The World and Everything in It: January 3, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. My name is David Jordan. I live in Medford Oregon, and I serve the Lord as a regional director for an insurance company. I hope you enjoy today's program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Congress reconvenes next week. With deadlines looming on big legislation— will House Speaker Mike Johnson get the job done?

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday. Also today, WORLD Tour. Plus, serving up discipleship on the pickleball court.

JASON DORSEY: It’s been a great fit for me in terms of my pastoral calling, especially in meeting people, making natural friendships, and being able to talk about my faith.

And WORLD commentator Andrée Sue Peterson on finding hope in the bleak of winter.

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, January 3rd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

REICHARD: Time for news now with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: NY/NJ migrant buses » New York City Mayor Eric Adams is calling the governor of Texas “mean spirited.”

That’s in response to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott skirting the mayor’s recent executive order restricting buses carrying migrants from the southern border to New York City.

ADAMS: We’re dealing with a person who just wants to disrupt. He just wants to create chaos.

His order says, among other things, that charter buses have to provide at least 32 hours' notice before arriving in his city and can only drop off migrants at designated locations.

In response, Texas is busing migrants to New Jersey, where they can easily catch a train into New York City.

Republican New Jersey Congressman Jeff Van Drew says his state is also being overwhelmed by migrants who illegally entered the country.

DREW: Americans, and of course New Jersians, are tired of illegal immigration. Every single state should be concerned about it.

Gov. Abbott says sanctuary cities like New York have added to the border crisis by incentivizing migrants to cross the border.

Ukraine/Russia » Russian missiles rained down on Ukraine’s two biggest cities on Tuesday, the latest in a series of deadly airstrikes. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: Ukraine’s air defenses were able to shoot down many — but not all — of the Russian missiles. The barrage included Moscow’s advanced Kinzhal missiles which can fly at 10 times the speed of sound.

The airstrikes against Kyiv and Kharkiv killed at least five people and wounded well over a hundred.

Moscow launched its latest round of urban airstrikes on Friday with its largest single assault since it invaded Ukraine nearly two years ago. The attacks have killed more than 40 civilians in recent days.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

AUDIO: [Palestinian protesting]

Beirut-Hamas » Palestinian protesters in the West Bank taking to the streets after Hamas has confirmed that one of its leaders is dead following an Israeli airstrike in Beirut, Lebanon.

Saleh Arouri was one of Hamas’s political and military leaders. Israel had aimed to kill him even before the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

HAGARI: [Speaking Hebrew]

Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari saying that Israel remains focused on its war efforts and that it is continuing to destroy terrorist infrastructure. He said Israeli forces are continuing to operate “above and below the ground.”

He added that Israel is prepared for any scenario… as some speculate that the Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah could increase its attacks against Israel in response to Arouri’s death.

Japan plane » Japanese officials are investigating a fiery plane crash Tuesday at Tokyo’s Haneda airport.

A Japan Airlines Airbus A350 collided with a Japanese Coast Guard plane on the runway killing all five crew members aboard that plane.

Aboard the Airbus the flight crew quickly evacuated the more than 350 passengers,

SOUND: [Passengers yelling]

just before flames engulfed the jetliner.

Aviation consultant Tim Atkinson:

ATKINSON: This is the kind of thing which is completely beyond certification requirements. You know, aircraft are not built to withstand, not designed, are not built to withstand colliding with one another on the runway.

Investigators are trying to determine how and why the crash occurred.

The coast guard says its plane was departing for Japan’s west coast to aid in relief efforts following Monday’s earthquake in the region.

Kim Davis ruling » A former county clerk in Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples must now pay more than a quarter of a million dollars in legal fees. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: A federal judge ruled that Kim Davis  is on the hook for $260,000 in legal fees and expenses to attorneys representing a couple who successfully sued Davis.

That’s on top of $100,000 in damages that a jury had already ordered her to pay.

Her attorneys are expected to contest the ruling.

Davis made national headlines in 2015 when she declined to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. She argued that being compelled to do so would violate her First Amendment religious rights.

Her stand led to a brief jail term until her staff issued the licenses without her name. That prompted state lawmakers to remove all clerks' names from marriage licenses.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Sen. Menendez latest » The Department of Justice is adding new claims to the indictment of New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez.

The Democrat faces a range of corruption charges.

And prosecutors now say Menendez introduced a member of Qatar’s royal family and a leader with a company tied to Qatar’s government to a New Jersey businessman named Fred Daibes.

He is a co-defendant with Menendez in the criminal case.

The DOJ says after that introduction the company invested millions of dollars in a real estate project planned by Daibes.

While prosecutors rewrote the indictment, they did not add any new charges.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: What’s ahead for Congress. That’s on Washington Wednesday. Plus, winning souls—and points—in pickleball.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 3rd of January, 2024. You’re listening to The World and Everything in It and we’re glad to have you along with us today! Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. First up, Washington Wednesday.

We’re less than two weeks out from the Iowa caucuses. Donald Trump continues to lead the Republican field by an overwhelming majority…even as some states are trying to remove him from the ballot ahead of the primaries.

Last month, the Secretaries of state in Colorado and Maine declared the former president unfit to stand for election in their states. Legal challenges are pending, and Colorado has a deadline on Friday to certify the lineup of names on the ballots.

REICHARD: We’ll provide analysis of this legal strategy and pushback from Trump and other Republicans in the coming days.

But today, we’re going to focus on a story that started back in October.

PATRICK MCHENRY: The chair declares the House in recess subject to the call of the chair (slams gavel).

North Carolina Congressman Patrick McHenry, after a majority of House members voted to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The Republicans who triggered the vote said McCarthy crossed a line in negotiating with the Senate and White House to pass temporary spending bills.

Republicans eventually came together to install Louisiana Congressman Mike Johnson, hoping he’d restore the normal order of Congressional business.

JOHNSON: We know that there's a lot going on in our country domestically and abroad and we are ready to get to work again to solve those problems. And we will.

BROWN: The House went on Christmas recess December 15th. But Johnson’s task list has only grown longer, and time is running short.

Joining us now to talk about it is Jim Curry. He’s an associate professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Political Science at the University of Utah.

REICHARD: Jim, good morning to you.

JIM CURRY: Good morning.

REICHARD: Well, next Tuesday, Congress comes back into session. What’s on its plate in order of urgency, would you say?

CURRY: I think the most urgent thing that Congress has on its plate is the spending bills. They kicked the can after Speaker Johnson took the oath and became the new Speaker of the House, kicking the deadline from November into January and February to fund the government and set funding levels for the coming year. But now they need to do it. And that’s going to be easier said than done with Speaker Johnson facing the same problems that Speaker McCarthy faced with a divided conference about how it would like to proceed.

REICHARD: What else in order of urgency after that?

CURRY: I’d say they have to deal with Ukraine funding, they have to deal with funding for Israel in Gaza. There’s these ongoing talks about the border crisis and what’s going to happen there, it’s I think it’s clear that the Senate may come forward with some sort of compromise measure on the border, and then there’ll be pressure on the house to deal with that. Section 702 of FISA is set to expire this spring, and so that’s a looming deadline. And then, of course, setting policy aside from it and turning to politics, Mike Johnson has to prepare his conference to run for re-election and try to maintain majority control of the house before the end of the year. And so that’s, that’s quite a to do list for a brand new speaker.

REICHARD: Well it is, I mean, that’s a tough task to get it all done in time. And part of the challenge has been getting Republicans to work together, how has he fared in trying to be the unifying voice of leadership in the House?

CURRY: I think under the circumstances he’s done okay so far. I mean, he walked into a situation where his conference was so divided, they were willing to throw out there sitting speaker, and he’s managed to not lose his job yet. And so from from that standpoint, I think he’s done okay. But you already started to see the fractures reappear, as especially once he had to kick the can on spending bills into the new year and even more so when he agreed to a bipartisan renewal of the Defense Department authorization in December, you started to see those same right wing members of his conference who were unhappy with Speaker McCarthy show their displeasure once again. And so, you know, so far, so good, but I think most of the test is still to come.

REICHARD: Let’s talk margin of error. Congressman George Santos has been removed from his seat; former Speaker Kevin McCarthy resigned. And another Republican, Bill Johnson, is also leaving… So, Speaker Johnson went from having a roughly 5-seat majority to little or no edge depending on the issue at hand. Looking at history, any other House majorities that compare to this?

CURRY: So you have a few, most recently you have the House majorities that, in terms of being quite this narrow, you have the late 1990s, with House Republican majorities dealing with the Bill Clinton presidency, where in the last few years of the Clinton presidency, Republicans held the narrowest of majorities, and they were remarkably good at holding themselves together to try to move things forward and negotiation negotiate with the Clinton White House. But I don’t think they were quite as viscerally divided on some of the key issues as they are right now. But after that, you have to go back quite a while because it’s been most of American history has seen pretty large house majorities. In recent years. They’ve been smallish. But this is this is quite small.

REICHARD: What do you make of Johnson’s decision to move ahead with the impeachment inquiry into the family business ties of President Biden? Appropriations, border security, aid to Israel and Ukraine seem quite pressing. Do you think that’s going to help or hurt his efforts to meet legislative deadlines?

CURRY: That’s a good question. I think it may help him win some goodwill from the more conservative members of the conference, who are the ones who really, really want to pursue these impeachment proceedings. And perhaps that’s why he made the choice he did to formally open it up and give them sort of that concession so that maybe they’ll go along a bit more on some of the other things that he knows he’ll have to do in a less conservative manner. But, you know, besides that, I don’t think it’ll disrupt legislative business as much because you know, a lot of the impeachment inquiry stuff is going to happen in committee and so won’t take up any extra time on the floor unless they get to the later stages of an impeachment.

REICHARD: You know, The White House and Senate haven’t taken House appropriations bills seriously up till now because they include spending cuts. When it comes down to the wire, do you think Johnson will negotiate or play hard ball?

CURRY: I think he’s going to have to negotiate at some point. I mean, the reality is things can only pass a closely divided Senate, such as that we have, with broad bipartisan support, and so passing really conservative House spending cut bills that only conservatives like and that pass only with Republican votes, just is never going to possibly go anywhere in the Senate, which means at some point he’s going to have to negotiate. And you seem to show that he knows that, the way that he negotiated and accepted a bipartisan compromise on the defense reauthorization. And so I think at the end of the day, he knows he’s going to have to. The question is, can he keep his right flank happy enough to go along with that sort of agreement?

REICHARD: Suppose the government gets funded and Speaker Johnson keeps his job. Do you see this as a realistic scenario and if so, what’s required to make that happen?

CURRY: It’s possible I mean, the whole Kevin McCarthy experience shows that it’s, it’s, it’s also possible he can cut the deal and lose the speakership. But I think it’s possible. And in part, because I don’t know how many times the right wing in the party wants to go through kicking a speaker out and going through the lengthy process of trying to find another consensus candidate. I mean, at what point do you just run out of candidates that you can actually get behind? So I think it’s possible, but he’s going to have to do something, to placate the right wing of the party. He’s going to have to give them some kind of concessions or some kind of promises, or something for them to, maybe not support any of the bipartisan compromises that they’re going to have to bring forward, but at least not blow up the House of Representatives over it.

REICHARD: Final question: Any aspect of this story that you think warrants more attention as Congress gets back to work next week?

CURRY: I think what’s going to happen with the border and Ukraine and Israel is going to be really interesting over the coming weeks, because you may see this bipartisan breakthrough on border policy in the Senate. And then the real question becomes, is the House Republican majority and their new speaker willing to play ball and negotiate and actually get us to something that we’ve been striving at for years, if not decades, which is some sort of bipartisan solution to a border crisis? Or are they going to, you know, hold firm and keep this an issue that they can carry forward into the 2024 election? I think that’ll be really important to watch.

REICHARD: Jim Curry is Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Political Science at the University of Utah. Thank you for joining us today, really appreciate it!

CURRY: Thank you.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD Tour with our reporter in Nigeria, Onize Ohikere. 

AUDIO: [Crying woman]

ONIZE OHIKERE: Nigeria Plateau killings — We start today in Nigeria, where frustration is still high over a Christmas holiday attack in the north-central Plateau state.

Gunmen targeted at least 15 predominantly Christian villages beginning Dec. 23. The violence continued into Christmas Day.

The death toll has risen to more than 190 people. Survivors fled to other communities.

No group took responsibility, but some Fulani armed herders have repeatedly targeted the mostly Christian farming communities in similar attacks.

Timothy Nwan is vice-president of the Church of Christ in Nations. He gave the sermon during a mass burial for many of the victims.

NWAN: There are many people that were killed, slaughtered like animals, cold-blooded, some were in their houses, some were even outside.

Senior military officials visited the region and pledged to deploy more security.

Abdulsalam Abubakar is a Nigerian army commander. He vowed authorities will capture the gunmen.

ABUBAKAR: We will not rest until we bring all those culpable for these dastardly acts to book.

But residents have decried the repeated lack of long-lasting solutions. Violence has continued across central and north Nigeria.

Residents of a village in northeastern Adamawa state said extremists killed at least two Christians on Christmas Day and set houses on fire. Three days later, armed assailants killed eight Christians in northeast Taraba state.

AUDIO: [Cheering supporters]

DRC election outcome — Over in central Africa, supporters have cheerfully welcomed the reelection of President Felix Tshisekedi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The country’s electoral commission declared Tshisekedi as the winner, with more than 70 percent of the votes.

But opposition leaders are calling for a do-over. Logistical problems delayed and canceled voting at some polling units

Presidential candidate Martin Fayulu finished in third place, with 5 percent of the votes.

FAYULU: [Speaking French]

He says here that any foreign country that considers the vote legal doesn’t respect Congo’s democracy.

The electoral commission will release the final result next week.

AUDIO: [Sound of crowd reacting]

South Korea stabbing — In South Korea, a knife-wielding suspect stabbed the opposition party leader during his visit to the southeastern city of Busan.

Lee Jae-myung had finished touring the construction site of a new airport when the suspect asked for an autograph.

Witnesses said he then took out a knife and stabbed Lee in the neck. Authorities arrested the suspect after several people chased and tackled him.

Lee’s Democratic Party said he was recovering at the Seoul National University Hospital after a two-hour surgery.

OFFICIAL: [Speaking Korean]

This Busan police official says the police force has set up a 68-member task force to investigate the incident.

Lee narrowly lost to South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol in the 2022 presidential election.

AUDIO: [Plane takeoff]

Kosovo joins Schengen zone — We close today in Europe, where hundreds of citizens of Kosovo lined up inside the Pristina airport to travel to other European Union countries.

January First marked the start of visa-free travel within the European Union’s Schengen Area for Kosovars.

Kosovo was the last of the six countries in the Western Balkans to get the visa waiver.

Here’s Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti:

KURTI: We have been waiting for too long, this has been a long injustice but finally we made it. This increased opportunity, we shall use in responsible manner.

The move grants Kosovars visa-free entry of up to 90 days within a 180-day period for tourism.

RESIDENT: [Speaking Albanian]

This resident says the waiver makes it much easier to visit relatives across Europe.

That’s it for today’s WORLD Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: New Year’s Eve means dropping things in order to celebrate. There’s the big ball drop in New York City, but Myrna, do you know what the folks in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania drop?

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Wise men?

REICHARD: Good guess, but no. Bethlehem’s where marshmallow Peeps are made, so they drop a 9400 pound yellow Peep!

BROWN: I want in on that afterparty!

Right? Then over in the City of Oaks… Raleigh, North Carolina drops a giant acorn. An hour down the road, Mount Olive lets loose a big pickle on a string….of course, home of Mt. Olive Pickles.

Chattanooga, Tennessee? Hometown of that famous southern treat? You guessed it…they drop a 12 foot electrified Moon Pie.

And Allentown, PA, home of the LeHigh Valley Phantoms hockey team drops a one-thousand pound hockey puck!

ALLENTOWN, PA: Four, three, two, one….[cheers]

BROWN: Score!

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

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, January 3rd, 2024. This is WORLD Radio. Thanks so much for listening! Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Today on Concurrently: The News Coach Podcast: AI tools. As those tools improve, how should parents teach their kids to think about them? For that, Kelsey Reed is joined by Dr. Michael Finch. Here’s a preview:

KELSEY REED: How do we coach our children in this new age towards the expression of their imagination towards the relationship with these machines that learn?

MICHAEL FINCH: Yeah, absolutely. Well, the first thing is very similar to just how we treat the internet and all of that in general, which is be aware and limit. Things like ChatGPT, I think that they're phenomenal tools. They keep a history of everything that's been done. And so the biggest thing is to partner with your child in, you know, kind of figure out, start using these yourself so that you can then assist them as they're doing it. But the number one key is that not to let them use it to do work for them, but only let them use it to augment work that they're doing. You know, it can't write the paper for you. But you can ask it a question. Give me five ideas of what to do for an essay because I'm just drawing a blank, I don't know. Learn with it, learn from it. Maybe tell your student you know, go make a few things on Dall-E and then let's talk about them. And that's really the key is just to allow it to be an assistant, not to replace you know, make sure the kid does the essay themselves. Go back through and check the ChatGPT history and make sure there's no you know, prompts that would just be replacing their their authentic thinking. And then you can use it as that assistant to augment.

REICHARD: You can hear the entire episode of Concurrently today wherever you get your podcasts. And find out more at concurrentlypodcast.com.

BROWN: Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Pickleball and pastors.

SOUND: [TENNIS MATCH]

We’re all familiar with the sounds of tennis. What about pickleball?

SOUND: [PICKLEBALL MATCH]

REICHARD: The game that crosses tennis, ping-pong, and badminton is the fastest growing sport in the US for three years running.

BROWN: But not everyone is a fan. Maybe you’ve read how some homeowners’ associations are banning it because the sound is annoying. And neighborhood streets get clogged with parking anywhere near a pickleball court.

REICHARD: Yet pickleball players see the game as a fun way to get exercise. Pastors included! They see it as a unique—and fun—way to share the gospel. Here’s WORLD correspondent Amy Lewis with the story.

AUDIO: [Sound of pickleball lesson]

AMY LEWIS: It’s been a full day for Rich Lively. He’s already put in hours of planning and meetings with church committees and tournament organizers.

But this is his favorite part of the day: teaching pickleball lessons. Sometimes it’s to children as young as 11 or to grandparents in their 70s. Often it’s just whoever happens to already be at the courts. Today it’s lessons for a married couple from the community.

AUDIO: [Pickleball lesson]

LIVELY: Pickleball really is one of those things where you can grab a paddle, go out with any skill level and actually have a decent game within about 10 or 15 minutes of picking up a paddle. That's not true with tennis.

Lively knows because he used to play pro tennis. But now—he’s known as the Pickleball Preacher. He even installed three pickleball courts in his church’s gym when he pastored in Cocoa, Florida.

AUDIO: [Sound of match]

LIVELY: I, of course, would be over in my office, you know, writing sermons or having meetings or Bible studies and just doing the regular pastoral stuff. But I would take a break once a while and walk over there and just say ‘hi’ to people…

Those people would invite him to play. And he would. But then he faced the question of what to do at the end of the game. Should he get back to quote “ministry,” or sit and talk with the players?

LIVELY: And one guy who just wasn't really into the Christian thing, but he really enjoyed pickleball one day sat down when everybody was gone. And he said, “So, what's this whole thing about being born again in John three, that Nicodemus guy. What is that really all about?”

Writing Sunday’s sermon could wait. Lively took the opportunity to share the words of Jesus—this pickleball player must be born again—of the Spirit.

After 30 years in full time ministry, Lively and his wife moved to Tennessee…and made a career change.

AUDIO: [Sound of pickleball lesson]

LIVELY: And so we’re I guess taking a little bit of a break from full time paid ministry and doing some other stuff…

That “other stuff” is coaching pickleball and being a senior professional on a US tour.

LIVELY: But what I’ve found is Pickleball has provided some amazing opportunities for ministries. I’m kind of mixing it together.

AUDIO: [Sound of match]

His pickleball-pastor combo opens conversations with other players.

LIVELY: And they’d say, “Huh. You don’t look like one.” So then it would lead to other conversations, which were really neat, and I’d have opportunities to pray with them, or just share with them….

AUDIO: [Sound of match]

Jason Dorsey pastors a PCA church in Redmond, Washington. He’s been preaching through the book of Joshua.

SERMON: What I didn’t expect to find, but what I’m seeing again and again in every chapter is that the issue is always the people’s relationship to God, the leader’s and the people’s relationship to God.

He says pickleball saved his life.

AUDIO: [Sound of game]

DORSEY: It was the end of COVID. And I was languishing, personally, eating too much, drinking too much, not exercising. And Jenny, my wife, Jenny, said, “You know, you need to go to the Y.” And so she kind of dragged me there.

He plays at five different places. Often with—and against—people he considers to be in his parish. Dorsey says pickleball’s communal aspects meet people’s real needs.

DORSEY: It’s a great place for some of the ache of loneliness to be addressed, just because you’re having fun with people you’re playing, you’re getting to know them…

But he says it’s not all fun and games with pickleball.

DORSEY: Honestly, I think one of the downsides is that it’s very addicting. And I’m struggling with finding a healthy balance…

His wife wondered if she’d done the right thing when he began playing five or six hours at a time, most days of the week.

DORSEY: She dragged me to the Y, and then she’s like, “Now I’m a pickleball widow, because you’re always gone. You’re always playing.”

He’s pared it down to two or three hours a day a few times a week now. Despite his personal struggle, Dorsey sees playing as ultimately good, and not just because he’s lost 40 pounds.

DORSEY: It’s been a great fit for me in terms of my pastoral calling, especially in meeting people, making natural friendships, and being able to talk about my faith.

But he says he’s not using pickleball as a means to evangelize.

DORSEY: It actually is an end in itself, to relationship and to friendship. But at the same time, I am always evangelizing. I’m always trying to nurture, woo people to Jesus, and to, and encourage them to see that he’s beautiful and true and good and faithful and, and is the deepest need of their heart.

AUDIO: [Sound of game]

Pickleball Preacher Rich Lively says being a pastor—and sharing his faith—is a calling on his life, even if he’s not in a pulpit anymore.

LIVELY: I’m never going to stop being the Pickleball Preacher. I’m never going to stop being someone who hopefully will always have a reason to give the hope that I possess. It’s just, I don’t have to wear a three-piece suit anymore. I kind of like that.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Amy Lewis.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Wednesday, January 3rd, 2024. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, WORLD commentator Andrée Sue Peterson on finding hope in the bleakness of winter.

ANDRÉE SEU PETERSON: There is Christmas, and then there is winter.

The Perry Como and Dean Martin radio specials stopped cold on December 26th like an embarrassment, making you feel you’ve been had. Soon it will be mid-January and you’ll be looking at each other in an empty house and one of you will say, “We need to take down the tree; it’s shedding all over the rug.”

Enter “the bleak midwinter” that 19th century English poet Christina Rossetti wrote about:

“In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan / Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone / Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow/ In the bleak midwinter, long ago….”

We can hunker down and wait it out. But here is the problem with that plan: When my husband died bit by bit in April and May of 1999, I drove to the hospital every day down a road lined with pink cotton candy trees. That rude incongruity has never again allowed me to lie to my heart on spring days and say that death’s not real.

So we will have to do better than escapism. Maybe let the bleak midwinter have its way in the Lord’s providence. For every season the Lord made, he made for some effect upon the soul. He says in James 5:13: “Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms”. He says in Ecclesiastes, “When times are good, be happy. When times are bad, consider. God has made the one as well as the other”.

There is no gainsaying that times are bad, and not just for the melancholy slant of sun. In Europe and the Middle East, unprovoked aggression has led to wars that show the growing popularity of tyranny and terrorism. One politician in France even claims jihadists have appropriated the phrase, “Après le Samedi il y a le Dimanche,” which translated is “After Saturday there is Sunday”: First we deal with the Jews, and after that the Christians.

That’s the bleak midwinter, too.

No. If we are to weather midwinter in any fashion worthy of the name of Christian we shall have to do better than lying low in hibernation. Something more muscular.

But do Christianity and muscularity go together? Isn’t Christian faith an end of striving? Depends what you mean. We don’t strive to climb our way to heaven–that’s forbidden, and impossible, in any case. Then what is “the good fight” Paul insists on?

The good fight means that joy in winter must be forcefully laid hold of. It and other virtues hid in Christ are not the default mode of even ransomed men. If they were, then Peter led us wrong in counseling that we “make every effort” to add them to faith; and Paul should not have scolded saints in Corinth, calling them mere carnal, milk-fed men.

Proverbs 23:7 reads, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he”. Let us think, therefore, upon all Christ has done for us, forgiven us, laid up for us. We will make it through midwinter and will see, as Peter writes, “the Day dawn and the morning star rise in our hearts.”

I’m Andrée Sue Peterson.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: The United Methodist Church. It’s beginning the new year with thousands of fewer churches. We’ll talk about the schism with a Methodist pastor. And, a camp that teaches boys about healthy masculinity. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myna Brown.

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 to the disciples: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” —Matthew 5:14-16

Go now in grace and peace.

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