Ephesians 2:10)? How we short change ourselves by loving the things of this world (1 John 2:15). Satan wants those who bear the name of Christ to love the world, and the things that are in the world. When you put your idols of technology, luxury living, self-aggrandizement, even insulated opulence of the church ahead of Him, God is jealous. Because He tells us that He is a jealous God (Exodus 34:14, Exodus 20:5).

The Rockefellers (Baptists), owners of Standard Oil, got rich selling oil for 10 cents a barrel. They built the great Riverside Church in New York, and have done much good, but that good will never erase the harm of “planned parenthood”, which they founded and financed.

The Saudis got rich selling oil for 1$ a barrel (5000 princes, royal family) and have given much of their wealth to many of the world's 2 billion member poor Muslim population. But amidst the conflicts involved, they do not mind killing one another (900,000 killed in Iraq-Iran War, 1988). There is no doubt in any one's mind that Iran is about to be involved in war again. The regime in power in Iran will be taken out, the three sects of Muslims: Sunni, Shi'ah, Khawarij will decide who dominates the world stage.

The world powers, including China and Russia, oil being the lubricant of all interests, (Russia interested in pipeline, China in energy supply) all have chosen sides...Israel has nothing to worry about (Genesis 12). World powers, including the Arabs, if they will read the Bible, will know that Israel's protection is predestined. There is a world coalition against Iran, Obama has already been bowing and scraping to the Saudis, this pending Middle East conflict is his trump card for reelection. It is only Americans who do not know what the world's Muslims know, that Obama is a Sunni Muslim. Democrats cannot read print, numbered paintings, or anything else because they are too busy with abortions and the gay agenda. Democrats pushed a communist-capitalist-Muslim into the White House, but many will survive to repent.

Crucial as the world stage, our national dilemma: bioethics, cloning, stem cells, biological warfare via germs, artificial and synthetic biology (hematology directed towards synthetic blood for use with pets and in warfare), cryogenics (not realizing that ice crystals so damage tissue). Scientists have so embarrassed themselves about many things (Global Warming, Gulf Oil, Recalled Drugs, etc.), many still believing that man is just a pile of chemicals, the injustice of killing one human being to save another. Thinking that the power who created the scientists, does not have the power to change everything. We too are looking for change, the change which the creator, not the creature, can make.