You have planted them, and they have taken root; they grow and bear fruit. You are always on their lips but far from their hearts. – Jeremiah 12:2

Today's Scripture Reading (July 6, 2026): Jeremiah 12

In many ways, North America was built on the concept of religious freedom. It definitely wasn't the only reason, but many people were willing to move from Europe to the American frontier because there they could worship as they saw fit, which ran counter to European practice, where areas seemed dominated by a single religious practice. However, the reality is that we have never been good at true religious freedom. We always seem to feel threatened by the religious practices, or non-practice, of others. We want the laws of the land to reflect what we believe and to protect us from others' beliefs. But that runs counter to the idea of religious freedom in the new world.

Enter Ronald Reagan Jr. and his television commercials supporting Atheism. Reagan likes to remind his audience that the United States was founded on the principle of the separation of church and state. Would it surprise you to know that Reagan is wrong? In fact, the separation of church and state is not a government directive, but was developed by well-meaning Baptist believers. The idea was that the state or the nation shouldn't have direct oversight of the religious practice. The New World was not Britain, where the reigning monarch is also the head of the church. 

I am continuously amazed at the reaction of atheists against the core beliefs of Christianity. I get it; they don't like the first four commandments, and I wouldn't expect them to. But when Jesus was asked which commandments were the most important, he quoted the last six.

"Which ones [commandments]?" he inquired.

Jesus replied, " 'You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,' and 'love your neighbor as yourself'" (Matthew 19:18-19).

What is wrong with these commandments, even from Ronald Reagan Jr.'s atheistic position? I get that there is some pushback to the question of adultery, but keeping our promises, which is the essential problem with adultery, is something on which our societies are constructed.

The reality is that our society has been planted on an idea that has taken root and bloomed: the Freedom of Religion. We give support to this principle with our lips, but not with our actions. Our actions often declare that it is our way or the highway; only our beliefs should be protected by Law.

It is an extension of Jeremiah's words. In the case of Jeremiah, God had planted Israel, and the nation had taken root and bloomed. The people gave lip service to their God but did little to follow his principles, even if those principles were just the last six commandments. Israel said that they believed in God but gave very little thought to what that meant, just as we say we believe in the freedom of religion, but think very little about what that means in our society.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 2 Kings 23

Then the LORD said to me, “There is a conspiracy among the people of Judah and those who live in Jerusalem.” – Jeremiah 11:9

Today's Scripture Reading (July 5, 2026): Jeremiah 11

In the aftermath of World War II, some saw an opportunity to further scientific development in the United States. The idea was that there were scientists in Germany who were working on the same kind of things, especially in the area of rocketry, that scientists in the West were developing. If we could bring those two groups together, we might make significant advances in scientific knowledge. Those in power in the United States decided to launch a plan to bring German scientists to the United States. The original idea was that scientists who had not been involved in the Nazi war effort could be given research positions in the United States. Background checks were initiated, and the appropriate scientists were invited to come and work with the Americans on various projects, including rocketry and the space race to the moon.

It wasn't long before a conspiracy theory began to circulate that there were Germans who were being invited to come to the United States who weren't the innocent academics they were portrayed to be. Nazi officers were being given government positions in the United States. And these scientists were not men who had slipped through the cracks in the policy designed to keep them out; the government knew they were here; in fact, the American government knew who these men were when it extended the invitation for them to join the American scientific industry.

There is something nefarious about conspiracy theories, yet they seem to arise in almost every field of achievement. The moon landing didn't really happen; what we believe was a moon landing was staged on a top-secret Hollywood set. Or the concept that the various school shootings were faked by people who support gun control. The message is that you have been deceived, and what you think you see cannot be believed. Usually, the deception lies with those who preach that we have been deceived.

However, sometimes, the conspiracy theories are true. And in the case of Nazi scientists being given positions in the American government, it was true. Research in the 1970s uncovered "Operation Paperclip," a secret American Intelligence program that brought more than 1600 German scientists into the United States, including men who the government knew were members of the Nazi Party. Kurt Debus, the first director of the Kennedy Space Center, was a member of the Schutzstaffel (SS) during World War II. Wernher von Braun, sometimes called the "father of the American lunar program" and the "father of rocket science," was also a member of the SS during World War II and a member of the Nazi Party from 1937 until 1945, when the Nazi Party was disbanded. Some have argued that von Braun and some of his compatriots escaped justice for their knowledge of war crimes because they were able to help the United States beat the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

Jeremiah writes that God alluded to a conspiracy that was alive in Jerusalem and Judah. Some experts think this was a figure of speech, but I think some religious leaders led a conspiracy against belief in God. The problem was that these leaders found God inconvenient, so they led the people away from true worship of the God of Israel, deceiving them and allowing them to be molded by the political leadership. Many people who decided to follow the conspirators would suffer defeat for that decision. All because the conspiracy was actually true, and people like Jeremiah, who fought against the conspiracy, were few.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 12

You came out to deliver your people, to save your anointed one. You crushed the leader of the land of wickedness, you stripped him from head to foot. – Habakkuk 3:13

Today's Scripture Reading (July 4, 2026): Habakkuk 3

In the days when my wife and I were planning our wedding, I was a university student, and she was working in a nursing home. I probably don't have to tell you that money was tight. And so our "Honeymoon" would basically be our drive back from my wife's island childhood home, where we would be married, to the city where I was attending university and she was working in a nursing home, a journey of just over 700 km (450 miles). We had a tourist book of hotels and motels on the Island, and we started searching it for a nice place to stay on our wedding night. We came upon a place not far from the wedding site and close to the ferry we would need to take when we left the Island; it sounded perfect. It was a small place, only a dozen or so rooms, right on the ocean with a great view. And so, months before the proposed wedding date, we booked a room for a couple of nights after the wedding.

When we got to the Island, a few days before the wedding, we had a fairly rude awakening. The place was a dump, and that is probably being generous. The only thing that seemed to be true to the advertisement was that it was small and on the ocean. There was a much nicer place across the street, but it was totally booked. However, I left my name with the owner, who promised to phone us if he had any cancellations. Luckily, a couple of days later, he called to say they had a cancellation and that my bride and I had a new place to stay before we started our journey home.

Today, we would go online and look for reviews of the place, which might give us a more honest evaluation of the hotel. After all, we know that the internet never lies. (Can you hear my sarcasm?) Maybe an online review would have helped, but we might have still fallen for the scam.

This section of Habakkuk's prayer feels a bit like an online review. Habakkuk begins to recount all the ways God had acted in the past. These are the things that you have done. It was a reminder of God's history to the people. Unlike my book of hotel reviews, the hope was that, as people remember these stories passed down from generation to generation, they would know this is what God has done in the past. And, if the past is prologue, if everything that has happened up until now informs our present, then when we need God to move, the way he moved in the past reassures us that He can move again. If God was able to do this in the past, we know that you will do it again.

Nothing has changed. God is still the one we can trust. We, too, know the stories, both those found in the Bible and those we have experienced in our own lives. And because we know what God has done in the past, we know that He can meet our needs in the present. We have seen God move and know what he can do. As a result, we can put our trust in Him.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 11

Happy Independence Day!

Woe to him who says to wood, 'Come to life!' Or to lifeless stone, 'Wake up!' Can it give guidance? It is covered with gold and silver; there is no breath in it." – Habakkuk 2:19

Today's Scripture Reading (July 3, 2026): Habakkuk 2

How are your retirement savings doing? The closer I get to my retirement, the more important that question seems. The truth is that none of us are probably doing as well as we should. I have friends who are angry because they believe that the government has purposely kept them poor and unable to afford to retire. Others recognize that it is our responsibility to save for the day when we let go of our paid work and retire to the retirement we all feel we deserve. The truth might live somewhere in between. Although I find that most of the time, we seem to live in a fantasy world where the government has unlimited funds to give us what we want, with no need to ask us to pay the bill through our taxes. However, our reality is that we all need to manage our money well so it lasts into our retirement years. If we can't make the most of our money now and save for retirement, we probably wouldn't do so even if the nation's financial conditions were different.

I am afraid that the day is coming when conditions will change, and not for the better. I am worried that the day is coming when we will be forced to pay back the national debt, and on that day, we will be surprised by the things our government will no longer be able to do for us. We have become comfortable with deficit spending, and that is always a dangerous place to be. What the government should be able to do for us has become an idol for us, but one on which we cannot rely.

Habakkuk is not talking about money, but he could be. He is speaking about idols made out of wood and stone. And his point is that these idols don't live. Regardless of how good we are at creating them or how realistic they look, they will never draw a breath or be able to help us lift a load. There is no guidance in their gaze, and they will not carry us into battle. In fact, these idols depend on us for life just as they depended on us for their creation.

Our government isn't all that different. We created them, and we continue their existence. But they cannot do everything we might want them to do. We have to rely on our own ability to lead our lives with confidence and an eye to the future. But the government will never be able to save us. Only God can do that.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Habakkuk 3

Their horses are swifter than leopards, fiercer than wolves at dusk. Their cavalry gallops headlong; their horsemen come from afar. They fly like an eagle swooping to devour. – Habakkuk 1:8

Today's Scripture Reading (July 2, 2026): Habakkuk 1

"Do humans have mothers and fathers?"

"Yes, but human mothers and fathers don't love their children as we do. They're not the same as we are" (Star Trek: The Next Generation; Chain of Command Part II).

The dialogue is between a Cardassian adult and his child. The Cardassians are one of the many enemies of Earth and her allies in the fictional Star Trek Universe. And one of the themes that Star Trek readily explores is the idea that our enemies are often a lot more like us than we might want to admit. It is often advantageous for us to portray the enemy as monsters. In this case, the enemy is projecting, and the particular human in question is Jon-Luc Picard, the esteemed fictional captain of the Starship Enterprise.

It makes sense to make the enemy into something that they are not. It is a lot harder to kill your next-door neighbor than someone from across the world, unless, of course, your neighbor is a bad person. And it is something that happens in real life, not just in a fictional science fiction universe. We often make our enemies into something quite different from us.

During World War I, this universal sameness was part of the problem of the "Christmas Truce." We still argue how widespread the truce really was, but in the places where the truce did happen, when the soldiers emerged from their trenches to sing carols, exchange gifts, and, in some tellings of the story, play soccer with the enemy, one of the discoveries was that the soldier in the trench across from you wasn't a monster, but just another person very much like you. And it proved very hard to share food with the enemy one day and shoot at them the next. Thus, the Christmas Truce occurred on the first Christmas of the war, but not on any subsequent Christmases. By then, the enemy had become something else; they were monsters who deserved to be killed, not people who shared the same hopes and fears as those who fought beside you.

Politics follows a similar storyline. The opposition is crazy; the people of a different political stripe are enemies of the nation and don't want the same things that you do. They don't love their children the way we do. It is us vs them, and they are different from who we are.

There is no evidence that Habakkuk has ever had any contact with the enemy. But he has a stereotypical idea of who they are. They are different from us. Even their horses are different. They are faster than the leopards, and they are fiercer than wolves. When you go up against them, you won't have a chance to win.

Was any of this true? No. Habakkuk's description of the enemy was likely propaganda straight from the enemy. After all, hadn't they rolled through the land up until now? Had anyone been able to stand up against their power? But the propaganda served the purposes of God, who had turned this stubborn people over to their enemies because of their disobedience. The battle was already over, because God had decided it, and he allowed the propaganda to take root among the people of Judah.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Habakkuk 2

For this is what the LORD says: "At this time I will hurl out those who live in this land; I will bring distress on them so that they may be captured." – Jeremiah 10:18

Today's Scripture Reading (July 1, 2026): Jeremiah 10

His name was Pan. He is often pictured with the horns, as well as the hindquarters and legs of a goat. He is the god of the wild places. He is found in the fields and forests, and anywhere where civilization is absent. His association with the wild places is probably why we also associate him with sex.

However, he is also the god of fear. Whenever Pan's afternoon naps were disturbed, he would react with a shout that would instill fear into the hearts of anyone and anything close enough to hear. Pan claimed that the Olympians' (the new gods) victory over the Titans (the old gods) in the ten-year war called the Titanomachy, fought in ancient Thessaly, was directly due to the fear the Titans felt at the sound of Pan's shout. It is this effect of Pan on the hearts of those around him that gives us the word "panic." Panic comes from the Greek word "panikos," meaning "pertaining to Pan." Perhaps the most famous example of this panic was found in the ancient battle between Persia and Athens at Marathon on September 12, 490 B.C.E. The Battle of Marathon was a David-and-Goliath story. Playing the part of Goliath were the Persians, who showed up with overwhelming force. The Athenians played the role of David. Athens had hoped to get help from Sparta, which possessed the best Greek army of that day, but the Spartans were delayed, and Athens had to go up against the Persians by itself. Herodotus (484-425 B.C.E.), a Greek historian, reported that 203 soldiers died on the side of the Athenians, while 6.400 soldiers died and seven ships were sunk on the side of the Persians.

The story behind the battle was that Pan had shown up on the side of Athens. Pan had caused confusion and fear (panic) among the Persian soldiers with his shout, allowing the Athenians to win a war that most believed would be a certain defeat for the Greeks, even if the Spartans had been able to participate in the battle. Panic has that effect on us, and it can change the outcome of the fight.

Of course, Pan doesn't exist, but panic is very real. Jeremiah sees a day when God would cast the Judeans out and would bring panic on the land, causing them to run into the arms of the armies who sought to capture them. A distress would come upon the land just as it had on the Titans and the Persians, but this distress would have nothing to do with Pan and everything to do with the God of Israel, on whom the people had refused to call.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Habakkuk 1

Happy Canada Day, Canada!

Oh, that I had in the desert a lodging place for travelers, so that I might leave my people and go away from them; for they are all adulterers, a crowd of unfaithful people. – Jeremiah 9:2

Today's Scripture Reading (June 30, 2026): Jeremiah 9

He wanted to meet for coffee. Unfortunately, my week was packed, so I couldn't schedule him in. So, I suggested we could have lunch next week, which looked at least a little more open. He nodded, but there was a sadness in his countenance. Next week would do, but then he added another comment: "If we are still here." I understood what he meant. We have had that conversation a few times before. Politically, the world is in a tight situation. Too many earth-devastating weapons existed, and too many itchy fingers seemed to be on the trigger. Welcome to life in the 21^st century. I am not quite as pessimistic as my friend, but I do understand his angst. We seem to be in a world that has evolved from one that protected the weak nations to one that seeks to exploit them. After all, if you can't act like a bully, what is the use of being strong?

My mind keeps going back to Jesus's words to his disciples late in his ministry on the earth. "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me" (Matthew 25:40). And Jesus didn't just state this idea once; he flipped it over and stated the same idea, but this time in the negative. "Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me" (Matthew 25:45). I believe this is what we are to do as individuals, and also as nations. There should be no role for the bully in this world, regardless of whether the bully is an angry man, a self-entitled woman, or an out-of-control nation.

My friend has often wished that there were somewhere he could run to with his family, where he would be safe from what he suspects is the coming storm. But if the worst happens, there really is no place to hide. Well, almost no place to hide. We believe that God is still on the throne, and we can still hide in Him.

I am not sure if it helps us today, but apparently Jeremiah felt the same way. He looked at his nation and saw a government that was out of control. And the Prophet realizes that a storm is coming. Jeremiah looked at his world and knew that the stage was being set for the Babylonians to come and destroy Judah. All Jeremiah wants to do is go and find a place in the desert where he would be safe. Jeremiah understands that the nation's leaders' disobedience has made this possible. If the people were trying to follow God, Jeremiah would have wanted to stand with him as Isaiah had during the Assyrian crisis. But these people were in full rebellion in support of the leadership, making Jeremiah wish there was someplace to which he could run.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 10