The World and Everything in It: March 21

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is brought to you by listeners like me. Hi, I’m Karen Benyo from Moorpark, California. I listen to WORLD everyday when I’m walking my dog or working out. My husband Bruce and I moved to Moorepark to be closer to our church, Grace Bible church, and that’s where we heard about The World and Everything In It. I know you’ll enjoy today’s program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! The Iraq War began 20 years ago this week, and Congress has taken steps to close the books.

TIM KAINE:We will start the first procedural steps to formally end the Iraq War.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also North Korea continues to project strength, but defectors who escaped the regime are calling out its human rights abuses.

Plus, getting Bibles across borders.

TUCKER: I honestly truly believe that supernatural things happened. Whether it was distraction, you know, timing of things that the Lord just blinded eyes. And there's no other explanation.

EICHER: And WORLD founder Joel Belz on living out what we say we believe.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, March 21st. 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: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: I'm Kent Covington.

Trump possible arrest » In New York City, police have been dragging steel barricades off of flatbed trucks, building a security perimeter around a Manhattan courthouse.

They’re gearing up for protests over the possible indictment of former President Donald Trump. In a social media post, the former president said he expects to be arrested today … but it’s unclear when — or if — the former president will be indicted.

Trump called on his supporters to protest if he’s arrested.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said authorities are ready.

ERIC ADAMS: We’re monitoring comments on social media, and the NYPD is doing our normal role of making sure that there’s no inappropriate actions in the city. And we’re confident that we’re going to be able to do that.

The possible charges stem from a probe into money Trump allegedly paid to silence claims about extramarital affairs. Some say those alleged payments may have violated campaign finance law.

Trump denies the encounters occurred and says he has done nothing wrong.

Reaction to possible arrest » The former president also says the investigation has been politically motivated. And many top Republicans agree, including potential 2024 campaign rivals.

Former Vice President Mike Pence:

MIKE PENCE: Just feels like a politically charged prosecution here. And for my part, I just feel like it’s not what the American people want to see.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of ignoring serious crimes in his district every day.

RON DESANTIS: And he chooses to go back many, many years ago to try to use something about hush money payments, you know, that’s an example of pursuing a political agenda.

DeSantis said in his view, Bragg is “weaponizing” his office.

Xi - Russia » 

AUDIO: [Putin speaking Russian]

At the Kremlin on Monday, Vladimir Putin warmly welcomed Chinese leader Xi Jinping, with each leader calling one another a “dear friend.”

The two leaders share a cause: Both want to challenge Washington’s global leadership.

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby says Beijing continues to prop up Moscow.

JOHN KIRBY: China has not condemned Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. They are still buying Russian oil and energy resources.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said that while Xi Jinping was the visiting leader … it was Putin who likely showed up for that meeting hat in hand.

MICHAEL MCCAUL: Putin is running out of ammunition. He’s begged Iran for their drones. He’s begged North Korea for artillery shells. And now he’s really coming to Chairman Xi and saying, hey I gotta win this thing. I need your help.

US intelligence agencies remain worried that Beijing may agree to sell weapons to Russia for its war in Ukraine.

American freed in Africa » An American missionary has been released from captivity more than six years after he was kidnapped. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: Jeffery Woodke was kidnapped from his home in the West African nation of Niger in 2016.

He had been a missionary and humanitarian aid worker in the country for more than 30 years, when a terrorist network with ties to ISIS took him hostage.

He was released outside of Niger in the Mali-Burkina Faso region.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said no ransom or concessions were made to his captors, and no prisoner swaps were conducted.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

France pensions » 

SOUND: [French protesters in mall]

Protesters have taken to the streets in France after French President Emmanuel Macron raised the retirement age from 62 to 64, without a vote in parliament.

He said the move is needed to keep the nation’s pension system from going broke.

French police arrested more than 100 people in Paris after demonstrations turned violent in recent days. Meanwhile, trade unions continue to call for strikes throughout the country.

The government survived two no confidence motions in the National Assembly on Monday. Opponents will likely challenge the bill when it reaches the Constitutional Council, which must validate the legislation before it can be signed into law.  

Somalia » The United Nations reports that about 43,000 people died last year from Somalia’s longest drought on record. WORLD’s Onize Ohikere has more.

ONIZE OHIKERE: The joint report between the UN and the Somali health ministry marks the first official death count from the drought-hit Horn of Africa.

The report says half of the deaths happened among children younger than five. About 18,000 people are forecast to die in the first six months of this year.

Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya are facing a sixth consecutive failed rainy season. More than 6 million people are hungry in Somalia alone.

The U-N stopped short of a formal famine declaration in Somalia … but warns the situation remains “extremely critical.”

For WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: A journalist remembers what it was like on the ground in Iraq. Plus, smuggling Bibles into China.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s the 21st of March, 2023.

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

REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

First up, remembering the war in Iraq.

Yesterday marked 20 years since the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the ouster of dictator Saddam Hussein. Over the course of the eight-year conflict, more than 4,000 U.S. service members and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed.

EICHER: Last week the Senate voted to repeal two measures that gave the U.S. government open-ended approval for military action in Iraq.

TIM KAINE: We will start the first procedural steps to formally end the Iraq War.

EICHER: That’s Senator Tim Kaine, the Virginia Democrat. A bipartisan group in the Senate is working to revoke the A-U-M-F, that’s the Authorization for Use of Military Force, the legal basis for the Iraq War.

KAINE: Right now, we still have not one but two active war authorizations against the government of Iraq that is no longer an enemy. But in the biblical phrase, we've beaten the sword into a plowshare. Iraq is now a strategic partner of the United States.

EICHER: WORLD Opinions contributor William Inboden was a member of the National Security Council at the White House during the Iraq War, and I’m going to quote from an article he wrote for us this week.

He says “the enormous costs and errors of the war are well-known, [but] the costs of inaction should not be ignored. Had Saddam Hussein been left in power, he had every intention of restarting his weapons of mass destruction program, and continuing to menace the region as well as the United States.”

REICHERD: “This is not to say that the war was worth the terrible price,” Inboden goes on. “But rather to remind us of the tragic dimension of statecraft. In our fallen world, with imperfect information, few policy choices are clear or cost-free.”

EICHER: What does this mean for today, on the 20th anniversary of the war? Inboden reminds us we “should begin with gratitude for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who served. Some of them supported [the war], others did not, but all willingly answered the call to service.”

REICHERD: Well, joining us today to talk about some of those soldiers is Lee Pitts…better known to us as the Executive Director of the World Journalism Institute. Before he became a journalism professor at Dordt University in Sioux Center, Iowa, Lee was a reporter for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, embedded in Iraq. Lee, good morning.

LEE PITTS, GUEST: Good morning.

REICHARD: Well Lee, why did you go to Iraq, and what was the state of the war at the time?

PITTS: Yeah, sure. So it was the fall of 2004. When I first headed out to Iraq via Kuwait and how I got that assignment was I'd been covering for most of the summer and fall, these are going away ceremonies for these the soldiers who are who are being activated and deployed overseas. I did enough of those and kept showing up that eventually one of the colonels in charge of some of the military units in that area said Hey, you, why don't you come to come with us on one of these units to one of these units to Iraq. And so I said, Yes, and embarked on a seven month adventure with a regimental combat team based out of Tennessee and spent time with them and the Diablo province of Iraq, which is in the northeastern part of Iraq, about 90 minutes from Baghdad near the Iranian border.

REICHARD: What was at stake security-wise, and how did the public feel about it?

PITTS: Yeah, well, the I mean, wasn't a, a safe place. You couldn't go wandering around any part of Iraq, including our part without, you know, Kevlar vest and helmet and Humvees and Bradley, five vehicles and so on. So there's definitely it was, it was a hot zone for sure. One of the interesting things about my embedded experience is that I was embedded on the ground with these soldiers. And my assignment was just follow them around in Iraq and spend time with them on their missions. It was about 4000 Soldiers from a regimental combat team. I was telling one part of a larger story, and that part was these the soldiers and what what I remember most about is not really the combat missions, although there were, you know, you know, ambushes and night raids, and snatch-and-grab missions. But what I remember the most is the humanitarian missions to these impoverished places like that, where they were trying to deliver things like flip flops and, and water and even even soccer balls to the villages, they would get these, these boxes of flip flops and soccer balls and so on shipped to them from people back home, readers back home, actually, we would write these stories about these poor villages, and then the readers would respond by sending boxes of things home and I have vivid memories of pulling up in convoy of Humvees and coming out and tossing out soccer balls and the whole area kind of going crazy, you know, raising their hands as for soccer balls are asking for for flip flops.  I remember that more than even the instances of combat. And I think that's what it was. It was more of a you know, I wouldn't call it just a war I call it a mix of war and humanitarian. and community building was was a big thing often kind of modeling to the villages they were in charge of overseeing how a democracy could work.

REICHARD: What did the war change, and how has public opinion about it shifted over 20 years?

PITTS: Yeah, well, you know, when anytime, again going back to what I was saying earlier about house so folks with the soldiers, even when we were in Iraq, there was controversy about should we be there should we be more in Afghanistan at the time of 9/11, the weapons of mass destruction debate you know, and I felt like my job as a reporter on the ground in Iraq with the soldiers was to chronicle the rough draft of history of their experiences and what they would say to me to them to a man and woman to a soldier there was that you know, we should be here this is important mission that we're here and we're going to you know, do the missions are best for our ability and and it was the way I interpreted that was that the you know, it had to it had to be the case for them because they are away from their families. They were there basically sacrificing a year of their lives a year their their family life that year, their professional life a year that just their community life back home, and it wouldn't make any sense you couldn't sleep at night if you were given up that year for for nothing or for something that that was you know, inaccurate, intelligent saying we shouldn't have been there. So they, they really, they really embraced that narrative of, you know, we're glad to be here we need to be here and this an important mission.

REICHARD: As you think about this week’s anniversary, what is one thing you learned about covering the Iraq War that you’ll never forget?

PITTS: Yeah, well, I think, you know, I learned that the journalism is best done, you know, outside of a newsroom, you know, being being present with whatever beat you’re on. You know, going out with the people you're covering and spending time with them going on their missions. My job was to go out there on the missions with them and kind of see it firsthand and write my stories that way. And I think that's what makes journalism fun and what makes journalism important, and even in this era of technology, and an email interviews and and, and zoom interviews, I think we shouldn't lose that. As journalists and storytellers and go on the missions of your beat.

REICHARD: Well, Lee has a lot more stories from his time in Iraq, and he shares many of them in his teaching at the WORLD Journalism Institute. So if you are a college-aged aspiring journalist and you haven’t yet applied to the 2023 WJI, let this be your invitation to get started. The web address is w-j-i-dot-world, and the deadline is March 31, just ten days away.

Lee, thank you for your time today.

PITTS: Thank you for having me.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Next up, escaping North Korea. Last week, the communist regime in Pyongyang launched an intercontinental ballistic missile.

It came just hours before a groundbreaking summit between South Korea and Japan was scheduled to take place. Audio here from North Korea’s state-run media.

AUDIO: [MISSLE LAUNCH, MUSIC, BROADCASTER SPEAKING IN KOREAN]

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Meanwhile, food shortages in North Korea are at their worst point since 1990, according to analysis by the Stimson Center’s publication, 38 North. But while the Kim regime threatens surrounding nations and citizens of North Korea starve, there are some who have not only escaped but have found peace.

EICHER: Last week, WORLD reporter Carolina Lumetta met two such women, and she brings us their story.

LEE HA-EUN: Hello, nice to meet you.

CAROLINA LUMETTA, REPORTER: That’s LEE Ha-Eun. She was one of the last women to escape from North Korea before the COVID-19 pandemic. And she’s here in Washington DC to speak to lawmakers and Hill staffers about the human rights abuses she endured.

LEE: First of all, I would like thank you everybody here for giving me this opportunity to speak for the poor women in North Korea who are suffering without freedom and equality.

Lee and two other women, all going by aliases for security reasons, shared horrific stories about the suffering they experienced at the hands of North Korean officials. But what they didn’t tell Hill staffers is what helped them to survive and heal since then their faith.

Ji Hannah first encountered the church in 2010 when she was looking for work across the river in Changbai, China. From a young age, she’d been taught to fear and hate Christian missionaries. Here’s her interpreter, Johnny Park of the Defense Forum Foundation.

JI HANNAH: there's one story that the government officials share with the people of North Korea that a kid North Korean kid just picked up an apple on the ground within the church periphery and the church missionary tied him to the apple tree and wrote the word ‘thief’ with acid on the kid's forehead.

But during her time in China, Hannah realized that the government had lied about missionaries and the church.

HANNAH: When I first saw North Korean defectors kneeling down praying or reading the Bible, I thought that that was ridiculous, because in my case, I left North Korea for food, so I was not really interested in that. And one day a South Korean missionary taught me a gospel song titled “I didn't know Jesus when I was lost.” And as I was just singing that gospel song I don't know why but it really touched my heart.

Just when Hannah thought she’d found a new life at the church in China, disaster struck.

HANNAH: After studying the Bible for about a month and a half, a Korean Chinese person reported us to the Chinese police, accusing us falsely of conducting the act of espionage. So three of us were arrested by the Chinese police officers.

Hannah and her fellow defector were detained and tortured for three months before being extradited to North Korea and sent to prison camps.

HANNAH: After I just went through that experience, I was so afraid. And despite the fact that I I believed in God, I was just so afraid that they might find out and send me to the political prison camp. So I had to hide my faith and had to pull myself away from learning the Bible.

Hannah made two more attempts to escape North Korea via China. Both times, a Chinese-Korean pastor named Han Chung-Ryeol taught her the scriptures and helped her find allies who eventually succeeded in guiding her to freedom in South Korea. But Pastor Han’s help came at a cost.

HANNAH: Whenever North Koreans have managed to leave their country and meet people like Pastor Han, who can help them but also who can teach them the word of God, it became a big threat to the State Security Bureau. So in April 2016, the State Security Bureau sent their people into China and assassinated Pastor Han.

As a Christian, Hannah has wrestled with how God can be good in the face of such evil.

HANNAH: For most North Koreans, it is very hard for for us to believe in God. But then, just considering all the adversities that we all had to go through, sometimes even we're betrayed by our own people. And yet, like God never betrays us.

Lee Hyun, who we met earlier, came to a similar conclusion in her own story. She ran a goods smuggling network in North Korea before the State Security Bureau intercepted her phone calls and arrested her. Lee’s captors tortured her and her husband and forced them to divorce, and she never saw him again. Lee eventually escaped to China and settled down further south in the country of Laos before she encountered Christian missionaries. Through their ministry, Lee found healing and the ability to confront her memories of those who tortured her.

LEE HA-EUN: after I come out of the detention center, I really wanted to revenge, you know, I wanted to hurt them. But now, after I become a Christian, and I accepted Jesus as my Savior, and read the Bible, now, I can forgive them.

Now a member of an organization seeking the reconciliation of North and South Korea, Lee not only wants political peace. She wants peace for the people she met during her imprisonment.

LEE HA-EUN: If I ever have a chance to go back to North Korea, and to meet my old cellmate, I would like to say, ‘everybody, there is God even though you are suffering now. God will help you, God will give you the strength to endure your, you know, suffering.

In the midst of suffering, this passage from Matthew has given Lee, Ji, and other Korean defectors hope.

AUDIO: [Lee Huan reciting Matt. 11:28-29 in Korean.]

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta in Washington D.C.

NICK EICHER, HOST:Coral Amayi was tubing down the Colorado River for a little whitewater rafting adventure. But Smelter Rapids was too much, and in an instant, the rafter became a swimmer. She did make it to safety. But 

CORAL AMAYI: My camera was missing. I remember getting back to my boyfriend's house and like inconsolably crying and upset.

EICHER: The audio from Fox 31 Denver. She’s telling a story that’s more than a decade-old. That camera had graduation pics. Bachelorette party. A friend’s wedding. Gone, gone, gone.

Well, fast forward to last week. A fisherman was walking along the same river about a mile downstream, and what does he see? An Olympus digital camera sticking up out of the sand. Spencer Greiner had the catch of the day. He takes it home, pries out the SD card

SPENSER GREINER: I plugged it into the, into the computer and it read it immediately and I'm like, oh, cool...let’s see what treasures are on this memory card.

EICHER: He posts some of the photos online, and it didn’t even take half an hour to match up. And for Amayi, distant memories have come back to life.

AMAYI: I was like dancing in the bathroom and was like, who am I gonna tell? I need to like, tell this to somebody.

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

They say a photo is worth a thousand words, and this photo collection now has a much more interesting backstory.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, March 21st. Thanks so much for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: smuggling God’s word.

China’s communist government keeps a tight rein on Bibles. You can’t buy or sell them online or give them away. And forget the app store. The only way you can legally get a copy of God’s word is at a registered church approved by the government. But approved churches are rare outside of major cities. And the communist party is rewriting even those Bibles, removing the divinity of Jesus and adding in socialist ideals.

REICHARD: So how do Christians under communism get a Bible? WORLD’s Whitney Williams talked to a Bible smuggler to find out.

MUSIC: [Asian music]

WHITNEY WILLIAMS, REPORTER: On Sunday, February 12, a five-year-old American boy with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a nervous smile pulled on a backpack full of Chinese Bibles. His goal? Get past that stern-faced Chinese soldier, the one checking bags at the Beijing Airport.

That little boy was the first of more than 300 children to carry God’s word into China that day—China being an orange cone on the other side of the large Sunday School space, and the Chinese soldier, well, he was a white guy dressed in an extremely convincing military costume a la Amazon. His wife, Lindsay Tucker, made him do it, he whispers with a coy smile and a nod in her direction.

LINDSAY TUCKER: Y’all are some good Bible smugglers. I saw y’all! A little sneaky!

Stonegate Church in Midlothian, Texas, had invited the 38-year-old nurse-practitioning mother of three to share her real-life Bible smuggling story with its children’s ministry.

In college, Tucker helped to sneak more than 1,000 Bibles from Hong Kong into mainland China. She worked with Open Doors, a missions organization serving the persecuted church.

TUCKER: I actually thought it was going to be a little bit more stealthy than it was.

Tucker’s Bible smuggling team consisted of four college-aged girls from the United States, three old men from Ireland—well, they seemed old to her at the time—and Paul, an 80-ish-year-old man from Denmark who stirred her heart to praise.

TUCKER: He had terrible hips, like arthritic hips, and he would be up before all of us walking in the garden to like, warm up his hips to walk the Bibles across.

Once Paul got his hips warmed up for the day’s mission, the team would meet together for a time of prayer and worship. Then they’d load up their suitcases and head to nearby train stations. Like all of the other travelers, the team members would put their bags up on the conveyor belt for scanning, but not Paul.

TUCKER: He'd just walk through it all and they'd watch him go across and they never even stopped him, I think out of respect for him.

And so here we are, these young people kind of have all this tension and Paul's just walking through with his warmed up thighs, you know, like, just so amazing.

When asked how the rest of the team got through the checkpoint undetected time after time, Tucker speaks of miracles.

TUCKER: I honestly truly believe that supernatural things happened. I truly believe that. Whether it was distraction, you know, timing of things that the Lord just blinded eyes. And there's no other explanation.

The team would cross into mainland China multiple times a day, taking different routes. Once they passed through security, they’d hop on a train and travel to a drop point. For safety, they’d never meet the Bible recipients face-to-face. But there was one man, a pastor from an underground church, who risked his life to meet the team at their gathering flat in Hong Kong. He wanted to thank them for what they were doing, to join in on their pre-smuggling time of prayer and worship.

TUCKER: And so we're all singing Amazing Grace. It sounds terrible, like truly terrible. So much so that I can hardly even worship in those moments. And I remember looking like opening my eyes. And he has tears streaming down his face. And it just hit me. It just hit me. And then after we stopped singing, he is just like, that was so beautiful. And he said, I just haven't gotten to hear like really hear worship in so long. And then he challenged us, like, when you go back to America, sing twice as loud for me.

The pastor explained that the plan was to give one Bible to each underground church in his network.

TUCKER: And so any time we were able to get some across, we just knew the value of God's word, man,

You are praying harder than you've ever prayed, Lord, please blind their eyes, you know, that your word can go forth.

And God did … until Tucker’s final attempt to cross. Her team members ahead of her had all made it through.

TUCKER: And so I'm last and as I'm going through, the man stops me and he pulls me to the side and he opens the my suitcase. And he's kind of asking me some things, and then he takes me to another area. He takes my passport, he starts putting things into his computer, and I'm thinking, “Oh, no, this is probably not good.”

The soldier kept asking Tucker, “Who are these for?” But she really didn’t know. Open Doors made sure of that, for the safety of all.

TUCKER: I didn't have an answer. And I just remember saying, “Lord, you have to help me.”

When the soldier asked Tucker again, God gave her the words.

TUCKER: And I remember he asked me again, who are these for? And I said, “anybody that wants one. Would you like one?” And man, like, I think it took him aback truthfully, kinda like, was surprised. And then he like, like, looked down at it. And then he looked at me again. And then he just said, Go, and he kept all the Bibles.

You could have heard a piece of rice drop as Tucker shared her smuggling story with the children—and there was plenty of rice dropping, by the way. The kids each had a cupful and were trying to eat it with chopsticks as she spoke.

TUCKER: You know, as a grown up, you get used to knowing there's people suffering all over the world for Jesus. And you know, the scriptures that say ‘remember as though you're bound with them,’ you know, and it's just like we forget, and these kids just like, “What? They can't just go to church? They can't just read a Bible when I have five Bibles in my house?” It was just like hearing it all over again for the first time and having just a burden and an ache again, by getting to see them awakened to that reality.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Whitney Williams in Midlothian, Texas.

TUCKER: “Welcome guys! Where did y’all just come from?”
KIDS: “ummmmm. Africa!”
TUCKER: “You were in Sudan?! Oh my goodness, y’all are world travelers! Today, now, guess where you are right now.”
KIDS: “CHINA!”

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, March 21st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, another installment in our classic commentary series by WORLD’s founder. Today, what is a good working definition of godly wisdom? For Joel Belz, it’s living out what we say we believe.

JOEL BELZ, FOUNDER: All of us struggle in our Christian walk to find the right balance between what we sometimes call the spiritual and the practical. Other times we call it a faith-works distinction, or we draw the line between pietism and activism.

I think we've made our faith too sophisticated and complicated. A faithful friend told me the other day, “More and more, I just want to call the people I'm working with to simply love Jesus.” I knew exactly what he meant. Applying faith to all of life is a great model. But the process sometimes stretches that faith so thin, you can't feel it anymore. Feeling is an important part of faith. So my friend’s emphasis on loving Jesus made sense.

Still, I couldn't help thinking of Jesus's simple remark, “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” Keeping His commandments means applying what I believe to all of life. And it's such tension that bothers us. We just don't know how to emphasize spirituality and practicality simultaneously.

Then it struck me how similar that relationship between spirituality and practicality is to my marriage with my wife. A human relationship, just like one between a person and God, exists in two dimensions simultaneously that always seem to be tension. Of course, I tell my wife, I love her. I feel like telling her that several times every day, and usually I manage to do so. Once in a while, but not often enough, I even tell her so in a note. But if I tell her ever so many times that I love her, and yet fail to pay any attention to the things I know she is eager for me to do for her, she is almost certain sooner or later to wonder how devoutly I believe what I say to her with my words. You love me, you say, but you continue to ignore the dripping faucet I've mentioned a dozen times. If you love me, why don't you do the things I say? That's one side of the tension.

But I get just as far off the track if I spend all my time doing the things I think might please my wife, getting so wrapped up in them that I never tell her in so many words that she is very dear to me. Then she is left to guess whether in fact I love her as much as I love my work. So with God himself as with our human mates, we pursue carefully that mature balance which understands this–only to talk about love with no performance becomes mere chatter. Only to labor on without adoring the face of the one we love is to miss the romance.

REICHARD: That’s Joel Belz, reading his commentary titled “A Perfect Marriage” from his book, Consider These Things. The column originally appeared in the August 26, 1989 issue of WORLD Magazine.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: we dig into the Biden administration budget on Washington Wednesday.

And, we’ll hear how American high school students are serving amputees in Central America.

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 answered [the Disciples], “Do you now believe? Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” John chapter 16, verses 31 through 33.

Go now in grace and peace.

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.