The World and Everything in It: October 19, 2022

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

How will border policy affect the midterm elections next month?

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday.

Also World Tour with our Africa reporter Onize Ohikere.

Plus, we’ll meet a family of filmmakers.

And WORLD Founder Joel Belz considers the flying trapeze and God’s law.

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, October 19th. 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: Biden doubling down on abortion for midterms » President Biden is banking on abortion to help his party keep control of Congress. He said he expects voters to turn out in big numbers to protect abortion rights.

BIDEN: Come this November, we’re going to see what happens all over America, God willing.

Biden heard there in at a Democratic campaign event, looking to fire up supporters.

He vowed that if voters deliver the numbers needed for Democrats to pass new legislation without Republicans …

BIDEN: The first bill that I will send to the Congress will be to codify Roe v.Wade.

But Biden’s bet on abortion may not pay off.

A new poll from the New York Times and Siena College of nearly a thousand registered voters nationwide found that more independent women are leaning Republican - by an 18-point margin.

Polling finds that even among so-called “pro-choice” voters, many are more worried about the economy than the availability of abortions.

Germany caution in China relationship » Germany’s foreign minister is warning that her country cannot make the same mistakes with China that it made with Russia. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin explains.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: Europe faces an energy crisis this winter after years of relying on Russian oil and gas. And foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock says her country must learn a tough but valuable lesson about leaning too heavily on authoritarian countries.

She told a foreign policy forum in Berlin that—her words—“one-sided economic dependence exposes us to political blackmail.”

German companies have invested heavily in China in recent years, and China is one of Germany's biggest trading partners.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz does not support breaking off trade with China, but he wants to place greater emphasis on trading with other nations.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Ukraine » Russian airstrikes have taken out at least 30 percent of Ukraine’s power stations.

AUDIO: [Ukraine spokesman]

A spokesman for Ukraine’s emergency services told reporters that more than a thousand towns and villages are cut off from electricity. That after 10 days of Russian strikes targeting energy facilities across the country.

Meantime, the death toll has risen in Kyiv from recent attacks. A swarm attack Monday of drones carrying explosives is now blamed for five deaths. And at least three people were killed in separate attacks on Tuesday.

Russian court rejects Navalny’s 2nd prison sentence appeal » Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critic in Russia will remain behind bars. WORLD’s Mary Muncy has more.

MARY MUNCY, REPORTER: A Russian court on Tuesday rejected a second appeal by opposition leader Alexei Navalny. He is serving a nine-year sentence on charges of fraud and contempt of court. The U.S. State Dept. says those charges were entirely trumped up to silence Navalny.

Police arrested Navalny in January of last year on his return from Germany. He went there to recover from nerve-agent exposure. Western intelligence says the Kremlin was behind his poisoning.

Navalny's arrest last year triggered the biggest protests seen in Russia in recent years, followed by harsh government crackdowns.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

Truss struggles in UK » British Prime Minister Liz Truss is scrambling to recover her grasp on power.

That after newly installed Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt ripped up her economic blueprint this week:

HUNT: We will reverse almost all of the tax measures announced in the growth plan three weeks ago that have not started parliamentary legislation.

That has some calling Truss a lame duck prime minister just six weeks after assuming office.

For her part, Truss said her government has made mistakes for which she apologized.

TRUSS: We have restored economic stability and fiscal discipline. And what I now want to do is go on and deliver for the public.

She remains in office, for now. Her Conservative Party is divided over if and how to replace her.

Truss held a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, where, her spokesman said they had an “in-depth discussion” on a new economic plan, and that no one asked her to resign.

ISIS French company fined » The French cement company Lafarge has pleaded guilty to U.S. charges that it paid millions of dollars to ISIS to keep a plant operational in Syria.

U.S. federal prosecutor Breon Peace told reporters …

PEACE: Lafarge made a deal with the devil, foreign terrorists who pledged to, and in fact did, harm the United States, its people, and its national security. And they did it for profit.

U.S. federal prosecutor Breon Peace said the company knowingly supported a terrorist group.

PEACE: Millions of dollars that ISIS could use to recruit members and conduct brutal terrorist attacks worldwide.

Prosecutors say the company routed nearly $6 million to ISIS and al-Nusrah Front, another militant group, in 2013 and 2014.

The company has agreed to pay nearly $800 million in penalties.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: the state of the border crisis ahead of the midterm elections.

Plus, a family making feature-length films together.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 19th of October, 2022.

Thanks for joining us for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Washington Wednesday.

Yesterday we talked a bit about Title 42 and the Biden administration using that rule to turn away a massive surge of Venezuelan migrants at the southern border.

But invoking Title 42 is a band-aid on a far bigger problem. Increasingly, migrants are crossing the US-Mexico border from all corners of the world. And the numbers are staggering. In the last fiscal year, border officials reported more than 2 million migrant encounters for the first time ever.

EICHER: So, what can the government do to truly address the border crisis, and how will this issue factor into the midterm elections next month?

Joining us now is Simon Hankinson. He’s worked as a foreign service officer at the State Department since 1999. He is now a researcher and an expert on border security and immigration.

REICHARD: Simon, good morning!

SIMON HANKINSON, GUEST: Good morning. 

REICHARD: Put the border surge in perspective for us. How does what we’ve seen over the past year or two differ from border traffic in years past?

HANKINSON: Mostly in volume and in the way that we deal with it. There has always been historically legal and illegal immigration over the southern border. But what's really changed in the past couple of years is the volume has gone up and the administration has decided to let it. So, under the Trump administration we saw a massive decrease in the number of illegal crossers. I think by the end, it was down about 85%. And under Biden, we've seen it go to, as you said, historic numbers, I think, over 170,000 people. So, unprecedented numbers a month. Many months over 200,000 and over over 2 million in the last fiscal year and almost that many of the year before.

REICHARD: Now, we have seen in recent months Texas Gov. Greg Abbot and some other red state governors busing or flying migrants to Democrat-led sanctuary cities and states. Democrats have derided that as a political stunt. What difference has that made, do you think?

HANKINSON: Well, I think it’s a brilliant political move. I wouldn't call it a stunt. I think what they're trying to do is demonstrate to the rest of the country that this is a huge problem and it's a national problem, and that you can't just write endless blank checks and hope that they never come home to roost, that no one ever catches them. It's all very well to declare yourself a sanctuary city as New York and Washington D.C. and others have, but it means that you have to accept the consequences of your generosity. For example, New York City is now looking at something like 17,000, I mean, the numbers go up every week, so I lose track, but there are well over 4,000 new kids going into their public schools, which are I think the second most expensive in the country at about $30,000 per pupil per year. Their homeless shelters are full. The mayor has rented a hotel. He's looking to rent I think a total of 41 other hotels, and even at a cruise ship parked in the harbor. And he's tried to declare a state of emergency. So you're seeing that there are consequences. And I think one of the reasons for that is these governors— Governor Ducey and Governor Abbott—were bussing fairly small numbers of people, honestly. The one that got the biggest fuss was, of course, the Martha's Vineyard flight which was only 50.

REICHARD: Are there specific events or policies that you would point to that’s led to the greater numbers of people pouring across the southern border?

HANKINSON: Well, yes. The main one, it’s what I call the Mayorkas Migration Machine. They've gone from … the sort of traditional model is you have to deter people from coming in. If they get across the border illegally, you have to detain them until whatever legal process is completed, and then you have to deport them. You've got to send them back home. And that was fairly effective. There's always going to be some illegal migration over a border the size of ours with Mexico, but historically, there have been surges, but nothing like what we've been seeing lately. The Biden administration, I think, in a massive ideological overcorrection to what they perceived as evil Trump policies, they overturned everything that worked, everything that was being done, from building barriers and surveillance and adequately staffing the border, to Title 42, to the migrant protection protocols, where people who are trying to claim asylum had to wait for their cases to be heard in Mexico. And since nine out of 10 of them won't get asylum in the long run, that means that they're not waiting in the U.S. and that they're going to disappear somewhere through the process. So under the Mayorkas Machine, they are allowing people into the country, they process them. So maybe they take down their biometric details, their photo, their fingerprints, they'll take down their name, if they have any kind of documentation, their birthday, and any other information they can get. Then they parole them, and then they punt them into the interior. I think there's an 8.5 million case backlog with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and almost a 2 million case backlog with the Department of Justice immigration courts. And parole authority, it does exist in the Immigration and Nationality Act. But it was conceived as an exception, a very rare exception by the Secretary of Homeland Security or Secretary of State to let someone in for some kind of medical emergency where they couldn't get a visa for some reason. But the Biden administration is using it wholesale for hundreds of thousands of people.

REICHARD: And more broadly, as we look ahead to midterm elections, Democrats have long believed that immigration would be an issue that would help them to increasingly win over Hispanic voters. But a Quinnipiac poll last fall showed that around 7 out of 10 Hispanics disapproved of President Biden’s handling of the border through his immigration policies. Other polls have similar findings. How do you see immigration factoring into the midterm elections next month?

HANKINSON: You know, it’s really hard to tell. I’m skeptical of polls these days because the traditional methods for gathering information just no longer apply. I mean, people don't have landlines, but then not all older people have cell phones or want to use them. And older people vote more than younger people. So I'm a little skeptical about polls. But polls do show that the economy is always number one. If there's a bad economy as there is now with high inflation and people are worried about the price of gas and heating their houses that's going to take the most of their attention. But immigration is up there. High crime is up there. And those two things are not entirely unconnected. So I do think it is an issue that voters are thinking about, particularly in border states. And I'll say something else with regard to the Hispanic vote. We've seen Myra Flores get elected. So a Mexican-American Congresswoman in a border region. I was just down on the border in Texas where the population is, I wouldn't tell you exactly, you know, 80% Hispanic. I mean, these are people who've been there for generations, but they share some kind of heritage with people on the other side of the border. They're really unhappy at the state of things. I mean, these are not people motivated by hatred of migrants or racism. They're just people who want to be able to live in their houses without seeing people illegally crossing their land every single day. There are ranchers who have their fences cut, so they can't keep animals safely. I spoke to a woman who had to install expensive security lighting and she has to lock her doors every night and buy a dog which she'd never had to do over the past 20 years because she lives a mile from the border. So I think this issue is no longer a slam dunk win for Democrats if they think that all Hispanics are automatically going to vote for leniency on the border, amnesties, and higher numbers of immigration.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about who is responsible for what. Suppose Republicans recapture control of one or both chambers of Congress next month. Is there anything they can do to affect border policy specifically, or does that have to come from the White House?

HANKINSON: Well, I think that's really that's the answer. And leadership does have to come from the White House, from the Secretary of Homeland Security. But there are things that they can do. I've heard talk of impeaching Secretary Mayorkas for completely failing to do his duty. He swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and to uphold the laws of the United States and he's not doing that. Congress can exercise its oversight authority, as you know, when the party that's in power has a lot more ability to ask the questions and to and to run the meetings in these oversight hearings. And they can ask, what are you doing? Where's the money going? How much money are you spending on non-governmental organizations in order to give people tickets, cell phones, move them into the interior of the country? How many of those people are disappearing? How many of those people can you keep tabs on? How many terrorists have gotten in? How many criminals? How satisfied is the Department of Homeland Security that they have even the identities of these people? And so on. So Congress can ask a lot of tough questions. They can hold administration officials accountable. And I suppose ultimately, they can control the funding, although that's the most complicated way.

REICHARD: Do you see common ground on Capitol Hill to actually fix the immigration and border problems? What’s it going to take?

HANKINSON: No, I don’t. I hate to be a pessimist, but I’ve been following this issue since I was in college. I wrote my first paper on immigration in, I think, 1989. And the last big immigration reform was 1986. There was another little one in 1991. Ever since then, people keep talking about immigration reform and on the left, that means let more people in, make it easier for them, have an amnesty. On the right, it means enforce our immigration law and sometimes reduce the numbers of legal immigrants. And I just don't think at the moment that there's room and there's appetite for compromise on almost any issue between left and right, unfortunately. And immigration is probably one of the hardest issues to solve. So I'm not particularly optimistic that we're going to see common ground and any kind of comprehensive package anytime soon.

REICHARD: Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation. Simon, thanks so much!

HANKINSON: It was a pleasure talking with you.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD Tour with Onize Ohikere, our reporter in Africa.

Nigerian flooding— Today’s World Tour sets off here in Nigeria, which is facing record flooding.

AUDIO: [Floodwaters]

Residents in Nigeria’s southeast Anambra state used canoes to navigate through flooded streets after heavy rainfall.

The worst flooding in a decade is affecting 27 of Nigeria’s 36 states. The disaster has killed more than 600 people and displaced 1.3 million others. Floodwaters have also destroyed more than 800,000 acres of farmland.

Jude Ekene-Ane is a taxi driver in Anambra. He said his neighbors tried to use sand to keep out the flood from their street, but the water still entered his house.

EKENE-ANE: We paid for over five trips of sand that we would drop along these streets and in front of our yard to stop the flood from entering our house. But all to no avail.

Similar scenes played out in Kogi state, located at the confluence of two of West Africa’s biggest rivers.

Authorities blamed unusually heavy rains this year and climate change. But experts also pointed to poor city planning and infrastructure.

The Meteorological Agency said heavy rainfall will continue until the end of November in some states.

Uganda Ebola response— We head east to Uganda, where authorities are still trying to control an Ebola outbreak.

MUSEVENI: Movement into and out of Mubende and Kassanda districts is prohibited.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni imposed a lockdown on two districts at the epicenter of the outbreak over the weekend.

The 21-day restrictions bar personal travel, shut down churches and public places, and set a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

The health ministry has reported 19 deaths and 58 confirmed cases since the outbreak began last month.

Ebola is spread through bodily fluids. The particular strain in circulation is called the Sudan Ebola virus, and has no vaccine.

Paris protests— Next, to France.

AUDIO: [Protesters chanting]

Thousands of protesters turned out on the streets of Paris on Sunday to decry rising living costs and government inaction over climate change.

Left-wing politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon led the rally. This year’s Nobel Literature laureate Annie Ernaux also attended.

AUDIO: [Speaking in French]

This 69-year-old retired railway worker said he wants higher purchasing power, better salaries, and an end to return-to-work orders.

The French prime minister warned striking oil industry workers that the government might use its requisition powers to force workers back to their posts… to ease fuel shortages.

Several unions also led a transportation strike that caused disruptions on Tuesday.

Jerusalem March— We wrap up at a global Christian gathering in Jerusalem.

AUDIO: [Singing]

Christians singing and waving flags from all over the world marched through Jerusalem last week.

They were celebrating Sukkot, or the Feast of Tabernacles.

Participants blew traditional Jewish shofar horns, sang worship songs, and carried religious icons. The Old Testament festival commemorates a harvest of thanksgiving and the 40 years the Israelites wandered in the desert. Participants feast and build sukkots—or huts—o remember the huts the Israelites slept in during their days of wandering.

Carl Halberg came with his wife from Hamilton, New Zealand.

HALBERG: Every time I see a nation here, speaking in their language, singing in their language, it brings a tear to my eye.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: Sometimes what makes things memorable is a good scare. That’s what happened big time for an American couple on their honeymoon in Spain.

Doran Smith and David Squillante were out for a stroll in Barcelona when Doran noticed a group of women in a panic. She told news station WJAR:

SMITH: I saw a flame coming out of the doorway next to the door that these women had come out of. So I said, 'There’s a fire."

Her husband lept to action, ran into the building and this is what he discovered.

SQUILLANTE: I found myself looking at 15-20 babies sleeping and immediately just kind of lined everybody up. We started grabbing them and putting them into the cribs.

The couple and other good Samaritans moved the babies to safety across the street. It only took ten minutes, and now the couple has quite the honeymoon story!

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, October 19th. 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: family videos turn into family movies.

Most parents by now have captured plenty of growing up years on video. But you probably didn’t have a professional set up with mics, costumes, and sets to produce a feature-length film.

REICHARD: WORLD’s Josh Schumacher caught up with one family who decided to up the production value and make family videos a time to bond.

AUDIO: [Awards ceremony, applause, music]

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: It’s the Christian Worldview Film Festival in Albany, Georgia. For the past few days, Christian filmmakers have been showcasing their movies. Judges have been voting on which films they think are best in various categories.

There’s best music video, best short film, best feature film, and so on.

Think the Oscars, except there are no tuxedos, and no red carpet. People are wearing sports jackets or suits, and it’s in the half-filled auditorium of a Baptist megachurch.

One award the festival hands out, though, is not decided by the judges.

SPEAKER: Okay, the Audience Choice Award winner for this year's festival we want to congratulate Return to New Haven [Applause, music].

A family of 10 walks up on the stage to accept the award. It’s the Steege family. Eight kids and their two parents. Believe it or not, Return to New Haven is their third feature-length film.

Little Crew Studios began about 15 years ago. Here’s Joel Steege. He’s the dad.

STEEGE: Well, it's kind of one of those things where we didn't really plan to do it. It's, it kind of happened.

Steege had been working as an IT Product Manager for Intel, and that had him traveling all over the world—he was gone just about every week.

And well, when you have kids, you realize life’s moving by pretty fast. He didn’t want to miss out on the kids growing up.

STEEGE: And so we were just trying to find something that we could do as a family, where we could all be involved.

And that’s how the moviemaking came to be. The family had done some family movies before, and putting those together had been a lot of fun, so they decided they’d give that a try… With a little bit of a family-style twist.

STEEGE: And then we thought, well, especially using our kids as the actors, well, here's something we could do, we could all do together.

That’s right: their kids—their little kids—were going to play all the roles.

CHILD 1: Who’re you?

CHILD 2: I’m here to help you… Whoa!

And so the filmmaking began. The Steeges did it the responsible way at first: Joel kept his job and burned all his weekends and holidays making movies. And they never made any progress.

STEEGE: So we kind of made the decision, you know what, we're gonna leave the job, we're gonna jump in with both feet. And we did that.

That’s when the filmmaking really began. And that’s when they ran into their next problem: they kind of had no idea what they were doing. They had to learn everything—And not just about the technical aspects of making a movie, like getting the sound and the color balance right.

For one, they had to learn how to make movies with kids as the actors.

STEEGE: Sometimes if you have a memorized everything…it comes out very robotic…And so sometimes you're trying to improvise…And with each one of the kids, it's different, because their personalities are different…

But they also had to learn how to write stories.

The Steeges originally started by writing a parable for their first movie, the Runner from Ravenshead.

STEEGE: And so the first movie was just simply the verse, you know, Jesus says, Come unto me, all you, you who are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. And we thought about the idea of the City of Refuge, and how that's the picture. And so we thought we'd just take that simple idea, and just kind of lay it out in a story, an analogy, or a parable.

They laid out the story, they shot all the scenes, and they put it together. The final product clocked in at 44 minutes. That’s half the length of a normal feature film.

So, they went back and laid out some more scenes to get it to 80 minutes. And? Voila: Their first real movie.

TRAILER: Henry, we need your help in the field until we can get a guide back in. If the Runner hasn’t been caught. Should be able to rendezvous near the red bridge.

And six years later, The Defense of New Haven.

Child 1: Do not let him get to the Defense Force!

Child 2: Quick! In Here!

Both of the movies showcase the parable-style storytelling. And that storytelling style really gets down to one of the Steeges’ main objectives. See, their goal isn’t just making movies that sell.

STEEGE: I think as parents, the most important thing that you want in your kid's life is that they, when we're gone, that they're going to have a walk with the Lord, that's their first priority. And that's the focus of their life.

So they’ve focused on making movies with lessons Joel and his wife Lisa have learned from their lives as believers… Or lessons they’re re-learning.

STEEGE: As we're teaching it to our kids, and we're trying to put it in movies, it's really where it starts to sink into our own lives.

Making movies has also taught them to trust God to provide. When the Steeges made their first movie, they could rely on things like DVD sales for revenue. By the time they were releasing their second movie, everything had moved to streaming. And that meant a change in the business model.

While making their latest movie, they ended up relying on donations—and 40 different times, they ended up getting donations just when they needed them.

STEEGE: ...and if one of those 40 doesn't come in, we probably don't make the movie.

Making movies hasn’t just helped the Steeges grow spiritually, it’s also helped them grow in the craft itself. Joel says he feels like he’s finally figuring it all out.

STEEGE: You know, you put in 14 years of filmmaking and you feel like the lights just starting to come through the door on how to tell a good story.

The family plans to continue filmmaking for the foreseeable future. But as their kids grow up, the Steeges know they’ll have to adapt. They’re not sure what that will look like yet, but they’re thinking about shifting the types of stories they tell, and gearing them towards older child actors. They’re also considering turning to episode-based series, rather than movies.

Even with the uncertainty, Joel Steege says they still feel like this is where God’s got them for right now.

STEEGE: [Applause, music] Thank you a lot we—it's interesting being in a showing here and feeling like the audience is pulling for you. Like they're overlooking your mistakes and they want it to be as good as it can be. And we just want to thank you all.

[Applause]

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher in Albany, Georgia.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, October 19th. 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.

Americans have long enjoyed the antics of daredevils and stuntmen. Take for example the historic Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. It shut down in 2017. But now the circus plans a comeback next fall. Proof that our fascination with people who flaunt the laws of physics is alive and well.

EICHER: Here’s WORLD Founder Joel Belz in a classic commentary on one death-defying feat that can teach us about God’s moral law.

JOEL BELZ, FOUNDER: A man came to our town two weeks ago and advertised boldly in the local paper that he was going to defy the laws of God in public. Well, it wasn't exactly the way it sounds. The man was a tightrope walker with Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. What the newspaper ad really said was that for $9, I could watch this fellow defy the laws of gravity.

I'm not at all sure the acrobat knows that God controls gravity. I didn't go to the circus. But the acrobat’s claim set me thinking–what with all the law breaking going on in the world today, why would someone set out to break another one of God's laws so gratuitously?

The fact is, of course, that there are two distinct categories of God's laws. There are the ones like don't lie, don't steal, and don't commit adultery–laws that seem all too easy to break. Then there is that other set of laws like 2 plus 3 equals 5, yellow plus blue equals green, and two solid objects can't occupy the same space at the same time. Laws that some of us work pretty hard to break, but which seem to get more and more certain as time goes on.

That's where appearances are deceiving in several ways. We all know–even non Christians know it–that when you try to break that second set of laws, you end up getting broken yourself. But we suppose that somehow with the right kind of cleverness, we can sneak around the first set of laws and get off scot free. It doesn't work that way at all. The evidence is that in the long run on balance, we would be far better off ignoring the second set of rules and observing the first. The damage we would do would still be severe, but not so long lasting.

In fact, human misery is summarized in our rebellion against both sets of laws. Most of us would test even the first set of God's physical laws more regularly, except that somehow we discover more quickly that life doesn't work as well when we do. Without that short tether, we'd be just as messed up there as we are with God's moral laws. Part of our task as Christians is to discover and then to proclaim to others how God's overall rules for life, both moral and physical, are designed to bring harmony and balance in all of life. This is true for us as individuals, as families, as communities, as nations and in the world at large.

Looking at the news makes it easy to see what we're doing wrong. Looking at God's Word is the best way to discover how we're supposed to do it right. About that acrobat, he wasn't really breaking God's laws. Whether he knew it or not, he was observing them. That's why he kept his balance. Something people actually paid to watch him do.

EICHER: That’s Joel Belz, reading his column titled “Balance on a High Wire” from his book, Consider These Things. The column originally appeared in the March 31, 1986 issue of WORLD Magazine.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: protests in Iran and religious freedom. Plus, mentoring young entrepreneurs.

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 says: Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. (Eph 6:1-3 ESV)

Go now in grace and peace.

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