The World and Everything in It: November 29, 2024

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Culture Friday: Covid critics and outsiders are about to become Washington insiders. Will that decrease the distrust?

And DEI is looking DOA.

NICK EICHER, HOST: John Stonestreet’s here and standing by, we’ll talk about all that and more.

Also today Dallas Jenkins on bringing The Best Christmas Pageant Ever to the big screen

SOT: If the Herdmans show up, it might be the first Christmas pageant in history where Joseph and the Wise Men get into a fight and Mary lights a stogie and hightails it with the baby. [laughs]

And later, and songs for Advent.

BROWN: It’s Friday, November 29th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Russian strike on Ukraine infrastructure » Russia has carried out a “massive” aerial attack against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, leaving more than a million households without power.

PUTIN: [RUSSIAN]

Vladimir Putin, speaking at a meeting in Kazakhstan, said, “We carried out a comprehensive strike using 90 missiles of this class and 100 drones. 17 targets were hit.”

Putin said it was in response to Ukrainian strikes in Russia using American-made long-range missiles. And he claimed the Russian assault only aimed at military targets.

But it was Russia’s second major aerial attack on Ukraine’s power grid in less than two weeks.

Israel-Lebanon latest » Meantime, in the Middle East one day after a cease-fire officially took effect in Lebanon, Israeli forces launched an airstrike, saying Hezbollah violated the truce. WORLD’s Mary Muncy has more.

MARY MUNCY: The Israeli military says its warplanes fired on southern Lebanon after detecting Hezbollah activity at a rocket storage facility.

The aerial attack came hours after the Israeli military said it fired on people trying to return to particular areas in southern Lebanon … in violation of the cease-fire. Lebanon’s state-controlled news agency said two people were wounded.

Under the terms of the agreement, Hezbollah militants must withdraw north of the Litani River … and Israeli forces are to return to their side of the border.

For WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

Boise State out of tournament over trans player » A women’s college volleyball team is pulling out of a tournament this week rather than play against a team with a male player.

Boise State advanced to the semifinals of the Mountain West women's tournament Wednesday night. But the Broncos announced later they would not play tomorrow against San Jose State. One of San Jose’s players is a man who identifies as a woman.

San Jose State received six forfeit victories because of boycotts from Mountain West opponents.

University of Nevada players said they—quote—“refuse to participate in any match that advances injustice against female athletes.”

Ernst suggestions to DOGE » Republican Sen. Joni Ernst says she’s ready to help the new Department of Government Efficiency —or DOGE, for short— that will be established when President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

ERNST: Every dollar that is going through our federal government, what is the benefit to the American taxpayer? Is it something that should be done by the federal government or is it something that shouldn't and maybe should be picked up by business and industry?

Ernst just penned a letter with suggestions on what expenses to cut and sent that off to business leaders Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will lead the effort.

She detailed a few of those suggestions earlier this week.

ERNST:  If you look at the NIH and a lot of the experimentation that is done there, things like finding out how fast shrimp can run on treadmills. Um, all of this, we have documented through the years.

The Department of Government Efficiency will be an independent office operating outside of the government. That means it will be reliant on the White House and lawmakers to enact its agenda.

Sen. Ernst has been tapped to lead the DOGE caucus in the Senate.

Brick and mortar retailers working to lure shoppers » Today is, of course, Black Friday the unofficial kickoff of the Christmas shopping season.

And brick and mortar retailers are pulling out all the stops to lure shoppers into stores. Holly Quartaro is spokeswoman for the Galleria mall in Dallas.

QUARTARO: Gift wrapping services. Um, buy online, pick up in stores. Another way that's customers that maybe they want to look online, make sure that it's available and then they can pick it up in the store and come into the mall to get it.

In the U.S., analysts envision a solid Christmas shopping season. The National Retail Federation predicted that shoppers would increase their spending in November and December by about 3 percent over the same period a year ago.

TSA food guidelines » If you’re flying home after Thanksgiving and thinking about bringing some leftovers with you the TSA says that’s okay, but of course, there are some rules.

TSA spokeswoman Lorie Dankers:

DANKERS:  If your food is a solid, in examples that are meats and cheeses, breads, cookies, those types of things, bring them through in unlimited quantities … because those are allowed. It's when the food is considered a liquid or an aerosol or a gel that there's a restriction.

And that restriction is 3.4 ounces. Liquids or gels can’t be in containers larger than that.

Dankers says you can find those rules on the TSA app and website

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Culture Friday with John Stonestreet. Plus, a conversation about a quirky kids movie and the true meaning of Christmas.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 29nd of November, 2024.

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

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

It’s time for Culture Friday, and joining us now is John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Good morning!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. What were you thankful for?

STONESTREET: Oh man, you know, you know I supposed to do that going into it being retroactively thankful. That's a really difficult thing to do, especially in a culture that, you know, immediately goes from giving thanks to trampling security guards for the latest flat screen TVs, although I'm grateful that Black Friday is not what it used to be, it's just digitally more than it used to be.

But what a just an incredible juxtaposition of our culture, Thanksgiving turns you outward, and should turn you upward, right?, where you're actually looking outside of yourself. It's just a way of approaching life in the world that's fundamentally different than "get while the getting's good," you know, quote, sort of approach that we've done.

Now, of course, gift giving is a good thing. And I once had this conversation with none other than Dennis Prager on stage, who just argued that Black Friday was actually a good thing, because, you know, people giving gifts is a good thing. And I said, "Well—" this was back in the heyday where we all waited for the videos of the tramplings that would come through, you know, of, you know, Circuit City. Remember that store opening at like, 4 a.m.? And I was just like, "I don't think all those guys are, you know, trampling security guards out of the goodness of their heart in order to bless other people." I just, I didn't think that that was the motivation. But there is an incredible juxtaposition, you know, this week that we experience culturally, I think.

BROWN: Yeah, I like the outward, upward focus … and getting away from the internal, which is how modern culture turns us. It’s Thanks-giving … not Thanks-feeling, right? It’s a thing we do!

STONESTREET: It's a choice! No, it's but, you know, that's what Christianity does. It turns us away from just our feelings determining reality, and saying, Well, what is actually true and what is actually real? It's the same thing with repentance. If you, you know, look at it. I know this isn't a Lenten time broadcast, but it is something worth mentioning, that these are things that, at the end of the day, have to precede our choices. You know, we ought not, for example, wait to repent when we feel like it, because we may never feel like it. But you repent so that you'll feel like it. And maybe the same thing is true with thanks. You give thanks, not if you feel like it, but because you should feel like it, even if you don't.

EICHER: You know it’s often said and not without evidence that President-elect Trump tends not to admit when he’s wrong, but instead tends to double down. Here’s an instance where he’s pretty clearly admitting wrong: remember, his top two go-to guys on COVID in his first term were Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins. Collins was head of NIH, National Institutes of Health … and Fauci was inside NIH … in one of the Institutes … and had been in government almost 40 years. Both of those men specifically worked to discredit Jay Bhattacharya and Marty Makary … both of them renowned physicians who were critics of our COVID policy. Well guess what, Trump appointed Dr. Bhattacharya … again, a target of Collins and Fauci … to take the job Collins had … to head NIH. And then Dr. Makary, he’s been appointed to FDA.

So, I think this is a case of not just admitting wrong, but appointing the people who said so.

STONESTREET: It is something to behold, and those two really in particular. I mean, at one level, it goes with the trend of the president appointing people to head agencies with whom all of these people have had direct conflict. You know, it's, I mean, a lot of us are ordering popcorn and are going to watch this thing kind of play itself out. But there is just an incredible level of mistrust when it comes to medicine in America. And it is not because I don't think, you know, people mistrust the individual people that are their providers. You know, I think most of us have found doctors or health care professionals that we rely on. But on a societal level, on a structural level, COVID did a lot of damage on this. And mainly because we were told to follow the science and found out later that the science wasn't followed.

Now look, trust isn't built by just perpetual skepticism, either. In other words, pointing out a lie is not always the same as pointing out the truth. Both of these individuals, I think, in these positions, both of whom have incredibly complicated names to pronounce out loud, so I'll leave that to you, but they have really incredible track records and a level of courage of saying the right thing when the right thing needs to be said. And there were many cases where both of these individuals paid a price for that courage. And so, you know, I do think when it comes to where America is with health care, whether we're talking about food, whether we're talking about Big Pharma, whether we're talking about vaccines, whatever we're talking about, I mean, I think there's a kind of a reckoning, so to speak, that's happening, and these seem-to-be appointees that are part of that story.

BROWN: John, big news this week with the nation’s largest retailer changing course and walking back its DEI policies.

Of course, I’m talking about Walmart announcing for instance, it will no longer consider race and gender as a litmus test to improve diversity when offering contracts to suppliers.

The company will no longer participate in the Human Rights Campaign Index and it’s going to pay closer attention to its merchandise … staying away from products aimed at minors, like chest binders.

Now, many theories as to what’s behind this “about face.” I’d like to hear why you think they backed off.

STONESTREET: Well, look, I think it's one of the under-told stories of 2024 and every major corporation was spending an incredible amount of money to align both HR and PR—both internal and external realities around it. And there was a group of people who rose up and said, "You know what? We can do something here. We can influence at the leadership and shareholder level. We can bring this back to neutral." And they have been incredibly successful. Of course, Robbie Starbuck is the front and center figure on this. There's some organizations that have been really working on this, and some of them are not always comfortable being identified. So I'm just going to say, "shout out across the airwaves," because what they have done is not try to shame people.

One of the things I appreciated about it is that the DEI thing really advanced through shaming people. The DEI reversal was not going through shaming people. You know the Walmart story, for example. During pride month, we talked about how a lot of companies got a lot quieter than they were the year before, in June. But then there was Walmart. What an exception, right? They started announcing chest binders and some weird things. And you're like, "Walmart, are you kidding?" And now what happened was some private work that was done where basically Walmart was called on the carpet and said, you know, here's what you need to do. And they did it.

And also a big part of the story is the number of newly minted vice presidents of DEI that aren't having renewed contracts next year. And I don't think we've heard all those stories, but there's a lot of them we have heard because basically it turned DEI into a criteria of success. It also became a standard of qualification for someone to have an executive-level job. Neither of those things proved true, and that's because DEI is not legitimate. It's not a legitimate way of thinking about either credibility, qualification, or progress, but it was made that way. You look at this lineup: this is Walmart, but of course, we're talking Tractor Supply. We're talking Harley Davidson and John Deere, you know, read the room, kids. It just was misaligned with reality from the beginning. And it's good to see this stuff really push back. And I think the momentum of Walmart here at the end of 2024 is a significant story heading into 2025.

EICHER: John, along these same lines … there was a new study … it’s from an outfit called the Network Contagion Research Institute … pretty involved study that found many DEI programs, workplace training programs wound up increasing racial suspicion … it found no measurable improvement in empathy or warmth among the ethnic groups. Did you see this?

STONESTREET: Well, look, at the same time that this story came out, was a study showing that these kind of anti racist books and anti racist training programs and the philosophy of anti racism when applied in some sort of teaching or pressure situation—which obviously a lot of times that was the same thing, teaching and pressure—it actually ended up making things worse, not better. It was purported to be some sort of pathway to reconciliation, some sort of pathway to racial relationships improving. But what ended up happening is, is it proved to be opposite. I think it's because of a couple things. Number one is, in many cases, it, you know, made people guilty by who they are, not how they behaved, and people don't like that. You know, people, we live in a world where God has created us in a way that we try to strive to be better. We try to strive to earn our stripes and to somehow give us moral credit or moral culpability based on no decision that we actually made or no actions that we actually took or didn't take. It just didn't sit well.

But you know, the thing is, I know this is shocking, but apparently, if you make everything about race, it tends to make everything about race. And if you say that the fundamental problem with the world in every situation is racial division, then people start seeing the world as being racially divided. Shouldn't maybe surprise us that the more you talk about race, the more you talk about race, and the less you move forward. And, look, we need to talk about race as Christians. There is a division, and there are examples of racism that exist. But this was a theory of everything. This was supposed to be the lens by which everything was supposed to be explained, all injustices, everything else. And it didn't work out that way, and it left people further apart, not closer together.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thank you John!

STONESTREET: Thank you both!

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, November 29th.

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

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: The making of a Christmas classic.

The Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. They lied and stole and smoked cigars even the girls and talked dirty and hit little kids and cussed their teachers and took the name of the Lord in vain and set fire to Fred Shewmaker’s old toolhouse.

So begins the children’s novel, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

It’s the story of what happens when those horrible Herdman kids manhandle their way into the town’s Christmas theatrical. Hijinks ensue, and by the end of the book, well, we all learn some lessons about the true meaning of Christmas in a very honest and heartwarming way.

MAST: The book is laugh-out-loud funny. Author Barbara Robinson wrote it more than 50 years ago and it won the ALA Notable Children’s Book Award. In my family, it’s not just a Christmas read-aloud tradition. Doesn’t matter what time of year–My youngest often has the audiobook going–I think she has it memorized.

EICHER: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is now a movie—bringing the Herdmans to life on the big screen.

They even set fire to Fred Shewmaker’s old broken down toolshed. To be fair, the shed was ugly and was about to fall over anyway. My father said burning it down was the only good thing the Herdmans ever did and if they’d known it was a good thing, they wouldn’t have done it at all. They were just so all-around awful, you could hardly believe they were real.

A couple weeks ago, we reviewed the film when it first hit theaters. The movie is directed by Dallas Jenkins, known best for his work on The Chosen. And today, we have a conversation with Jenkins about why he felt compelled to bring this story to the screen … and why he feels like this is the movie he was born to make.

MAST: Dallas Jenkins, welcome to the program.

JENKINS: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm so glad you've read the book, and are as excited as I am to get this movie out there.

MAST: Let’s start with your own history with the book. When did you first read it?

JENKINS: The more I've thought about it, I think it's actually closer to 20 years ago. My wife, Amanda, brought it home from Pottery Barn. She was there shopping and saw it on the counter. I think they were doing a little special board or something. And she's like, oh, yeah. I remember this book as a kid, and it was a TV movie in the 80s—kind of a short, little TV movie. And so we said, “Oh, let's read it to the kids. And so I was reading it, and pretty quickly, a couple things started happening. Number one, it's very, very funny. The story is just brilliantly written by the author, Barbara Robinson, who's, unfortunately, no longer with us, but so I was already laughing and going, Man, this is funny.

And then fairly early on, I'm like, this is a Jesus story, you know? And it's a Jesus story fairly early on, the Herdmans are the worst kids in the history of the world. But they take over this church's Christmas pageant, and they are, you know, through the course of the story, start asking all these questions because they've never heard the story before, and you ultimately find out that, because of their poverty and their outsider status, they're actually closer to the heart of the nativity story than even we are in our kind of suburban American church environment. And so we learn from them as much as they learn from us. And so as I'm reading the story, I get to the end of it, and in the last chapter, I am weeping like I am. I can't read. And my wife goes, Oh, let me, let me read it. And so she starts to read. She can't get through it because she's crying. So we just hand it back to each other. And so the Christmas tradition became to not only read this story to our kids every year, but for our kids to make fun of us for the fact that we could never get through without crying.

MAST: I do the exact same thing! Every time. So you read the book, you love it… and then what?

JENKINS: Yeah, after that first time, I said, I have to make this movie. So, I was searching for the rights, looking online, everywhere. I tracked down this group of guys who have the rights, and they said, Oh yeah, appreciate your passion, but it's already, you know, with a studio, and they're developing it as a different kind of movie. And I was like, man, and I had so many different opportunities over the years. The rights would expire at a studio, and I would reach out to them again and go, please, let me, let me do this movie. And they're like, Well, no, because I was, you know, I hadn't had the success of The Chosen yet, and they wanted to do a big studio project with these big filmmakers. So, I would check in every year, you know, praying that the movie wasn't getting made. And finally, just a couple years ago, the mom of one of the rights holders calls him up and says, You've got to watch this show called The Chosen. It is changing my life. It is so good. He goes, Oh, that's funny. The creator has been bugging me for years to try to get the rights to this story. She's like, you better do it with him. You better give him the rights. And so the mom, you know, I think she was in her 70s at the time, you know, he made him go watch the show, and he ultimately decided to, when the rights expired with the studio, to let me do it. And so we set it up with another studio, and I got to be the filmmaker.

MAST: So what about the story made you so passionate about getting it off the page and onto the big screen?

JENKINS: This movie, I sometimes call it a Trojan horse. On the surface, it's a best selling book that's been read in public schools all over the country. It's performed as a play all over the world. But beneath the surface, and in fact, not in a subtle way, it is the story of the Nativity. It is the story of how the power of Jesus and the power of church can actually truly change a kid's life, even a broken group of kids, and how they can also kind of teach us something about the story of God and the story of Nativity. So I'm just really, really excited about this story getting to the world.

MAST: Why do you say this is the movie you were born to make?

JENKINS: Yeah. I mean, the thing about The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is when people see it, they'll think, oh, wow, this is so different from The Chosen. Again, on the surface—the style, the tone, the time period, of course, it's very different from the first century and the way that we shoot The Chosen. But the theme is actually similar, and that is telling the story of Jesus that we've heard a million times, but through a different lens, not changing it, not changing the intention of it, not changing the character of Jesus and the Gospels, but telling it through a different lens, a different perspective. And just like people have said that they've experienced with The Chosen, and just like people say in the movie The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, it sometimes brings a story to life in a fresh way that they hadn't considered before, and re-engages and re-energizes their relationship with God. And that's what I think this movie can do that's similar to The Chosen.

MAST: We’ve come a long way from the Christmas pageants that you read about in this book and in the Ramona Quimby books–preschool angel choirs and shepherds dressed in their dad’s bathrobes and such. Your own work has brought the production level of Christian storytelling up by a few notches. Is there still a place for more quaint tellings of Jesus’ story?

JENKINS: That’s such a good question and absolutely. I think there’s something charming about the quaintness of it because that’s actually the story itself. And you see that in this movie, there's a moment, I don't want to give too much away, although, you know the title calls it The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, so you know things do work out. But Imogene Herdman, who's the meanest and the baddest of the Herdman kids, is portraying the part of Mary. And the tradition in that church Christmas pageant is for Mary to be dressed in white and to practically have a halo around her head, to be this sweet, you know, pretty little thing that's presented as almost perfect, right? Like in a lot of nativities that we see. And Imogene brings from home the table cloth, and she wraps it around herself. And she even says to one of the girls, if I'm going to play Mary, I'm going to look like the real Mary. And she brings to it the quaintness and the, you know, maybe poverty is too strong a word, but I think it's accurate. She brings to the story the truth of it, which is that Mary and Joseph and the stable and the animals and all that stuff are not we're not cutesy and sweet, and it wasn't also big and epic like we sometimes portray. So I think there is something to be said for that simplicity and the quaintness of it. And I think that when we can see the heart of Jesus through quaintness, and we don't need spectacle, I think that's actually closer to the heart of the story.

MAST: Dallas Jenkins, thanks for giving us your time today.

JENKINS: Oh, thanks so much for having me. Those are really wonderful questions and a great conversation.

EICHER: There’s a lot more to Lindsay’s conversation with Dallas Jenkins…and we thought this would be a great weekend to post it as families are out and about and perhaps looking for something to listen to when you’re ready for a break from Christmas music…so keep an ear out for that.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, November 29th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. This Sunday marks the first week of Advent. Over the next four Sundays, Christians around the world will prepare for—and reflect on—the coming of Christ. At the close of each Friday program, from now till Christmas, WORLD correspondent Bonnie Pritchett will guide us through a selection of Advent hymns.

BROWN: And just a quick note, we’re creating a Spotify Playlist again this year. We’ll keep it updated throughout the month so you can find the music for your own enjoyment. We’ve included the link to that in today’s transcript at wng.org/podcasts.

Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1oi8824UlZxkjFL6hXSNYT?si=1380cdd74c9f433d

BONNIE PRITCHETT: This Sunday is the first of four Advent Sundays. But kids have probably been anticipating the arrival of Christmas Day since, oh, say – October when store displays went up and commercials began airing.

For kids – the can’t-wait-for-Christmas-Day impatience can be overwhelming.

SONG: ISAIAH 9:6-7 by Adam Wright
LYRIC: For to us a child is born…

Taking time each day until Christmas to teach the meaning of Advent can, perhaps, redirect a child’s focus and help them understand what—or, rather who—we’re all waiting for.

LYRIC: And his name shall be called Wonderful. Counselor. Mighty God. Everlasting Father. Prince of Peace.

Musician Adam Wright performs and composes under the name The Corner Room. His songs help children to learn and memorize God’s word. This song, simply called, “Isaiah 9:6-7” is from Wright’s 2020 album: Remember and Proclaim: Scripture Songs for Little Ones.

LYRIC: Prince of Peace…

CHILD SPEAKING: Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and uphold it with justice and righteousness from this time forth and for evermore. The zeal of the LORD of Hosts will do this…

Isaiah’s Messianic prophecy continues into chapter 11. And that’s where the band Rain for Roots picks up the story in their 2015 album Waiting Songs.

SONG: ISAIAH 11 by Rain for Roots
LYRIC: A green shoot will sprout out from Jesse. The root will grow a budding branch.

The song, titled “Isaiah 11,” paraphrases the prophet’s message about life under the rule of the servant king.

LYRIC: The good, good, King will lead them. The good, good, King will lead them. The Spirit of the Lord will rest upon him. The good, good King will lead them…

Fast forward about 700 years…faithfully awaiting the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy was an old priest named Zechariah and his wife, Elizabeth.

An angel of God told Zechariah that Elizabeth would have a baby boy who would grow up to prepare the way for the coming Messiah. The old priest praised God at the birth of his son.

SONG: ZECHARIAH’S PROPHECY by Randall Goodgame
LYRIC: Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, For he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David…

Randall Goodgame, creator of Slugs and Bugs Bible memorization songs, captures a portion of Zechariah’s praise in the song “Zechariah’s Prophecy” on the 2020 album Sing the Bible Family Christmas.

ANTIPHONAL SINGING: As he spoke (As he spoke) As he spoke (As he spoke) From the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, prophets from old …

Zechariah blessed God for the birth of his son, John, who did grow up to herald the arrival of the long-awaited Messiah.

Now, if the kids still think waiting for Christmas Day takes forever, inform them that Zechariah and all faithful Jews had been waiting for the Messiah, roughly, 255,500 days.

Tell the kids they can probably wait just 24.

For WORLD, I’m Bonnie Pritchett

NICK EICHER, HOST: Well, it’s time to say thanks to the team members who helped put the program together this week:

Jenny Rough, David Bahnsen, Emma Perley, Mary Reichard, Travis Kircher, Bekah McCallum, Leo Briceno, Onize Oduah, Janie B. Cheaney, Mary Muncy, Carolina Lumetta, Bob Case, Cal Thomas, John Stonestreet, Lindsay Mast, and Bonnie Pritchett.

Thanks also to our breaking news team: Kent Covington, Mark Mellinger, Lynde Langdon, Lauren Canterberry, Christina Grube, and Josh Schumacher.

And a new voice on the program this week, WORLD Opinions contributor Steve Watters.

Thanks to the guys who stay up late to get the program to you early … Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Our producers are Paul Butler, Kristen Flavin, and Harrison Watters…with assistance from Lauren Dunn and Benj Eicher.

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 Psalmist writes: “Consider how I love your precepts! Give me life according to your steadfast love. The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.” —Psalm 119:59-60.

Be sure and worship with your brothers and sisters in Christ in church on the Lord’s Day! And, Lord willing, we’ll meet you right back here on Monday.

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.