The World and Everything in It: February 5, 2025

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning!

President Donald Trump brings neighbors and rivals to the bargaining table.

TRUMP: And they want to make a deal. Let me tell you, in all cases, they all want to make deals.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Trade wars and rumors of trade wars ahead on Washington Wednesday.

Also today, how is the government funding freeze affecting international aid programs? A World Tour special report.

And the curious corpse flower smells like it sounds. And some people can’t get enough, apparently.

VAUGHAN: I knew it was going to smell like something. I just didn't know it was going to smell that bad.

And commentator Janie B Cheaney on FOMO.

MAST: It’s Wednesday, February 5th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

MAST: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

TRUMP: Thank you very much …. Today I’m delighted to welcome Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu back to the White House …

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Netanyahu at White House » Reporters packed the East Room on Tuesday for a joint press conference centered on challenges facing the Middle East.

Prime Minister Netanyahu said to secure his country’s future and bring peace to the region, Israel has three goals:

NETANYAHU:  Destroy Hamas's military and governing capabilities, secure the release of all of our hostages, and ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel.

To that end, he praised President Trump for his support.

For his part, Trump surprised many at the White House by proposing that —in his words to break the cycle of death and destruction in Gaza the United States should take ownership of the Gaza Strip to rebuild and develop the territory.

TRUMP:  This was not a decision made lightly. Everybody I've spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent …

Trump said he had discussed the idea with leaders of Middle Eastern countries who responded positively. Netanyahu said it’s worth exploring.

The president also announced that the U.S. is withdrawing from what he called “The anti-semitic Human Rights Council.” And he said the U.S. is ending support for the UN Palestinian relief agency known as UNRWA. Trump said the group had funneled money to Hamas.

Trump return to max pressure on Iran » President Trump also announced:

TRUMP:  Today, I also took action to restore a maximum pressure policy on the Iranian regime, and we will once again enforce the most aggressive possible sanctions,

Trump repeatedly said he hated to do it adding that he hopes concerns about Iran’s nuclear ambitions can be resolved diplomatically. But he said whatever it takes, Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.

And after US intelligence agencies revealed an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump before last year’s election Trump said Tuesday that if he’s killed by Iran, he’s left instructions to obliterate the country.

China tariffs » The White House on Tuesday reacted to news that Beijing is hitting U.S. imports with tariffsin retaliation for new tariffs on Chinese goods.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the U.S. is standing up to Beijing over the flow of fentanyl from China:

LEAVITT:  Fentanyl is the leading cause of death amongst young people in this country aged 18 to 34. And it is the president's utmost responsibility to protect American lives. That's why he implemented the 10 percent tariff on China.

President Trump also once again decried the U.S. trade deficit with China and said he’s not worried about the retaliatory tariffs.

Among other measures, Beijing will levy a 15% tax on US coal and liquified natural gas and a 10% tariff on crude oil and agricultural machinery.

El Salvador offer » Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Tuesday in El Salvador with President Nayib Bukele who offered to take in and jail hardened criminal illegal immigrants in the U.S. regardless of their nationality.

RUBIO: It's a very generous offer. No one's ever made an offer like that. And, um, to outsource, at a fraction of the cost, uh, at least some of the most dangerous and violent criminals that we have in the United States.

President Trump says he is exploring whether he can legally take Bukele up on that offer.

One day earlier, Rubio met with leaders in Panama who agreed to key concessions regarding the Panama Canal. Those include waving fees for American vessels and reducing China’s influence in the operation of the canal.

Senate confirms Bondi as AG » The Senate has confirmed Pam Bondi as U.S. attorney general.

SOUND: On this vote, the yeas are 54. The nays are 46. The nomination is confirmed.

Bondi is a former Florida attorney general. She is expected to oversee a reshaping of a Justice Department that Bondi says had become politicized and weaponized under the prior administration.

Democrats reject that view and many expressed fears that Bondi would weaponize the department on President Trump's behalf.

Senate advances RFK Jr  » And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will likely become the nation’s next health secretary.

AUDIO:  Mr. Chairman, the final total 14 ayes, 13 nays. The vote was 14-13. The nomination is reported favorably.

The Senate Finance Committee voting to advance his nomination Tuesday.

That came after Kennedy won the crucial swing vote of Republican Senator and doctor Bill Cassidy, a gastroenterologist. The nominee agreed to a number of measures to assuage concerns over his past remarks about vaccines. The senator said that Kennedy, and the Trump administration, committed to a close working relationship with Cassidy.

CASSIDY:   Aside from he and I meeting regularly, he will come before the help committee on a quarterly basis if requested. He committed that the help committee chair may choose a representative on any board or commission formed to review vaccine safety.

Senate advances Gabbard » Meantime, the Senate Intelligence Committee, voted behind closed doors, to advance the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence.

That was another party line vote, 9 to 8.

Her final confirmation on the Senate floor is expected, but not assured. Several Republicans have voiced concerns. And with the GOP’s thin majority, the final vote could be close.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: using tariffs as a bargaining chip. Plus, how international aid programs are responding to the U.S. funding freeze.

This is The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 5th of February.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Two days in a row for corrections, Lindsay! Yesterday, I must’ve been in a Texas state of mind, because my brain and my tongue went their separate ways. I misspoke about Governor Sam Brownback’s faithful service ... it was not to Texas as I inexplicably said, but, of course, to Kansas. Brownback served as governor of Kansas, and before that, represented Kansas in the U.S. Senate. I knew this. My mouth, apparently, didn’t get the memo. So, my apologies—and a reminder to double-check the itinerary before sending my words on the next road trip.

MAST: All right, let’s road trip to DC: it’s time for Washington Wednesday.

Over the weekend, President Trump ordered the U.S. government to impose tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico.

TRUMP: We've had good relationships. But we have to stop fentanyl from coming in, whether I like somebody or not. And we have to stop the illegal aliens from coming in.

EICHER: The tariffs were set to go into effect on Tuesday…but by Monday evening, Mexico and Canada both made deals with the U.S. to put them on pause for one month.

What did America’s neighbors put on the table to satisfy the dealmaker in chief?

Washington Bureau reporter Leo Briceno has the story.

LEO BRICENO: The tariffs Trump unveiled on Saturday would have slapped goods made in Mexico and Canada with duties of 25%...driving up the price of everything from cars to lumber. Both countries promised to retaliate with their own tariffs on products made in America. But then Trump announced a pause right after Mexico promised to increase its border security measures.

TRUMP: They've agreed to put in 10,000 soldiers permanently, like forever, 10,000 soldiers at their side of the border and stop fentanyl and illegal aliens from coming into our country. They have a big incentive to do.

Meanwhile, Canada has pledged to implement a $1.3 billion border plan, send 10,000 personnel to the border, and create a new Fentanyl Czar position. In return, President Trump granted both countries a one-month pause to the impending tariffs.

What is unclear is how much in the deals is new versus what Mexico and Canada were already working on. Erica York is Vice President of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation.

ERIC YORK: We've seen the deals that have been announced that were already mostly announced back in December.

For example, Mexico had already increased the number of national guard troops stationed at the border. And up north:

YORK: Canada has maybe agreed to create one new position for a border czar. Is the threat of a trade war really what was necessary to get one more incremental change in border policy? Could that have been done with a phone call that doesn’t come with all these economic downsides? I think the tool is not right for the policy goal here.

President Trump has said the tariffs could go into effect in March if Mexico and Canada fail to take more steps to prevent illegal immigration and drug smuggling. So how does this uncertainty around tariffs affect the economy?

Markets took a small hit, but rebounded once the deals were announced. York is watching to see what happens to business investment.

YORK: So, we've got studies from the last time we saw Trump try this back in 2018 and 2019. And while uncertainty isn't as harmful as the actual tariff itself, uncertainty does have an economic cost.

She says that when businesses don’t know what’s going to happen next, they tend to freeze.

YORK: And that's why we see investment fall and GDP fall. Even if the tariffs don't take effect, you can see some of that pause, some of that slowdown. It has a really chilling effect.

Other economists push back.

JEFF FERRY: The purpose of the tariff is to handicap the imports to allow the domestic sector to grow. And domestically, you get more jobs, more investment and greater productivity.

That’s Jeff Ferry, chief economist emeritus at the Coalition for A Prosperous America. He supports the use of tariffs not merely as a bargaining chip, but as a tool to force companies with a foot in two worlds to plant themselves squarely in the United States.

FERRY: The problem is we import too much; we consume too much. We need to get that under control. We need our economy to focus more on production and less on consumption.

The challenge is that while the U.S. imports a lot of consumer goods, the majority of imports are goods used for production meaning products labelled “made in America” would also be affected by tariffs.

But some consumers seem willing to watch and see—at least for now. Tyler Evans, a shopper in Pennsylvania, says he’s open to seeing what kind of return the country gets on its gamble.

TYLER EVAN: Initially right now, you know Canada and Mexico the tarrifs on them are basically so that they can help us out with the fentanyl and some of the problems that are coming through, but I don’t think the tariffs will be too bad.”

Whether tariffs help more than they hurt, there’s a very real political cost. That’s something that worries at least some Republicans who have spoken out about their disagreements with the administration. Here’s former Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, on 60 Minutes this week.

MITCH MCCONNELL: It will drive the cost of everything up. In other words it will be paid for by American consumers. I mean why would you want to get into a fight with your allies over this?

Economists are divided on what President Trump’s tariff war with China cost the United States during his first term. But Ferry believes it was small enough to calm fears about a new round of tariffs.

FERRY: What we know from studies that were done of the tariffs levied in 2018 and 2019 is that the price increases were very small in specific sectors. A 20% tariff led to about a 2% increase in price in that specific good. And overall inflation did not rise in 2019. It actually fell slightly after Donald Trump levied what were the largest tariff increases since the 1930s.

While trade with Mexico and Canada is in the clear for now, a new tariff war with China got underway yesterday. The U.S. imposed 10% duties on all Chinese goods, and Beijing responded with a 10% tariff on American oil…plus 15% tariffs on coal and natural gas. Reporters asked President Trump if China could make a deal to end the tariffs.

TRUMP: We’ll have some good meetings with China, we have meetings planned, and we'll see what happens. But that was just an opening salvo. If we can't make a deal with China, then the tariffs will be very, very substantial.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leo Briceno.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: a World Tour special report.

Days after President Donald Trump assumed office, the State Department froze U-S funding for nearly all foreign aid programs.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: The 90-day pause has halted several ongoing projects and left some global aid groups uncertain of the way forward.

Here’s WORLD’s Africa Reporter Onize Oduah with the story.

ONIZE ODUAH: Late in December, Adeboro Odunlami started researching for her upcoming gig as a research consultant.

The project involved studying how human rights are respected online across dozens of countries and then pushing for policy changes to address the issues. Odunlami’s part of the project focused on Nigeria.

ADEBORO ODUNLAMI: Even though I hadn't signed a contract, I already started gathering my data. Right? Gathering, doing my research, like underground base research. If I started following the news more closely to gather data on what I will impute in the research.

But shortly after she formally began in January, Odunlami received a stop-work notice last week.

ODUNLAMI: I think my element of shock might have come from not knowing that this organization that I was working with, um, was actually you maybe like had been U.S. funded.

The U.S. is the world’s single-largest provider of foreign aid and development assistance. The U.S. disbursed $72 billion in foreign support in 2023.

The funding freeze had a nearly immediate impact on ongoing global projects, from Odunlami’s research to a crisis hotline supporting veterans in Ukraine. Seven refugee hospitals in the conflict-hit Burma have also closed down—citing the freeze.

KHATAZA GONDWE: There's a very real chance that some of the people who are receiving this assistance prior to the 90 days will not be alive by the end of it, because they depend on that to live.

Khataza Gondwe is the team lead for Africa and Middle East at Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

GONDWE: I'm also aware that the money from the US, and particularly USAID, which seems to be in the crosshairs of this, um, has helped to pay for school lunches. Um, it supported girls education and it strengthened um, health systems, as I said earlier. And it also helps small farmers.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio later announced some waivers/exceptions to the funding freeze. It excludes some life-saving aid like an emergency food program in Sudan and eventually extended to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — or PEPFAR. The program is credited with saving some 25 million people globally across 55 countries.

Some aid groups have said the exemptions don’t extend to funding for clean water, sanitation, and healthcare. Last week, an early warning system for predicting famine globally also went offline.

Gondwe said a crucial part of the U.S. funds include its global soft power influence.

GONDWE: When programs for not just HIV, etc., but also human rights and religious freedom and democracy are imperiled, this actually undermines, um, the US's security itself and even the, you know, as sort of bad actors continue to be bad actors, and continue possibly to repress even more than they did before. And also, the bad actors are gaining ground in countries where they would not have ordinarily had an influence, because they're stepping in to fill a void that the US would be leaving.

President Donald Trump said the suspension will allow his administration time to review all the humanitarian, education, development, and security programs that the U.S. funds.

The current administration has also accused the U.S. Agency for International Development—or USAID—of funding so-called “woke programs” globally. The waivers also don’t extend to programs that cover abortion, family planning, or diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The future of USAID is still uncertain beyond the 90-day pause. The agency’s website went offline over the weekend. Employees also received orders to stay out of the Washington headquarters on Monday.

Meanwhile, the State Department is also under the spotlight for alleged waste.

U.S. Republican Representative Brian Mast chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee which provides oversight of the State Department.

He says less than 30 cents of every dollar earmarked for aid through the State Department actually goes toward aid, like food and medicine. He appeared this weekend on CBS’s Face the Nation.

BRIAN MAST: Let's list them off. Half a million dollars to expand atheism in Nepal, $50,000 to do, let's see, a transgender opera in Colombia. $47,000 to do an LGBTQ trans comic book in Peru. $20,000 a pop to do drag shows in Ecuador.

Back in Nigeria, State Minister for Health Dr. Isiaq Salako said the paused aid serves as a wake-up call for the country to restrategize. He said authorities plan to increase domestic funding for the country’s health sector.

Odunlami agrees.

ODUNLAMI: Everybody should sit up. At the end of the day, we have a government that is supposed to take care of the HIV patients and all the other things that UK aid, USA, and Canada aid are doing. I also think that the global South should see … countries in the global South, especially in Africa, should see and begin to prioritize their own people as well.

It’s still uncertain whether many of the programs might return after the 90 days. In the meantime, Odunlami sees this season as providing a challenge for Christians in Nigeria.

ODUNLAMI: If you consider yourself a good person in the land, take this foreign policy change as an opportunity, not as something to always just like, complain about and lament over. But it's an opportunity for you to step in, right? A gap has been created, and you can step in at like the most local level.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Oduah in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: The federal government has a rule of thumb known as the Waffle House index—to gauge the severity of local disasters. Waffle Houses are famously always open. So, just to rehash: if the Waffle House is open, all good! If it’s closed, yikes!

So looking to Waffle House: we have egg-price news with breakfast giant tacking on a temporary 50-cent per egg surcharge.

You may have noticed how much you have to shell out these days. Mike Vickers runs a supermarket in Minneapolis.

MIKE VICKERS: It’s the first time in my life that I’ve ever had to be kind of embarrassed when I’m selling eggs.

Prices are not quite as high as last year around this time, but the U-S city average has cracked 4-dollars a dozen.

VICKERS: I even said to myself, I’m like, this is blasphemy. It’s just robbery! It’s really expensive.

Yeah, only if you worship them, so don’t do that.

But when economic problems show up on the Waffle House menu, it’s time to scramble for alternatives.

LINDSAY MAST: Eggstra bad yolks!

EICHER: It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, February 5th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: the smell of death.

The Amorphophallus titanum, known much more commonly as the corpse flower, is considered endangered. There are only about 1-thousand of these stinky plants left.

They’re on display in botanical gardens around the world and each time one blooms, thousands of people wait in line for hours for a whiff. Demanding an answer, why?

WORLD correspondent Amy Lewis talked with a biologist who has studied the phenomenon.

ERIC SCHALLER: If you put your hand up against it, it basically feels like body temperature. So it is, fairly feels animal-like in that respect.

AMY LEWIS: Molecular biologist and weird horror fiction author Eric Schaller is no stranger to death.

SCHALLER: My dad’s a wildlife biologist, so I grew up around dead animals. There would be skulls on the roof of our house in other countries…

Schaller works with plants instead of animals. But he has been fascinated with the corpse flower since he studied one nine years ago at New Hampshire’s Dartmouth University.

Besides heating up to body temperature, the corpse flower plant grows from an underground potato-like corm to a 6-foot tall spadix hugged by a large pleated green spathe in just two weeks. Then for only 24 hours, the spathe turns a deep, meaty red and unfurls. The whole thing warms up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit and exudes a death-like stench that attracts carrion beetles, flies—and scientists.

SCHALLER: There's been a fair amount of analysis of what the gas composition was that is emitted to mimic rotting odor smells.

But Schaller couldn’t find any studies on the molecular biology of the plant—basically, how it stinks. So he jumped at the chance to study it when a corpse flower corm in the greenhouse at Dartmouth showed signs of blooming.

SCHALLER: I got there around midnight and had liquid nitrogen containers, collected tissue samples from various parts of the inflorescence, and was saving those. And then I went back over several more nights to collect further samples.

For the next few years, Schaller collected samples every time one of the university’s corpse flowers bloomed. But spending even a little time in a greenhouse with a plant that exudes putrid smells has unintended consequences.

SCHALLER: When I'm up there, there's the shirt that gets rank with odor. But then if I'm trying to sleep for an hour or two, then I have a separate set of shirts for that. And when I go home, they basically my wife says, yeah, I have to get rid of all my clothes…

The smell doesn’t stop hordes of curious people from lining up to see these huge, scarce, short-lived, stinky, heat-producing plants.

SCHALLER: Kids get drawn to, I mean things that smell bad. You think, you bring your friends over and say, ‘This really stinks’ sort of thing. It's an extreme sensation, and we want to see a little bit more what it's like.

That was certainly true for 12-year-old Hudson Mantzaris from Geelong, Australia. He walked to the botanic gardens after school to see their specimen late last year.

MANTZARIS: We seen on the internet that it smells like a corpse and stuff, and we wanted to see if it was blooming or not.

Todd Coleman visited the greenhouse after work. He used to live in a funeral home where he sometimes smelled what the flower is named for. He’s curious if the corpse flower will live up to its name.

COLEMAN: I would assume not a lot of people would want to experience, because it smells so terrible, but that’s why I want to experience it because it’s so different and unique.

SOUND: [Frogs and people chatting]

For the next 24 hours, twenty thousand people wait in a line that snakes past a pond, out the gates, and around a parking lot. From grandparents with walkers to parents pushing babies in strollers, everyone slowly files past to see, smell, and take a selfie with this odiferous phenomenon.

VAUGHAN: I knew it was going to smell like something. I just didn't know it was going to smell that bad. But a dead whale smells worse.

WOMAN: It smells like a popped kangaroo, like a kangaroo that’s popped. It does.

Conversations dwindle as the visitors finally enter the greenhouse doors to file past the corpse flower. The time of visitation has finally come.

EVELYN: This is so exciting.

SHARON: It’s like a revered silence. This is so interesting.

Back in New Hampshire, Schaller’s team proved and recently published their hypotheses about the amino acid methionine and putrescine, the bad smell that decomposing bodies produce.

SCHALLER: The novel discovery was really putrescine as being a component of the odor. Putrescine had not been previously identified because it tends to break down.

His discoveries don’t change anything for the crowd waiting to see the corpse flower. They want to see—and smell—something macabre and have a unique experience.

XAVIER: Just for that little moment. I mean, we can say, now we saw a corpse flower. In bloom.

MAN: It smells. Yeah, I got a waft of warm air and then the smell and I was like… [gagging sound]

Even if they have to stand in line for a really long time.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Amy Lewis in Geelong, Victoria, Australia.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, February 5th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Ephesians 2:10 says we are God’s workmanship, created to walk in good works that He has appointed for us. WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney says when we walk those paths, we need not fear missing out.

JANIE B. CHEANEY: The first time I heard of FOMO, I thought, “Ah, yes. I know that feeling.”

F-O-M-O stands for “fear of missing out,” defined by Merriam-Webster as “fear of not being included in something—such as an interesting or enjoyable activity—that others are experiencing.” The term dates from 2004, coined by author Patrick J. McGinnis in an article published by Harbus, the journal of Harvard Business school. The concept was identified in 1996, defined by Dr. Dan Herman, a PhD. in psychology and a marketing strategist who conducts business seminars on how to use FOMO in supposedly positive ways.

That’s the origin of the term and the concept, but the thing itself probably goes back to the beginning of time. The serpent seemed to leverage the fear of missing out to great effect while tempting Eve.

But here’s another example a bit closer to home: a snapshot from my youth.

During my junior year in high school I was adopted by a group of gal pals, for the first time. Up to then I was shy and insular at school, living mostly in my own head. With these girls I could hang out at Pizza Inn pretending to smoke, harmonize with Dionne Warwick on the radio, laugh at private jokes, and struggle to stay awake during sleepovers. But one sunny afternoon I was leaving my house when a familiar Mercury Cougar sped by and didn’t stop. The four girls inside waved and shouted greetings. They were going somewhere fun without me. I was going somewhere with my mother. The FOMO cut deep, friends.

Decades later I opened a Facebook account when Facebook was still cool. That old feeling came back from time to time when one of my 300 plus friends would post about their anniversary trip to Italy or the authors’ get-together I should have been invited to. Social media, as anyone could have guessed, exacerbates the anxiety for obsessive YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok users. Ironically, the more connected and informed the internet makes us, the more disconnected and uninformed we can feel. And maybe a bit envious too: Why can’t I have some of that great life they’re having?

There’s an antidote to that poison. As caretaker of an Alzheimer’s spouse, my life is pretty boring right now as I miss out on lots of things. The question “What’s new?” gets the same answer most of the time: not much. Help my husband get dressed, empty his catheter, cook breakfast, throw something together for lunch, keep an eye on him while he wanders around the house, track down the things he moved. Same old, same old, waiting for the next step down in the inevitable decline.

But sometimes, while drying him off after a shower, I remember Jesus washing feet. Sometimes, while paying bills and calculating expenses, I think of the eternal inheritance waiting for me. Sometimes, missing family members I can’t get away to visit, Hebrews 5:11 comes to mind. As the NIV puts it, “Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.”

How can a member of Christ’s family be missing out on anything that matters?

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: a conversation with Paul Vaughn, one of the pro-life advocates recently pardoned by President Trump.

And, we’ll meet some Mississippi pro-lifers who decided to do something about abandoned babies in their state.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible records a scribe asking Jesus: “‘Which commandment is the most important of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The most important is, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.’” —Mark 12:28-31

Go now in grace and peace.

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