The World and Everything in It — December 9, 2020

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Washington Wednesday we’ll tell you about how a Biden administration would re-regulate the economy with environmental policy.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today, World Tour. 

Plus, we’ll meet a woman sharing hymns on social media to encourage people during the COVID moment.

And commentator Janie B. Cheaney on the eternal beating heart.

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, December 9th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Now news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: British woman receives first public dose of Pfizer vaccine » AUDIO: [Sound of vaccine being administered]

It was the shot watched round the world. A retired British shop clerk made history on Tuesday. 

Healthcare workers with a round of applause for 90-year-old Margaret Keenan. She received the very first shot in the country’s coronavirus vaccination program. 

Keenan was first in line at University Hospital Coventry. She told reporters it was a privilege to be the first person vaccinated. 

KEENAN: At the moment I don’t know how I feel. It’s just sort of strange and so wonderful really. So anyway, this is for a good cause so I’m so pleased that I had it done. 

The second injection went to an 81-year-old Warwickshire man named William Shakespeare.

Tomorrow, regulators in the United States and Canada could approve the same Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine for emergency use. 

Data shows AstraZeneca vaccine safe and largely effective » Meantime, new results show another vaccine to be safe and largely effective against the coronavirus. 

The data suggest a vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca is about 70 percent effective. 

Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, Andrew Pollard said Tuesday…

POLLARD: The important thing about vaccines is that they get to people and that they are protected. And the only way we can do that is by having multiple vaccines available, because there are a lot of people on the planet and we need to get those vaccines out to them as early as possible. 

And that’s one of the advantages of this vaccine. It’s relatively cheap and easy to distribute. 

Questions remain about how well it may protect those over age 55. A mistake led to some confusion around the trial data. Some participants got a half dose followed by a full one, rather than two full doses as intended.

And the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine appears to provide lower levels of protection than some others. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have shown to be about 95 percent effective. 

Still, experts say the vaccine is likely to win approval in many countries soon. 

Biden introduces healthcare team » President-elect Joe Biden introduced his health care team on Tuesday officially announcing his pick for HHS secretary and other top posts. 

As expected, he is nominating California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. 

He also introduced a quartet of medical doctors who will advise him amid the pandemic. Among them, the government’s top infectious disease specialist, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

BIDEN: Dr. Fauci is trusted, a truth teller, a patriot. Like every good doctor, he’ll tell me what I need to know, not what I want to know. 

Biden also tapped businessman Jeff Zients to lead the White House coronavirus response. He said Zients is renowned for his crisis management skills.

Meantime, President Trump announced that he has signed an executive order to prioritize the American people. 

TRUMP: To ensure that Americans have first priority to receive American vaccines. And then we’re going to be working with other countries all over the world, and I think we’ll be able to start doing that almost immediately also because we have millions of doses coming in.

Health officials say it will take several months to deliver vaccine shots to most Americans. 

California scrambles to increase hospital capacity » Some California hospitals say they’re close to reaching a breaking point as more and more COVID-19 patients check in. 

That’s prompting Gov. Gavin Newsom to bring in hundreds of medical workers from out of state while preparing to re-open emergency hospitals created last spring. 

NEWSOM: On 11/23, just a few weeks ago, we had shy of 6,000 COVID-19 positive patients in our hospital system. Now over 10,000, just like that—72 percent increase.

The state has almost 8,000 ICU beds in total. With the recent surge, only about 1,700 of those beds are now empty. 

California officials are painting a dire picture of overflowing hospitals and exhausted health workers. That as the state records an average of 22,000 new cases each day. 

California has requested nearly 600 health care workers to help in ICUs through a contracting agency and the federal government. 

China slams US sanctions, Taiwan arms sale » China is lashing out at the United States over new U.S. sanctions and the sale of more U.S. military equipment to Taiwan. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports. 

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: The State Department on Monday said 14 Chinese officials are now banned from traveling to the United States or accessing the U.S. financial system. That in response to Beijing’s crackdown on free speech in Hong Kong. 

The Trump administration also approved a $280 million sale of advanced military communications equipment to Taiwan.

Chinese Foriegn Minister Zheng Zeguang said the U.S. actions—quote—“violated the basic norms of international relations, seriously interfered in China’s domestic politics” and damaged China-U.S. relations. He also called the moves “arrogant, unreasonable, and vile.” 

He said China will “take resolute and forceful countermeasures.”

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: the Biden administration’s environmental policies.

Plus, Janie B. Cheaney on the one heartbeat that will never stop.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday, the 9th of December, 2020. 

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Washington Wednesday. 

When President Trump moved into the Oval Office in 2017, his team immediately went to work dismantling a laundry list of Obama era regulations. Many of those changes occurred at the Environmental Protection Agency. 

By the time he leaves the White House, the Trump administration will likely have rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations.

EICHER: Republicans say cutting red tape and scaling back government power is good for the country, especially for the economy. 

But it’s likely that a Biden Administration will handle things very differently. This is how Joe Biden described his environmental plan on a left-wing podcast:

BIDEN: It’s a vehicle by which we can not only save the planet, but we can generate such economic growth and lead the world.

He calls it his Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice.

REICHARD: Joining us now to preview that plan is Nick Loris. He is an economist and policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

Nick, thanks so much for joining us!

NICK LORIS, GUEST: Thanks for having me! Glad to be here. 

REICHARD: Let’s start with what Biden is actually proposing. Give us the Biden elevator pitch, if you would. In a nutshell, what does Biden want to do here and what are the benefits as he sees it? 

LORIS: Yeah, a big part of President-elect Joe Biden’s plan is to use federal agencies and use federal regulations to reverse course in terms of what the previous administration has done to roll back regulations that have had high compliance costs for negligible environmental benefit. And so President-elect Biden’s plan is really focused on three fundamental goals. One is increasing regulations from everything from the oil and gas industry to the coal industry to prohibiting oil and gas leases on federal lands, which is a big issue for those states out West where the federal government owns a lot of land. And the other big part is really focusing on trying to subsidize different clean energy technologies. So, that’s really the focus of President Joe Biden’s policy is regulate the energy sources he’s not too fond of, and subsidize the ones that may need help from the taxpayer.

REICHARD: You say a core part of his plan is for Uncle Sam to have a much bigger hand in energy and transportation markets. What does that mean, in practical terms for each person listening right now? 

LORIS: Yeah. It means higher prices, forcing costlier energy technologies into the marketplace as well as huge taxpayer expenses. I think the reality is when you let energy markets work, they work quite well. They deliver affordable, reliable power to American families and businesses. We’ve seen significant environmental improvements over the years in terms of particulate matter and criteria in air pollution coming down as we continue to innovate and compete. And we’ve seen greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector come down as well as a lot of natural gas that’s displaced coal. So, we’re seeing a lot of economic and environmental benefits when the market is allowed to work in the energy sector.

Conversely, when you have the government intervening in the energy sector, you see a lot of picking winners and losers using taxpayer dollars to steer investment. So, there’s not only higher costs to Americans in forms of a higher tax burden, more national debt, forced higher energy prices that ripple throughout the economy, but really through the government picking winners and losers, a lot of investment opportunities are lost because it’s the government choosing which energy projects get to move forward. And so the fact that the government continues to play a role and try to be some sort of investment banker in all of these decisions really has long-term, adverse effects on how investment decisions are made. 

REICHARD: Nick, you say that Biden’s plans have a whole lot in common with the Obama administration’s environmental policies. What lessons can we take from the eight years of the Obama presidency in this realm?  

LORIS: Yeah, we’re going to see a lot more regulations. I think one of the problems that we’ve seen—and I think this is frustrations voiced by both the left and the right—is that Congress has really ceded a lot of authority to unelected bureaucrats at agencies, whether it’s the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Interior or the Department of Energy. And it’s going to be that see-saw back and forth now with a Biden administration focusing on how do we reverse course from what the Trump administration did, who reversed course from what the Obama administration did. And so it’s really unfortunate because that provides a lot of economic uncertainty for all sorts of energy technologies and companies, not just your conventional oil and gas and coal, but also for renewable and nuclear technologies if you really have a lot of regulatory uncertainty coming down the pipeline. 

And then I think what we’re going to see is really using any opportunity—whether it’s a pandemic relief bill or a highway reauthorization bill or some sort of other stimulus bill—to really focus on a green stimulus style spending. And, again, we saw something like Solyndra that happened during the Obama administration years where half a billion dollars of taxpayer dollars was pumped into one company and it still couldn’t compete in the marketplace because it was a bad technology. And so that’s not to really dunk on renewables. I think renewables, the declining costs of renewables is great and we want more competition in the marketplace. We just don’t want the government footing the bill for it, which means the taxpayers are ultimately footing the bill for it. 

REICHARD: To be fair, you also say that there are some elements of Biden’s plan that could accomplish some positive things. You say they could open the door for more innovation and competition in energy markets. What are those positive elements? 

LORIS: For sure. I think one thing about President-elect Joe Biden is he’s been a big proponent of natural gas. I imagine that we’ll still see liquified natural gas exports continue under a Biden administration. He’s not going to full stop ban fracking or restrict oil and gas to the point where it no longer becomes economically viable. They will face more regulations, but it’s not going to be a full stop. And I think someone like Joe Biden understands the economic and environmental and the geopolitical benefits that the U.S. has reaped because of its energy dominance, that we are supplying jobs, we’re supplying affordable, reliable energy. We’ve seen the environment improve and we are providing more energy choice to our allies abroad, so it’s not Russia who is using their natural gas to manipulate markets for political purposes. By providing other countries, especially our NATO allies, but also places like Southeast Asia with more energy choice, that is breaking up that type of monopoly over some of these energy markets. And so I think a lot of those things will continue under a Biden administration. 

REICHARD: Now, we have a pair of January Senate runoffs in Georgia that will decide control of the Senate. No matter what happens, Democrats won’t have a veto-proof majority. So how much of his environmental agenda can Biden push through without passing new legislation?

LORIS: A fair amount on the regulatory side. One of the biggest potential obstacles to President Biden undoing some of what the Trump administration has done over the past four years is what’s known as the Congressional Review Act, which can undo some of these final regulations coming down the pipeline during the last days of the Trump administration. And if Republicans win one or both of these seats, it’s likely that the Congressional Review Act is no longer on the table. So, that prevents some of what President Biden’s administration could do in terms of undoing the Trump administration’s regulations. But you will see a lot of new regulations coming down the pipeline. Probably new regulations on fuel economy standards for vehicles, methane regulations on oil and gas operations. I think the biggest one, again, is probably going to be the prohibition of new oil and gas leases on federal land. No one is really sure what that means yet and whether it’s actually legal, because right now the mineral leasing act requires that the Department of Interior conduct lease sales on a quarterly basis. And so that’s going to be a big challenge moving forward and a really big question mark legally. 

REICHARD: Do you see Biden perhaps holding off on certain regulations until the economy recovers? How do you imagine this playing out at the start of his presidency? 

LORIS: Yeah, I think it’s going to be a slow drip type of mentality. One of the things that benefits a Biden administration is these regulations take time to promulgate and actually release. So, I think they’re going to get cranking on them almost immediately, but it goes through a long regulatory process where they have to write the rule, they have to release a draft rule, it has to go through a public comment period, and then the rule has to be finalized. If there’s a pandemic relief bill, you may see an extension of a lot of energy subsidies and a lot of stimulus style spending because that’s usually the left’s approach to get the economy going again is to spend more taxpayer dollars. And so last time the Department of Energy got a huge plus-up when the Obama administration passed and signed into law their stimulus bill. And I can imagine something like that happening again.

REICHARD: Nick Loris is with the Heritage Foundation. Nick, thanks so much!

LORIS: Anytime. Thanks again for having me.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour with Africa correspondent Onize Ohikere.

ONIZE OHIKERE, REPORTER: Mass funeral follows attack in Nigeria—We start today here in Africa.

AUDIO: [CHANTING]

Residents of the Zabarmari community in Nigeria gathered for a mass funeral last week. They crowded around the bodies of 43 farmers and fishermen, shrouded each of them in white cloths, and prayed before laying them to rest in mass graves.

Boko Haram fighters struck the community two weeks ago, targeting agricultural workers near the village of Koshobe. It was the single deadliest attack in the region this year. Eight people are still missing.

Extremists often target rural communities in Nigeria, extorting food and money from the residents. Farmers in the region had recently refused demands for payment. A local lawyer said the latest attack was likely retaliation for that resistance.

Local leaders warn ongoing attacks on farmers could trigger famine in the region.

India mystery illness—Next, we go to Asia.

AUDIO: [YELLING, WHISTLING]

More than 300 people were hospitalized in India this weekend with a mystery illness. Dozens of people in the city of Eluru became sick Saturday night. They suffered symptoms like seizures, nausea, and vomiting. Many complained their eyes were burning. Others fell unconscious, and one man died.

Doctors aren’t sure what’s causing the symptoms. All the patients tested negative for COVID-19. And their blood tests showed no sign of a viral infection. Officials also ruled out water contamination and air pollution.

Doctors will continue to run tests and lab work to identify the cause. Over half the patients were released, while the rest are still undergoing treatment and tests.

Rohingya refugees moved to island—Next, we go to Bangladesh.

AUDIO: [CROWD]

More than 1,500 Rohingya refugees arrived on a remote island off the coast of Bangladesh on Friday. The refugees had been living in overcrowded camps in the mainland’s Cox’s Bazar district. So the government made plans to move them to a new camp on a tiny island in the Bay of Bengal.

But the island only surfaced about 20 years ago, and monsoon rains frequently submerge it. The Bangladesh navy has built flood protection embankments, houses, and hospitals for the refugees, but some aid groups still worry a strong storm could overwhelm the island.

More than a million Rohingya have fled violent persecution in Myanmar over the past three years. Many of them now live in overcrowded camps in Bangladesh, plagued by rampant disease and organized crime.

Christmas tree lighting in Bethlehem—And finally, we end today in the Middle East.

AUDIO: [SINGING]

A small group of residents and religious leaders attended the famous Bethlehem Christmas tree lighting on Saturday. The ceremony usually draws thousands of visitors, but coronavirus precautions kept the group small this year. No crowded inns or visitors from the east. But Bethlehem’s mayor said Christmas would not be canceled, and that the small ceremony in Manger Square was a message of hope to the whole world. Local officials lit the massive tree, then set off fireworks.

AUDIO: [SINGING, FIREWORKS]

That’s this week’s World Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: A newspaper headline called it the “Miracle on Register 6.” 

No one can quite explain how it happened. How June Rountree of Dothan, Alabama, was reunited with her best friend at the Walmart where she works.

Three weeks ago, her four year old lab-pitbull mix named Abby disappeared. She and her husband searched all over but found no trace.

That is, until one day she was working at the checkout line when she heard a commotion. 

She turned around and saw other employees trying to usher an animal out of the store. But it wasn’t just any animal. You’re getting this, right?  

REICHARD: It’s Abby!

She darted right up to Rountree’s register. 

The Walmart is about a mile away from her home, and amazingly, June never brought her dog inside the store. But somehow, Abby managed to find her way. 

An early Christmas miracle.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, December 9th. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today for The World and Everything in It. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. If you’ve been listening for a while, you’ll remember that we do things a little differently around here during the week of Christmas. We take time to remember the people we’ve lost during the past year. And we look forward to celebrating the birth of our Savior. Best of all, we invite you to join us!

EICHER: One of the highlights this past year at WORLD Radio was listening to the Scriptures and prayers you recorded for the week of the election. We enjoyed it so much that we thought we’d do something similar for Christmas.

Starting on December 22nd, we will end each day’s program with a selection of scriptures from both the Old and New Testament looking ahead to Christ’s coming and His return. We’ll cap it all off on December 25th with the Christmas story from Luke chapter 2.

REICHARD: Right, but to do it, we’re gonna need your help.

If you’d like to participate, go to worldandeverything.org/christmas. Pick one of the scriptures listed there and record yourself reading it using the voice memo app on your smartphone. Then email the recording to us at feedback@worldandeverything.com. 

We’d love to have the whole family participate! But please remember to have just one person reading at a time. Easier on the ears that way.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming next: a Kentucky woman’s mission to replace some of the loneliness and ache of lockdown with lyrics and music that encourage.

WORLD’s Paul Butler brings her story.

MARBARA STIVERS: My name is Marbara Stivers. I live in Louisville, Kentucky. I’m 67. I have two children who live in New York City. My husband and I’ve been married  37 years at the end of this month. I homeschooled our children. And I’ve been a librarian for 29 years at our church. And I sing in church now. And so that’s, that’s about it.

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: Well, that’s not quite it. 252 days ago, Marbara Stivers sat down at her piano, turned on her phone, and started recording. 

AUDIO: Ok, it is April 1st, 2020, and this is the first edition of Musical Moments with Marbara…

[MUSIC] You can sing along. LYRICS: This is my Father’s world…

MARBARA STIVERS: Back at the beginning of April, I was just praying and asking God what I could do to help connect and encourage. And he said, “Sing,” so I said, OK. 

Stivers started by singing some of her sacred favorites and posting them to Facebook. She usually included a Scripture passage or other devotional thought as well. Initially, the technology was a steep learning curve.

AUDIO: Ready for another Musical Moments with Marbara? I did this one yesterday, and tried to upload it for about five hours yesterday and today and it would not load, so I’m trying again…

About five weeks into the daily posting, Stivers was organizing a bookshelf and came across a book a friend had given her: Near to the Heart of God by Robert Morgan. It features stories behind many old hymns.  

MARBARA STIVERS: I thought, Oh, well, I’m still doing this, I’ll just do it the way he’s doing it. So I started going day by day and trying to find the songs that he was referencing.

AUDIO: From time to time I might be reading the stories of those. Here we go…like I said this is a different tune.

MUSIC: [JUST AS I AM]

Stiver comes from a musical family. And hymns have been a part of her life ever since she was a girl learning the piano.

MARBARA STIVERS: My dad and I used to play Name that Hymn. He would be in the kitchen, and I would be at the piano and I would play through the hymnal. And he would yell out what song it was from the kitchen. 

AUDIO: Hello, welcome to another Musical Moments with Marbara. This is number 50! And, I had no idea when I started this that at day 50 I would still be doing this…

For more than eight months now, she’s posted a hymn or chorus every day. 

MARBARA STIVERS: I’m an introvert. And this is just a perfect way for me to connect at my own pace, and other people can listen when they want or not. 

Stivers hasn’t missed a single day, though sometimes she’s recorded more than one at a time.  

MARBARA STIVERS: There was one day when I knew I had some things coming up. So I did three in one day, I just changed clothes because I felt if they see me in the same clothes two days in a row, they’ll wonder if they had already watched that one. So for 125 days, I think I wore a different outfit every day. But that made it to the end of the closet. So then I had to start over.

Social media has gotten a lot of bad press recently, but Stivers is committed to using it to encourage her family and friends with songs of the faith. 

AUDIO: Welcome to another Musical Moments with Marbara, this is day 100.

MUSIC: [I WILL SING OF MY REDEEMER]

MARBARA STIVERS: I have relatives that listen every day, my mother listens every night before she goes to bed. I have friends from college and elementary school and high school and from all over the place that do listen, every day. 

And she’s found that what started as an outreach to others, has encouraged her as well. 

MARBARA STIVERS: You know, it also gave a purpose. Especially at the beginning…that was one thing I could accomplish every day. And so it’s it’s, I hope it has encouraged others, but it’s been a good thing for me too.

AUDIO: Hello, welcome to another Musical Moments with Marbara. This is day 200.

MUSIC: [LET THERE BE PEACE ON EARTH]

Stivers admits there’s an additional personal reason she’s kept at it all these months. She hopes someday, her grandkids will be able to see it.

MARBARA STIVERS: Maybe some of these will still be around, and they can have some memory of their grandmother singing. I remember my grandmother singing at the piano and quoting poetry as I was growing up. And so that has sort of been in the back of my mind, too. 

As another wave of illness leads many states and local governments to restrict public gatherings, families are facing tough choices about upcoming holiday gatherings. Stivers says people need encouragement today, perhaps more than ever. And as long as that’s the case, she’ll keep playing and singing. 

MARBARA STIVERS: One hymn that sort of illustrates, I guess what my philosophy would be. The song would be Little Is Much When God is in It. I was thinking you know, well I’m not a great pianist and I’m not an award winning vocalist or anything but when God said sing, I said yes, so that’s that it.

MUSIC: [THIS IS MY FATHER’S WORLD]

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Paul Butler.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, December 9th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Commentator Janie B. Cheaney on the heart that beats for all eternity.

JANIE B. CHEANEY: Death can be confusing, and confounding. A friend’s brother died very suddenly a few weeks ago—he was sitting, then he was standing, then he was falling. Cardiac arrest. Another friend’s husband died six weeks after she brought him home from assisted care. Probably a stroke. My mother died 12 years ago, just shy of her 88th birthday, and the cause was never determined. At 88, her body didn’t need a cause. On her last evening, I put my head on her chest and heard her last heartbeat, faltering like a footstep seeking purchase. 

Then stillness. 

We know when our hearts begin to beat: not to the minute, but definitely to the week, perhaps even the day. But no one knows when his heart will stop.

I think about that sometimes after a morning run, when I’m winding down and my heart rate is up to a healthy 140. I can feel it in my chest and hear it in my ears and contemplate the many millions of times it has beaten for me. It’s been a steady, reliable little machine for seven decades now. How much longer? 

“All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” All the heartbeats, too. If God keeps track of the hairs on my head, he must also have a number in mind: two billion, five hundred seventy-five million, four hundred forty and one. When my heart reaches that predetermined number, it will stop.

Once, in a dusty village called Nazareth, a girl who had never slept with a man felt a baby twitch in her womb. Imagine the start, her hand on her belly, a quick breath, the news taking shape in her own body. But even before that, the little form was growing, and at some time during the fifth or sixth week, his tiny heart began to beat.

Ke-thump, ke-thump, ke-thump. Quickly slipping into the stream of time.

The angels know. The Father knows. Now Mary knows, and her own heart keeps the little one company.

Ka-thump. Ka-thump. Ka-thump. 

Did he know? Was his developing brain somehow aware that it had directed a heart to start pumping, and that it would keep pumping for some thirty-three years? 

If not in the womb, he would know on the cross. He would know, to the second, when the last drop of blood would fill up the measure and pay the price. His heart would stop when he surrendered his spirit and willed it to stop.

Then it would lie still in a cold body, wrapped up like a swaddled baby and placed on a stone slab in a tomb. For the next thirty-odd hours it would remain still.

But then, sometime in the pre-dawn hours of the third day, it started beating again. And all these centuries later, it beats still. For us.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

While I still have your attention: I’d like to talk to you about the importance of journalism that strives to keep pace with that divine heartbeat.

As we near 2021, that means I’m nearing my 30th year with WORLD. 

I’ve seen a lot of things change. But I’m more impressed by what hasn’t changed: WORLD’s dedication to biblically objective journalism. Even as our platforms have expanded from print to digital, from words on pages to spoken words on podcasts, now to television news for students, I’ve been pleased to hear the heartbeat of biblically based reporting continuing on.

Ka-thump. Ka-thump. Ka-thump.

What helps keep WORLD’s heart healthy is the support you provide. 

This is our December Giving Drive. Would you make the most generous gift you can afford to make this year? Just visit wng.org/donate and pledge your gift today.

Thank you.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Pandemic restrictions mean many churches and families must rethink the way they celebrate Christmas this year. We’ll talk to some of them.

That and more tomorrow. 

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

Jesus said: Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction; those who enter by it are many. But the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

I hope you’ll have a great rest of the day. We’ll talk to you tomorrow!

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.