The World and Everything in It: October 15, 2024

PREROLL: Back to back hurricanes Helene and Milton are stretching FEMA funds and non-profit relief agencies. I’m Mary Muncy. In just a few minutes, I have the story of a few workers on the ground in Florida.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Israel weighs options to respond to attacks from Iran and its proxy Hezbollah.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Meanwhile, two hurricanes in a row have left massive damage. How are government agencies and volunteers faring in their recovery efforts? We have a report.

And the Lewis and Clark expedition marks its 220th anniversary.

AUDIO: Up and over this ridge, we're going to be home free to the Pacific Ocean and all he sees after that is just more and more massive mountains.

REICHARD: And ladies, don’t run from your age, lean into it. Commentary by Candace Watters.

EICHER: It’s Tuesday, October 15th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

REICHARD: And I’m Mary Reichard. Good morning!

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Israel » Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing back against claims that Israel's military has been targeting members of a UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

NETANYAHU: The charge that Israel deliberately attacked UNIFIL personnel is completely false. It's exactly the opposite. Israel repeatedly asked UNIFIL to get out of harm’s way. It repeatedly asked them to temporarily leave the combat zone, which is right next to Israel’s border with Lebanon.

Five peacekeepers with UNIFEL -- the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon -- have been wounded in attacks. Most of those incidents have been blamed on Israel.

The prime minister again reiterated Israel's right to defend itself against the ongoing attacks from the Lebanon-based terror group Hezbollah.

SOUND: [IDF soldier funeral]

And in a somber reminder of those attacks, hundreds of mourners gathered in Israel yesterday for the funeral of Sergeant Alon Amitai. The 19-year-old was one of four Israeli soldiers killed in a drone attack against an I-D-F military base near the city of Binyamina Sunday.

That attack was the deadliest launched by Hezbollah...since Israel started its ground invasion of Lebanon two weeks ago.

MOTHER: [Speaking Hebrew]

Speaking there, Amitai's mother says she feels as though her heart has been ripped out.

Milton aftermath » The state of Florida is working to stem a fuel shortage in the wake of Hurricane Milton. Governor Ron DeSantis heard here in Palmetto, just south of Tampa.

DESANTIS: We have fuel for the public. We’re not even charging you. Free gas, imagine that.

Florida is offering residents ten free gallons of gas.

Many have been using that fuel to run generators with hundreds of thousands still without power. DeSantis says crews are working around the clock.

DESANTIS: There have been over 3.8 million accounts restored for power. So right now, about 97% of the state is electrified and operational.

Infrastructure has been leveled in some of the hardest hit areas. But for residents in the rest of the state, those who lost power should have the lights back on within the next few days.

Hurricane Milton is blamed for at least 22 deaths.

Florida Milton insurance » In the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton some insurance carriers are setting up shop in Florida at so-called insurance villages in the Tampa Bay area.

At four separate locations, policyholders whose homes were damaged can meet in person with insurance company representatives and get their claims started.

Jimmy Petronas is Chief Financial Officer for the state of Florida.

PETRONAS: Depending on what type of policy you have, you might get you know, up to like 10, 000 as living expense money if your house is not habitable right now.

Insurance carriers are bracing for upwards of 50 billion in losses with Florida already suffering from a property insurance crisis.

SpaceX ANNCR: 3,2,1 ignition and liftoff, liftoff … a Falcon Heavy with Europa Clipper.

NASA Jupiter mission » SpaceX launching the Europa Clipper on Monday from Florida's Kennedy Space Center. It’s embarking on a quest to explore Jupiter's moon Europa.

Laurie Leshin is the director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

LESHIN: Even though it’s a robot we’re sending out into space, it’s a very human endeavor to want to explore the unknown.

It will take 5 1/2 years for Clipper to reach Jupiter. Once there, the spacecraft will orbit the giant gas planet, sneaking close to Europa during dozens of flybys.

Scientists are almost certain a vast, deep ocean exists beneath Europa's icy crust.

Nobel economics » The Nobel committee in Sweden handed out the last Nobel prize of the year this week honoring three professors in the United States for their work in economic science.

The trio worked to understand why some countries grow rich and others poor. They theorize that a country's social institutions strongly influence its wealth patterns.

Co-laureate MIT professor Daron Acemoglu says modern democracies have hit a rough patch.

ACEMOGLU: It is in some sense quite crucial that they reclaim the high ground of better governance, cleaner governance, and delivering sort of the promise of democracy to a broad range of people.

The three professors will be formally honored alongside other 2024 laureates at a formal ceremony in December.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: storm damage recovery assistance is in high demand. Plus, following the trail of Lewis and Clark.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 15th of October.

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

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

First up, Israel’s wider war.

Israel continues its ground offensive in Southern Lebanon, destroying weapons and bases built by Iran’s proxy terror group Hezbollah. Here’s Military Spokesman Daniel Hagari in a video released by the IDF yesterday.

DANIEL HAGARI: We're now in the bunker that we found underneath a Lebanese house in a Shia village only a couple of kilometers from our border.

REICHARD: Meanwhile, days have gone by since Israeli leaders promised to hit Iran itself with a lethal and surprising attack.

This comes after Iran launched a missile barrage numbering in the hundreds aimed not at military targets, but civilians in Tel Aviv.

EICHER: Joining us now to talk about the conflict is Richard Goldberg. He previously served the White House on the National Security Council staff. He’s now a senior advisor for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

REICHARD: Rich, good morning.

RICHARD GOLDBERG: Good morning.

REICHARD: Let’s start with Iran. Rich, what do you make of Israel’s delay in responding to Iran’s missile attack? Do you think U.S. diplomatic pressure is a factor?

GOLDBERG: Well, it's really possible that diplomatic pressure is playing into this. I would call it likely more coordination and deconfliction, though there may be some pressure as well, certainly when you hear the president of the United States say very publicly he does not favor Israeli strikes on nuclear targets or on oil infrastructure specifically, the need for U.S. support in defending Israel and whatever Iran might respond with after the Israeli first strike, is certainly something to be taken into consideration. And obviously we're now seeing the deployment of a THAAD system. This is the Terminal High Altitude [Area] Defense System, air defense system that the Americans have, certainly bolstering Israel's ballistic missile defense here ahead of whatever Israeli action is coming. That's good news for the Israelis to increase their defense posture before going on offense, and so if taking more time to coordinate with the Americans is providing them a better defense for whatever the Iranians might launch. But also remembering that time in this regard, is certainly still on Israel's side. There is no rush to respond. You don't have to show force immediately. They can launch a strike package inside of Iran. We saw them hit a target in Iran, very symbolically, back in April after that first big ballistic missile strike. But remember, they also have covert capabilities inside of Iran. We've seen Mossad sabotage efforts, assassination plots, explosions. And so if you need some time to make sure those are all synchronized, and you want to sequence something so that you are knocking out command and control, you are disorienting the regime. It might not be hey, let's rush and hit a few targets as much as we can and see what happens next. Let's actually think this through. Be methodical, be strategic about it. Build this into a campaign, not just into a one off retaliation.

REICHARD: Rich, is it possible that Israel has struck Iran…but in such a way that Iran doesn’t want to publicly admit?

GOLDBERG: Well, we saw some explosions in the last few days. You always see certain explosions here and there at locations that have in the past been tied to their nuclear program, their supply chain, centrifuge supplies, things like that. You never know whether or not that's actually a sabotage operation, some sort of covert action that took out something or disrupted something, those are always possible. Unlikely that the Iranians would want to acknowledge that happening, if they can avoid it. Though you see gossip and rumoring in social media that neither side really acknowledges. It's a challenge for us because we don't actually know the extent of Israeli capabilities, and therefore we can't in our own minds, conceive of what an operation multi dimensionally might look like.

REICHARD: Turning now to Lebanon…Israel very quickly took out Hezbollah’s communications and command structure late last month, and then began a ground offensive. Where does it stand now…and what’s their objective?

GOLDBERG: Well, I think it's important to recognize that Hezbollah remains a threat in Lebanon. Its leadership has been decimated, and that's an incredible accomplishment by the Israeli military, something that most people didn't believe was possible in just a couple of weeks time, from the Secretary General, the head of the terrorist organization, Hassan Nasrallah on down. That’s a crisis for Tehran, since this is essentially an extension of Iran. So what is Israel doing now on the ground? While the air campaign is still potentially there to look at high value targets within the terror infrastructure command and control. You are seeing the Israelis going town by town off of their border to root out the hidden missiles, the hidden anti tank guided missiles, which have been attacking homes, so that at some point the 60,000 to 100,000 Israelis who have been evacuated from their homes since October 8, when Hezbollah started firing on Israel can actually return. That doesn't mean you're going to eliminate all threats from Hezbollah. It doesn't mean Hezbollah is going to be gone in southern Lebanon, but if you can push Hezbollah back beyond the range of those anti tank guided missiles, if you can guarantee that the space between that range, which is around six miles, 10 kilometers, is free of those threats, that there's some sort of a buffer zone there, that would be a big achievement to restore some modicum of normalcy of security to those northern border towns on the Israeli side. So if there is ever a cease-fire in the future. You can then see an opportunity to bring people back to their homes, which is the stated objective here of the Israeli government.

REICHARD: Rich, final question. You’ve studied this area for a long long time now. Is there anything happening in that region that you think the American public should know but perhaps doesn’t?

GOLDBERG: I think the one thing to remember is that this isn't something thousands of miles away that is disconnected from our security. Important to always remember what is the national interest here? Obviously important to support an ally, and Israel is at the tip of the spear in a very dangerous area for democracy, sort of the canary in the coal mine for our national security. Certainly important that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon—not just for the region, but for the world. Remember, this is a regime that chants Death to America before it says Death to Israel. They have active terror plots against Americans right now. They're operating on our soil today, and of course, they are building long range missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons all the way to the U.S. homeland. That is their ultimate intent. So understand that we have a very direct national security interest in degrading Iran, degrading its threats, ensuring that Israel is successful in dismantling this ring of fire that Iran has created and ultimately taking out the biggest threats to us inside of Iran, its nuclear and missile programs.

REICHARD: Rich Goldberg is a former member of the National Security Council staff…and senior advisor for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Thank you for your time!

GOLDBERG: You bet.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up, recovering from two storms.

SOUND: [RECOVERY EFFORTS]

Floridians continue picking up the pieces this week after its second hurricane in as many weeks.

Following Helene, Hurricane Milton hit Florida on Wednesday night as a category three and killed at least 23. Power’s still out for some 400-thousand.

EICHER: Ahead of the most recent storm, aid groups and government officials stationed crews just outside the projected path. Some have been on the job since Helene hit three weeks ago.

REICHARD: WORLD’s Mary Muncy on the stresses on the helpers.

REED ADCOCK: We took a beating.

MARY MUNCY: Reed Adcock leads a storm response company. He coordinates bringing extra linemen into disaster areas.

ADCOCK: And when I drive around here, I see 100 year old oaks laying on their side on cars.

He lives about ten miles north of where Milton’s eye cut through Florida.

ADCOCK: It's amazing how much tree damage has been done in this part.

Adcock’s crews take a tiered priority approach. They start with getting power and water to emergency services and the most populated areas, then they move slowly outward.

Some of Adcock’s linemen have been on the job since Hurricane Helene hit three weeks ago.

ADCOCK: We literally had folks driving from Florida to Georgia, then to South Carolina or North Carolina, only to turn around from North Carolina and drive back to Florida to do the next storm.

He says two major storms back to back is rare… and they’re pulling from deep in their reserves. When a storm is coming, they usually call linemen closest to it first.

ADCOCK: On this storm, we had folks that came out of Canada.

And linemen aren’t the only ones working their way up and down the east coast.

Disaster relief organizations all over the country converged on Florida before Hurricane Helene hit, only to realize they needed to send teams further north too.

And now, they’re calling some of those teams back down to Florida.

AIMEE FRESTON: We're currently in Tennessee and we're also in North Carolina, those two locations for Hurricane Helene, and then now we're providing support to Florida for Hurricane Milton.

Aimee Freston works in communications for Texans on Mission—a Christian non-profit relief organization.

FRESTON: I was in Tennessee just a few days ago, and we had some people packing up on Wednesday night to head out to Florida on Thursday morning.

Right now, she says the needs are pretty different in each state so they aren’t spread too thin, but this has been a busy year.

In August, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, had to stop funding everything except life-saving operations.

Then, right before Helene hit, Congress passed a resolution allowing FEMA to borrow money from next year's budget, giving them access to about 20 billion dollars starting October 1.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell held a press conference before Milton hit.

DEANNE CRISWELL: I think it was 11 billion dollars was in there as of yesterday morning.

Criswell had planned to ask Congress for more funding in December or January.

CRISWELL: But I’m going to have to evaluate how quickly we’re burning the remaining dollars within the disaster relief fund to see if I’m going to have to go back in to ask for additional funding.

FEMA spent part of the money on helping states continue to recover from disasters like wildfires in California and tornadoes in Texas earlier this year. They’ve spent the rest on Hurricane Helene and at that point, preparations for Milton.

Some lawmakers have criticized the agency for its response to Helene in North Carolina… where many remain without power and water. And they’re questioning the agency’s efficiency.

BROCK LONG: Disaster response to recovery is a team sport.

Former FEMA administrator Brock Long told WORLD’s Addie Offereins that FEMA is just one player in a large-scale response.

LONG: FEMA is not going to be able to make someone who has lost their home and uninsured, they're not going to be able to make them whole. They only have the ability to render support that really kickstart recovery.

Instead, Long says FEMA relies on non-profits to fill some of the gaps in helping victims.

Right now, FEMA keeps having to ask for money for its Disaster Relief Fund. Long says the fund needs to be reassessed… to understand how much money the agency actually needs.

LONG: But here's the other thing I'll say: bigger FEMA is not necessarily going to be the single greatest thing that stops us from having these big disasters.

Instead, he says it’s going to be increasing community resilience. Things like better building code enforcement, having the right insurance, and people being more personally prepared for unexpected disasters.

LONG: We've got to get, you know, the you know, citizens in this country to become part of the solution, and not just the disaster victim that we're having to support when things go wrong.

But in the meantime, people like Ethan Forhetz with Convoy of Hope will continue to bring aid. He talked to me from an airport as he headed from distributing aid in North Carolina, to Florida right before Hurricane Milton hit.

ETHAN FORHETZ: We've been working in six states since Hurricane Helene. The big part now is North Carolina, which is still just reeling after the flooding that took place there.

They deliver truckloads of food, water, and cleaning supplies. He says the last time they had so many people and resources deployed was in 2017 when several large hurricanes hit close together.

FORHETZ: The Bible says we don't grow weary in well doing.

He says many of the volunteers are tired, but there’s a difference between being tired and being weary.

FORHETZ: We go to bed tired at night after a distribution that's eight or nine hours long, but we don't grow to go to bed weary, we go to bed refreshed in our soul, because we know we're doing the Lord's work.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

NICK EICHER, HOST: A woman up in Washington State found herself facing a unique problem with a local gang, and it was bad enough to merit a call to 911.

She called the cops on the raccoons.

DEPUTY: 35 years ago you first started feeding raccoons. And then when all of a sudden did it explode like this? 

LADY: 6 weeks ago.

Mmm-hmm, pardon my skepticism on the timeline. She’d been feeding them for decades but only in the last month and a half did they become a problem.

And they did become a problem. At least 100 of them had swarmed her home. Scratching at her door, at one point surrounding her car. Can you imagine? Demanding food.

A lady nearby has dogs who had a run-in with the nasty critters, and she seemed sympathetic to her neighbor.

NEIGHBOR: I do hope somebody steps in and helps her, you know, take care of this problem. And hopefully she quits doing it.

Quits feeding them, that is. The raccoon lady says she’s learned her lesson: stick to feeding the birds.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, October 15th.

Thank you 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: heading west.

The Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail follows the original path of their expedition. The Corps of Discovery set out from St. Louis on May 14th, 1804 and did not return home for more than two years.

REICHARD: WORLD reporter Jenny Rough recently hiked some of the trail and stopped in at one location along the route to learn what they discovered and what they didn’t.

JENNY ROUGH: Two hundred and twenty years ago, explorers Meriweather Lewis and William Clark led the Corps of Discovery, the group tasked with exploring the western continent.

NATE HESS: Alright, we’re going to head into the visitors’ center for the Lewis and Clark Trail…

Nate Hess is a historian at the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail in Omaha, Nebraska. He says President Thomas Jefferson gave the group several objectives. At the top of the list: to search for something...

NATE HESS: Something that other explorers, English, French, Spanish explorers had been searching for a very, very long time.

The Northwest Passage.

HESS: Specifically, he was very curious to whether or not there was a waterway that connected the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. Maybe some of the rivers that crisscrossed the United States might connect because then you can send boats and trade and all sorts of things up and down the waterways.

Lewis served as principal scientist, Clark as principal cartographer.

RYAN COOPER: Clark is known for making the map that’s so famous today. … Clark’s map of North America basically.

That’s Ryan Cooper, a geographer who works with Hess at trail headquarters.

COOPER: Clark didn't just have a blank canvas that he was filling in. He was armed with all of the maps from fur traders. They had all sorts of books that they took along.

But as the expedition moved westward, he had to fill in more and more.

The trail stretches 49-hundred miles from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where preparations began to the mouth of the Columbia River, which flows into the Pacific Ocean.

Hess says the party started with more than 40 members.

NATE HESS: If you’re familiar with a rocket ship when it takes off, there's booster rockets, right? And there was a portion of that crew that was kind of like a booster rocket.

The booster crew got the group to North Dakota, then turned back while the permanent party of 33 pressed on.

Seventy-five percent of the trail is water-based. The crew mainly traveled by a large keel boat and canoes. So finding a Northwest Passage looked promising at first.

HESS: They took it down the Ohio River and then up the Mississippi, and then up a good chunk of the Missouri River.

Those rivers all connect. Although geographer Cooper says the Missouri River looked very different back then.

COOPER: It was a large, wide, shallow body of water, much different from the kind of canal that it is today. And so they weren’t leisurely rowing on the water…

Historian Hess says, when they hit those shallow points—

HESS: Well, they got out and pulled. [Laughs]

… wearing linen trousers and wool coats.

The Corps only managed about 10 miles per day. The slow pace allowed designated hunters to walk alongside and gather food. They used a 1795 Springfield Musket. Hess holds a reproduction.

HESS: You have to pour black power down the muzzle of the barrel. And you have to use this thing called a ram rod to push the bullet all the way down. You just pull the trigger then. [Musket clicks]

They ate all kinds of different animals.

HESS: If they shot something, they generally ate it. Things that we wouldn't even think to eat today, things like hawks, eagles.

Hess also has a reproduction of their medical kit. Lewis and Clark weren’t doctors, but they were well-versed in survival medicine.

SOUND: [Digging through medical kit]
HESS: Here, let’s get a couple of…
ROUGH: Oh, yikes!
HESS: …the more impressive items…

The kit includes everything from a scary looking knife with a long, curved blade…

HESS: This is called a capital knife. And this is the type of amputation knife that would be used on something that’s curved, such as an arm or a leg.

… to forceps for extracting musket balls.

HESS: That’s is called a bullet probe. That’s your old time x-ray. That’s where you find out where the bullet is. And then you would use that to extract the bullet.

But the biggest challenge the Corps faced? The Rocky Mountains. They knew mountains were out there, but not how many, nor how high.

HESS: Thomas Jefferson didn't know that at that point. And none of the people living in the 13 colonies knew that at that point, the American Indians knew that.

The Corps began to get an inkling of what lay ahead after communicating with Indian tribes through interpreters and sign language.

Geographer Cooper says Lewis and Clark probably began to suspect the Northwest Passage didn’t exist when they reached the top of Lemhi Pass on the border of modern day Idaho and Montana.

COOPER: Lewis basically thinks, okay, up and over this ridge, we're going to be home free to the Pacific Ocean. And all he sees after that is just more and more massive mountains with snow on the top.

They followed already-established paths over the Bitterroot range. But the snowy, rugged mountains almost did them in.

COOPER: They had been eating their candles. They had been eating snow.

The group had crossed over the Continental Divide. Water that falls west of the divide reaches the Pacific. Water that falls east heads toward the Atlantic. Here’s Hess:

HESS: The primary objective of the Lewis and Clark Expedition was to try and find the Northwest passage. So in that sense, the expedition was kind of a failure. Because the Northwest passage doesn't exist.

But the detailed writings of Lewis, Clark, and the other explorers did pave the way for westward expansion. The journals noted everything from geology and plant life to animal species and tribe encounters.

Today, people can visit the trail and stand in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark imagining what the explorers might have learned and seen. Cooper says that enables us to give deeper thought to what’s changed and what hasn’t.

HESS: William Clark and Merriweather Lewis complimented each other so well. Where Lewis was maybe a little weaker, Clark was strong. And then of course, vice versa.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jenny Rough in Omaha, Nebraska.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, October 15th. 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: an invitation for older women.

Dame Maggie Smith died last month, having built her acting career to great acclaim playing older women. Smith embraced old age, and the dignity and authority that went with it. It’s an unusual trait given our culture’s obsession with youth. WORLD Opinions contributor Candice Watters says older women in the church should pay attention.

CANDICE WATTERS: Recently a Wall Street Journal commentator worried about American baby boomers’ extreme efforts to stay young. Brenda Cronin writes: “Longevity is in vogue. Going gentle is yesterday’s approach. Now it’s all about thundering through middle and even old age with the brains, reflexes and agility of youth.”

I wonder if our efforts to preserve the appearance of youth is distracting us from something urgent. According to a survey from the American Enterprise Institute, Generation Z women are outnumbering the men in their age group leaving the churches they grew up in. Could it be that older Christian women are so busy trying to remain young that they’re neglecting a God-given stewardship to disciple younger women?

The survey also reveals that many young women who grew up in Christian homes appear to be rejecting God’s design for male and female. I wonder if they’ve seen older women demonstrating its goodness. Young women report they’re increasingly becoming feminists and embracing abortion and the LGBTQ agenda. Who has been there to challenge their cultural attitudes and show them a better way?

I needed to learn from older women when I was young. Phyllis was 30 years my senior when we met. She helped me grow in maturity. She knew and loved the Bible—she’d been reading it every day since she was in her 20s. When I described marriage like a tug-of-war and bristled at the word submission, she pointed me to Scripture. I watched her submit gladly to her husband, Paul. The Lord used her example to show me that His ways are higher than mine.

Another older friend said she celebrated when her hair went gray. Now she could speak boldly to younger believers as the one with what Proverbs 16:31 calls a “crown of glory… gained in a righteous life.”

What do older women neglect when they chase after youth and relate to younger women as peers?

Now I’m nearly as old as Phyllis was when we met. I know I need to delight in God’s Word in order to resist the pull of the world and my own flesh. But also, the young women in my church need women like me to be filled with the Word. When my words are God’s words I can speak more boldly no matter how challenging the message is.

Strong cultural currents are pulling many young women away from the church. Older women, we need to lay aside our desires to appear young for the sake of discipling those who are young. They need faithful older women to “teach [them] what is good.” As the Apostle Paul instructs in Titus 2 they need spiritual mothers who are willing to show them the goodness of loving their husbands and children; being self-controlled, pure, and kind; working at home; and being submissive to their husbands. As Titus 2 verses three through five says, all of this is so “that the word of God may not be reviled.”

I’m thankful God sent older women like Phyllis into my life when I was young. She trusted the Lord and His Word. She lived out a genuine, fearless faith that I want to emulate. She was content being older and spent herself discipling young women like me.

We need the Lord’s help to see the goodness and purpose in growing old. We can be confident that 2 Corinthians 4:16 is true: “Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.”

That inner renewal is meant for kingdom purposes. Older women, be unafraid to be old. The young women are counting on you.

I’m Candice Watters.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: on Washington Wednesday women who regret their abortions respond to Kamala Harris’s promise of “reproductive freedom.” And, we’ll meet a couple with a counter-cultural message encouraging families to have more children. 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.

The Bible records the Apostle Paul telling the elders of Ephesus: “I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw the disciples after them. Therefore, be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears.” —Acts 20:29-31

Go now in grace and peace.

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