Sparkling Jewelry Worn with Work Boots

Graduate school was where I learned about and loved the writings of Victor Frankl, in particularly what he had to say about hope. Having spent time in Auschwitz, his words carried more weight than someone who just bought a lottery ticket. He made the case that those who survive desperate circumstances aren’t necessarily the physically strongest, but rather those who find some meaning in living despite trials. And meaning can be found through using creativity. It can be found in helping another person. It can be found in determining our own attitude about circumstances around us. People who survive are those who hold on to hope. You might say hope is the glitter on a dark painting. It is jewelry worn with work boots.

The times of this uncertain world of ours are not a first or second or tenth to face an unsettled present and future. We are so far from alone in our anxiousness and confusion, it would be comical if not for the plane crashes that have become weekly breaking news.

To wit: The newly freed Israelites began a long tutorial on courage when they crossed through a sea which God’s invisible hand alone held back. I wonder who was more nervous – those in the front or those at the end of the line?

 

 

Christians from Peter and James to Polycarp and Tyndale faced persecution and death from emperors, kings, and bishops. I’ve always been touched by Polycarp’s response to the captors who came to get him. Would I have ordered a meal for them while I spent an hour in my room praying? I understand the prayer. The meal? I don’t know.

 

The pilgrims lived through a rough and uncertain voyage to a land they’d never seen.

Corrie Ten Boom and Anne Frank faced deprivations and uncertainty and horror.

Israeli citizens were kidnapped, raped, tortured, and killed.

Lately, too, some folks closer to home have met with trials and deaths of loved ones in East Palestine, Ohio; Lahaina and Maui; western North Carolina and the Appalachians; and the Pacific Palisades.

I’m leaving gaps, of course; gaps you can fill in yourself, remembering that not all uncertain times are on the news.

 

However, there is much good with the bad these days. We are watching an effort to restore (rather than reform) our government to its original state. It’s long, long overdue. We are watching more people turn to Christ. I anticipate changes in our nation’s food. We will see. We get to decide where we focus. We get to determine whether to weep or sing.

Romans 5 reminds us that we can experience peace despite tribulations, and those troubles provide a way for us to gain patience along with experience. And hope. Glorious, enduring hope.

Hope. It is the sparkling jewelry to our faith’s work boots. They, both of them, get us through the uncertainty of various threats, fires, floods, and more. I hope to see you, my friend, if not on the other side, next to me as we travel through.

Images: pexels-thatguycraig000-1467574.jpg; parting_red_sea-apha-141121.jpg; pexels-karolina-grabowska-4750319.jpg; pexels-pixabay-69934.jpg; pexels-pixabay-248077.jpg; Ephesians 6:10-17

A Valentine’s Connection

It was a tug somewhere near her throat and traveling down to her heart. It wasn’t always there – only sometimes. Like Valentine’s Day. Like today. Oh, she had friends; and they were the good kind; the kind she knew she could trust with her mistakes and dreams and everyday thoughts. But they had boyfriends or husbands. They knew what a lonely Valentine’s Day was, but their experience had become fuzzy with time and change of circumstance. They knew, but they had forgotten.

Maybe she’d watch an old movie? Or read a book.

woman reading a book beside the window
Photo by Rahul Shah on Pexels.com

After thirty minutes, she stopped and tilted her head. Had she heard something? Maybe it was a squirrel or raccoon. There had been four, maybe five squirrels all winter long nosing around by the bushes. And she’d caught sight of a couple of raccoons rummaging through the garbage three nights ago.

close up of a raccoon
Photo by Volker Thimm on Pexels.com

There it was again! Heart beating faster, she grabbed an old baseball bat she kept under her couch and tiptoed to the door.

“Augh!”

“Oh!”

He turned toward her as she threw open her door, bat held high.

“I’m sorry to have scared you.” He motioned to the street. “Car trouble. I was just searching for a connection for my phone.”

“Yea, it’s not great.”

She squinted. He seemed familiar somehow.

“Hey! Were you at the thing last week?”

It clicked. He had been one of the guests at a friends 30th birthday celebration.

“You’re going to be late,” she ventured.

“I was just on my way home from the grocery store.” His chuckle ended in a sigh. “I won’t be late for anything tonight.”

“I have wifi inside.”

Relief spread across his face.

“Let me grab something from my car.” He sprinted to the curb and came back with some cookies.

“I was going to watch an old movie and bought a Valentine’s treat to go with it.”

“I’ll put on some coffee.”

And suddenly Valentine’s Day lost its tug.

black ceramic cup with brown liquid with heart shape on black ceramic saucer
Photo by Oriana Ortiz on Pexels.com

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Beautiful Savior

 

Beautiful Savior, Lord of the nations,

 

Son of God and Son of Man!

 

 

Glory and honor, praise, adoration

 

Now and forevermore be Thine!

 

 

Beautiful Savior by Joseph A. Seiss, Moravian hymn, 1873; Images: jackson-david-8qudl9pDZJ0-unsplash.jpg; zac-durant-_6HzPU9Hyfg-unsplash.jpg

 

They’ve Got Tina

They’ve got Tina.

When I heard someone say that, it was the first time I felt slight concern, though not enough, about a now 70 year old woman who was a Mesa County, Colorado county clerk.

County clerk. It’s a position that seems innocuous enough.* It is a job that includes preserving birth, death, marriage, and vital statistics records. These include deeds, liens, and judgments. Business licenses. Construction permits. Court documents. County clerks are responsible for entering data into computer systems and maintaining accurate records of all transactions and documents. And often the job includes overseeing the administration of local elections. And that responsibility includes maintaining votes from an election for 22 months following the election and 4 years following a contested election.

I’d heard a few things here and there, but didn’t pay close attention. However, Tina Peters’ name kept being mentioned.

As I understand it, some Mesa county citizens expressed their concern over votes being manipulated in the 2020 election and before that, as well. Tina didn’t take it very much to heart. After all, the system seemed to run smoothly enough and she trusted it. And then Dominion, the computer system relied on during elections asked to service their machine. Tina agreed, but out of an abundance of caution before they came to do so, she had an expert come in and, to simplify things in a way people like me can understand it, take a picture of the original vote results. After Dominion serviced the machine, Tina asked the same computer expert to take a picture again. It showed that data had been deleted and completely wiped off the server. Tina’s decision to so preserve those vote results provided proof of the felonious actions of removing critically important election-related data files (before it is legal to do so) under the guise of supposed “software update maintenance”.

Reports were made, accusations flew and now Tina is spending 9 years in prison. Her husband died in the midst of the trouble. Her home was raided including precious items of this Navy SEAL Gold Star Mother’s son. It seems like overkill for a county clerk, doesn’t it?

PBS called her a Republican election denier. The AP called her whistleblowing a voting data scheme. The judge called her a charlatan. (By the way, judges are the ones who determine which evidence is allowed and disallowed at trial.)

AP said “Peters was convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failing to comply with the secretary of state.

She was found not guilty of identity theft, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and one count of criminal impersonation. Yet she persisted on social media to accuse Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems, which made her county’s election system, and others of stealing votes.”

Why would a 70 year old county clerk persist in a lie when faced with prison and nine years, at that? I’ve heard prison is harder on women than men. I don’t know if it is, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

All of us need to do some research. Then we need to think about the perspective of the sources we are using and their biases and ours. But we are obligated in this wide world to do more than sigh or watch someone else tell us what to think.

So I won’t tell you what to think, but I’ll tell you what I think. I think elections are important, and this case shouts that this election needed a specific result, something must be covered up, and someone must be silenced. And the reason that is usually done in nations the world over is that someone(s) is threatened by a loss of control.

We believe we are aware of the stakes in the 2020 election, but I don’t think any of us is to a full extent. No. Someone is very protective of their control. I have to ask why. The usual suspect is money. Maybe. Maybe it’s more than that. Yes, it’s more than that.

We do know that trafficking of children, women, and drugs is at an all-time high. We know that at least 300,000 children have been “lost” in the last 4 years upon crossing our border. That’s a lot of Amber Alerts. Drugs can be sold once. A child can be sold dozens of times a day.

A child-trafficking network of this degree needs corrupt officials. It needs DHS, Secretary of State, Presidential approval, Office of Refugee Resettlement, and HHS to give a means to step away from protections that at one time had been put in place. As of March 2021, for instance, background checks are no longer required of each resident for a child to be placed in a home. The network also involves NGO’s, many liberal Christian charity groups, which receive money with no bid contracts to facilitate some of the trafficking and help cartels make money, helping themselves to payouts in the process. Our federal government uses these organizations to launder money. Said another way, public private partnerships use tax dollars to fund the world’s largest child trafficking organization. Democrats put it in place. Republicans funded it by abdicating their power of the purse.

US taxes fund trafficking. Let me say it again. US taxes fund trafficking. Are we understanding the enormity of this yet?  Entities involved in trafficking as well as the by now cascading travesties compromising our very nation needed cover by people willing to be bribed or weak enough to be blackmailed. And the integrity of our elections figures into that. A woman named Tina stood her ground, told the truth, and sent that beast of a network into a frenzy.

Jesus came and sacrificed himself on the cross to save our souls. But God put us in charge of the earth. We need to clean up this mess. Christians, we are not called to escape. We are expected to reign. We are expected to call a spade a spade. We are expected to not turn the other way.

Can we start by at least getting on board to stand with Tina, the County Clerk, and FREE TINA PETERS?

*County clerk job description I found online states: Create, maintain, organize and file various documents. Capture data on spreadsheets and in various computer programs. Run errands, such as collecting documents and transporting documents to other offices. Handle correspondence for the County Clerk’s office. Receive relevant fees and balance a cash drawer. Perform election administration tasks and capture election data.

Image: birth-child-baby-newborn-50553.jpg; adorable-baby-baby-feet-beautiful-266011-Pixabay.jpg; zlataky-cz-q1l6TrQFLdo-unsplash.jpg;

Sources: https://gaballots.com/evidence/f/how-long-must-erecords-be-kept; https://coloradonewsline.com/2024/10/03/tina-peters-former-mesa-county-clerk-sentenced-to-9-years-in-prison-over-voting-systems-breach/; https://www.cpr.org/2024/10/03/tina-peters-former-mesa-county-clerk-prison/; https://www.kkco11news.com/2025/01/24/can-trump-pardon-tina-peters-heres-what-district-attorney-says/; https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/12/please-remember-gold-star-mom-tina-peters-who/; https://joehoft.com/tina-peters-exclusive-im-letting-you-know-that-if-i-die-here-it-wasnt-by-my-own-hand-im-not-depressed/; https://www.courthousenews.com/colorado-court-of-appeals-finds-insufficient-evidence-to-convict-tina-peters-of-contempt-for-recording-in-court/; https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/10/one-last-hurrah-tina-peters-releases-her-mesa/; https://www.westernslopenow.com/tina-peters-trial-live/; Juan O Savin SITREP on Rumble [MIRROR] OPERATION: AMBER ALERT<U.S. CHILD TRAFFICKING (2024); http://MiCasaKids.org; https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/01/exclusive-tina-peters-important-message-prison-regarding-supremacy/; https://www.streetinsider.com/PRNewswire/Cyber+Crisis+and+Systemic+Abuse+of+Power:+Saving+Tina+Peters/23488086.html