I don’t often get into current events, especially when they are political in nature, but there are lessons to be learned in President Trump’s relocating US Space Command Headquarters from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Alabama.

First, let me make a couple of things clear:

• Huntsville is a fine place for anything space-related. They’ve been in the space business for decades.
• That said, a headquarters can be anywhere, and right now it’s in Colorado Springs. Moving it will be costly and time consuming.
• Therefore, there ought to be a good reason for moving it.

So what is President Trump’s reason (as he stated it)?

“The problem I have with Colorado … they do mail-in voting, they went to all-mail-in voting, so they have automatically crooked elections. And we can’t have that when a state is for mail-in voting — that means they want dishonest elections, because that’s what that means.”

— President Donald Trump, citing what he described as a “big factor” in his decision to move U.S. Space Command from Colorado to Alabama. He has not provided evidence of wide-scale fraud tied to mail ballots.

In response, the Colorado Springs Gazette reports:

El Paso County and Huntsville’s home in Madison County, Ala., had nearly identical support for Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Trump won El Paso County with 53.5% of the vote, slightly more than the 53.35% he received in Madison County.

Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, said in a statement Tuesday afternoon that “it is deeply ironic that President Trump made a decision about the Space Force based on Colorado’s election model, yet moved it to Alabama, a state whose system provides neither the access nor the security that Colorado’s does.”

In 2013, Colorado’s county clerks — at the time, the vast majority of them Republicans — designed and championed the nation’s first modern mail ballot system, Crane added.

“Their work laid the foundation for what is now recognized as the most reliable, transparent, and accessible election model in the country.”

A biblical principle might apply here:

It is better to be a poor but wise youth than an old and foolish king who refuses all advice. (Ecclesiastes 4.13, NLT)

In the meantime, 1 Timothy 2.1, 2 certainly applies:

I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them. Pray this way for kings and all who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and dignity. (NLT)

But the bottom line is this: President Trump is not in charge. God is. He is not to be worshiped, God is.

For the LORD is the great God, And the great King above all gods. (Psalm 95.3, NKJV)

Oh, sing to the LORD a new song! Sing to the LORD, all the earth. Sing to the LORD, bless His name; Proclaim the good news of His salvation from day to day. Declare His glory among the nations, His wonders among all peoples. For the LORD is great and greatly to be praised; He is to be feared above all gods. (Psalm 96.1 – 4, NKJV)

China just paraded its weapons for all to see. China’s leaders (and most leaders, for that matter, want to be gods (little-g). Putin from Russia and Kim from North Korea were there. A heavy occasion. But don’t forget:

Why do the nations rage, And the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, And the rulers take counsel together, Against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying, “Let us break Their bonds in pieces And cast away Their cords from us.”

He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; The Lord shall hold them in derision. (Psalm 2.1 – 4, NKJV)

Let’s get our head straight:

For the LORD is great and greatly to be praised; He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are idols, But the LORD made the heavens. (Psalm 96.4, 5, NKJV)

Oh, worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness! Tremble before Him, all the earth. Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns; The world also is firmly established, It shall not be moved; He shall judge the peoples righteously.” (Psalm 96.9, 10, NKJV)

What’s the end?

For He is coming, for He is coming to judge the earth. He shall judge the world with righteousness, And the peoples with His truth. (Psalm 96.13, NKJV)

A personal note…

If you’re a regular reader, you know that in early July we moved from our house of 19 years in Monument, Colorado, to a one-level townhouse in Colorado Springs, about 20 minutes south of where we were. Everything has gone well EXCEPT we’re still waiting to sell the Monument house.

We had an offer come in on July 30, but it was contingent on the buyer selling their house in the Phoenix area. September 12 was a go/no-go decision point. The Phoenix house has not sold so that offer is gone for now, and the Monument house is back on the active market effective yesterday.

We’ve been praying for:

• The right buyer
• The right price
• The right time

That prayer continues, and we wait, a common posture for God’s people. God acts on his timetable, not mine!

Hear my prayer, O LORD, And let my cry come to You. Do not hide Your face from me in the day of my trouble; Incline Your ear to me; In the day that I call, answer me speedily. (Psalm 102.1, 2, NKVJ)

I would have lost heart, unless I had believed That I would see the goodness of the LORD In the land of the living. Wait on the LORD; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the LORD! (Psalm 27.13, 14, NKJV)

Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter rain. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. (James 5.7, 8, NKJV)

For you have need of patience, that, after you have done the will of God, you might receive the promise. (Hebrews 10.36, KJV)

After yesterday’s A Simple Gift feel good, holy moment story, I have to follow up with another one from an unlikely source: a stressed out lady who teaches de-stressing techniques for a living. Rebecca Heiss opens her story this way:

I was pacing the lobby of a Big Island hotel in flip-flops, panic rising in my chest like mercury in a thermometer. My luggage had vanished somewhere between the continental U.S. and Hawaii, and in less than 24 hours I was supposed to deliver a keynote speech to a room full of suits. The irony was not lost on me: Here I was, a stress physiologist who studies how humans handle pressure, completely undone by a missing suitcase. – Rebecca Heiss, I Study Stress. This Cure Surprised—and Helped—Me, Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2025

A hotel employee had a car take her to nearby shops which sold nothing but touristy stuff – no business suits. The story picks up:

Then in the last shop something extraordinary happened. The woman behind the counter listened to my predicament and chuckled, “Oh sweetie you aren’t going to find what you need here.” She handed me the keys to her brand-new BMW convertible and gave me directions to shops that sold business attire 40 minutes away. “Just bring it back when you’re done,” she said with a smile. 

Wow. A holy moment (and I have no idea whether or not the store clerk is a believer).

The story continues with a remarkable insight on one way to overcome stress:

I returned hours later, outfit secured and overcome with gratitude. Through tears, I asked the woman—her name, it turned out, was Tani—why she had done this. “That’s how we take care of people here in Hawaii,” she answered.

Then she revealed something deeper. “I’ve been stressed lately,” she admitted. She was worried about her daughter, who had just moved back to the continental U.S.: “My hope is that somebody might do something similar for her if she was in the same circumstance.”

When I returned to the hotel, the hotelier was eager to hear how my trip had gone. As I recounted Tani’s extraordinary kindness, tears welled up in his eyes. Minutes later, an elaborate display of chocolates arrived at my room, accompanied by a two-page note. He explained that he’d been anxious about moving his family to Hawaii, but my story story had quieted his stress.

In the self-help field, we tend to promote the usual stress-management arsenal: meditation apps, massage therapy, breathing exercises, yoga classes. These aren’t wrong, but they rely on the individual to solve their own stress…A study of workplace interventions to reduce stress, published in Industrial Relations Journal in 2024, revealed a startling truth: Of the 90 different stress-reduction strategies tested in corporate settings, which included meditation, massage and breathing exercises, only one consistently mitigated the negative effects of stress: serving others.

My Hawaiian crisis had become an impromptu case study. People experiencing their own stress had all instinctively relieved this pressure by helping someone else…This helped me see how we’ve been approaching stress relief backward. Instead of turning inward with bespoke wellness practices, we do best when we turn outward—toward the needs of others…In a world obsessed with self-optimization and individual wellness solutions, the most radical act might be the simplest one: noticing when someone else needs help, and then providing it. – Rebecca Heiss, emphasis mine.

Wow. Where to start? “noticing when someone else needs help, and then providing it” sounds a lot like

• Be there
• Pay attention
• Do what you can…

Which I’ve written about before.

And the whole idea of helping others comes right out of Philippians. As usual, God (and the Apostle Paul) are ahead of the curve:

Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. (Philippians 2.4, NKJV)

I’ve just run across a holy moment that’s too good not to share. My friend Mateen Elass was Minister of Adult Education at First Presbyterian Church, Colorado Springs, back in the late 1990s. He went on to several different pastorates and returned to Colorado Springs in 2015 to work with Voice of Truth, an outreach ministry to Arabs. Why? Here’s the beginning of his bio:

What are the odds that a son born to a Muslim father, raised for more than a decade in Saudi Arabia, schooled in western philosophy and psychology, and then trained in eastern mysticism, should become a resolute Christian and ambassador of the gospel? Small odds indeed, when counted by human probability. But Dr. Mateen Elass sees this prelude to his  ministry as witness to the amazing power of God to find and call His children to service-regardless of the odds. – Read the rest of his bio here.

Anyway, here’s this brilliant guy with a degree from Stanford, two master’s degrees and a doctorate, and he’s the nicest, most humble man. Here’s his blog entry from May 7, 2025, a holy moment. He calls it “A Simple Gift.”

This last Monday, I was traveling to an Arab pastors conference in NC with coworkers and friends. On a shuttle from long-term parking to the Denver airport, we met a very friendly and talkative Ghanaian driver, Isaac. He couldn’t have been more polite or helpful. We were all quite impressed with his warmth and expression of faith.

Having my cell phone in hand, I decided to look up quickly how to say “thank you” in his mother tongue of Ashanti. Not sure how to pronounce “Meda wo ase”, I clicked on the audio and practiced a few times. As we arrived at the terminal, everyone started piling out and our driver helped offload bags with a ready smile. I was the last one off. I shook his hand and said, “Meda wo ase, Isaac!”

What happened next was like fireworks going off. His face lit up and his smile grew even bigger. Continuing to hold my hand, he slapped me on the chest and said excitedly, “You’ve been to Ghana before?”

“No, never,” I answered. “I just learned how to say thank you in your language because you’ve been so kind to us.”

“I can’t believe it. I never expected to hear my language from an American,” he said. “This is a great gift to me! Thank you for making my day.”

All from a simple gesture of thoughtful gratitude. We never know much we may impact a new acquaintance by taking a bit of time to find a bridge to connect with them in unexpected ways. I know that I always appreciate hearing English unexpectedly when in a foreign country.

What fun to bring joy to another’s day with a simple act of kindness. Perhaps you’ll find a way to bless someone else this day, and find your own joy doubled in the process!

Amen.

As he went along, he saw a man… (John 9.1, NIV)

Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good… (Titus 3.14, NIV)

Yesterday we meditated on God’s throne room and the implications for prayer. It’s worth a review. Here’s a prayer thought from a few days ago.

He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, And show him My salvation.” (Psalm 91.15, 16, NKJV)

Psalm 93 speaks to the throne:

The LORD reigns, He is clothed with majesty; The LORD is clothed, He has girded Himself with strength. Surely the world is established, so that it cannot be moved. Your throne is established from of old; You are from everlasting. (Psalm 93.1, 2, NKJV)

Therefore, what are we supposed to do? Psalm 95 has the answer.

• Oh come, let us sing to the LORD!
• Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation.
• Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving;
• Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms.

For the LORD is the great God, And the great King above all gods…

• Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
• Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker.

For He is our God, And we are the people of His pasture, And the sheep of His hand. (Psalm 95.1 – 7, NKJV)

“For the LORD is the great God…For He is OUR God.”

Amen.

Someone encouraged me recently to read Revelation 4 to “see what it’s like in heaven right now.” Not a bad word. We can see what things are like here on earth, and they are sometimes discouraging. What’s going on in heaven?

John gives us a picture that’s a little hard to get hold of, so maybe we should just “feel it,” rather than try to analyze it:

…and before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal. And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind:

• the first living creature like a lion,
• the second living creature like an ox,
• the third living creature with the face of a man,
• and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight.

And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say,

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”

And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying,

“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” (Revelation 4.6 – 11, ESV, emphasis mine)

What a picture! And what a throne! And it’s this throne that the writer of Hebrews invites us to approach:

Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4.16, NKJV)

Come boldly to THAT throne…

• Mercy – not getting punishment I deserve.
• Grace to help in time of need – receiving help that I don’t deserve.

What’s your need right now? I have a specific one in mind, and I’m approaching THAT THRONE to ask for it.

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. (Philippians 4.6, NLT)

The LORD reigns, He is clothed with majesty; The LORD is clothed, He has girded Himself with strength. Surely the world is established, so that it cannot be moved. Your throne is established from of old; You are from everlasting. (Psalm 93.1, 2, NKJV)

We come to one of my favorite psalms, especially at my age: Psalm 92. It opens routinely:

A Psalm. A Song for the Sabbath Day.

It is good to give thanks to the LORD, And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High; To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning, And Your faithfulness every night, On an instrument of ten strings, On the lute, And on the harp, With harmonious sound. (Psalm 92.introduction – 3, NKJV)

“…an instrument of 10 strings…the lute…and the harp.” are listed as means of giving thanks to the LORD. Our concert on August 24 was such a night, I think. (Music starts about 2:20 in.)

The middle part talks about God’s works. (See Psalm 92.4 – 11)

The psalm closes with a promise for those of us in the last quarter:

The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree, He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those who are planted in the house of the LORD Shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bear fruit in old age; They shall be fresh and flourishing, To declare that the LORD is upright; He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him. (Psalm 92.12 – 15, NKJV)

“They shall still bear fruit in old age…” Amen.

Where do you live? We moved from 19325 Glen Hollow Circle in Monument to 7815 Antigua Point in Colorado Springs, a process that’s ongoing. But where do we really live? Psalm 91 has a suggestion:

He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. (Psalm 91.1, NKJV)

Because you have made the LORD, who is my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place… (Psalm 91.9, NKJV)

What does it mean to live in God? Maybe the answer is right there in Psalm 91:

I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.” (Psalm 91.1, 2, NKJV)

It’s an attitude of trust, and if we live in God, Psalm 91 has some promises:

• Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler
• And from the perilous pestilence.
• He shall cover you with His feathers, And under His wings you shall take refuge;
• His truth shall be your shield and buckler.
• You shall not be afraid
  • of the terror by night,
  • Nor of the arrow that flies by day,
  • Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness,
  • Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.
• A thousand may fall at your side, And ten thousand at your right hand; But it shall not come near you. Only with your eyes shall you look, And see the reward of the wicked. (Psalm 91.3 – 8, NKJV)

It continues:

• No evil shall befall you,
• Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling;
• For He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways. In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone.
• You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra, The young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot. (Psalm 91.10 – 13, NKJV)

The psalm concludes:

He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, And show him My salvation.” (Psalm 91.15, 16, NKJV)

“He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him.” Jesus promised the same thing:

If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. (John 15.7, NKJV)

There it is again. “Abide” – where do you live?

“Ask what you desire…” I recently asked God for a man to disciple, and one came out of the clear blue. I’m praying for lasting fruit for my new friend.

Now I’m asking to get this house business closed out.

I wrote Saturday about my friend Robert who experienced Jesus’ life change through a Rescue Mission residential program which included a 6am Bible study I was helping lead.

How about a story about transformation through a church that intentionally promoted it?

A highlight about my times in Estes Park is often a conversation with my friend Aaron Dorman, lead pastor at the Christian Church of Estes Park. Two weeks ago was no exception. The church’s tag line is

Be disciples. Build disciples.

Not an unusual goal for a church, but Aaron and his team are actually doing it. He told me they had just had a going away party for a young couple who had been in the church about five years. They were moving for job reasons to North Carolina. (As an aside, Aaron assumes he’ll have his members for 5 – 7 years. Estes Park tends to be a mobile community.)

When this couple came to the church, the wife was a nominal Christian and the husband was an unbeliever. When they left five years later, both were active disciple-makers! I’ve written before about a little tool I learned from Regi Miller’s workplace ministry book About My Father’s Business. Regi puts people into one of five groups:

• A: Apathetic
• B: Beginning to seek
• C: Confessing Christian
• D: Developing disciple
• E: Excelling reproducer

In contrast to some pastors’ goal of “get ’em saved, get ’em baptized” (A to C), Aaron’s couple went from A to E in five years!

How? I introduced the church to the 2:7 Series a number of years ago, and that tool, along with others, is part of their intentional training process.

But it’s not just courses. Aaron structures the Sunday morning services around action. He told me he’s changed his preaching style. He used to preach for “inspiration.” Now he preaches for “application,” and more than just application – “here’s what to do” – he develops ways to help them do it. Aaron implements something I suggested to a discipleship pastor of a large church a few months ago: “What would it look like if you really intended the folks to put into practice what you wanted them to do?” Aaron encourages the folks to commit to a specific action, and then follows up with them a few days later to see how it’s working, for example.

In short, it’s about being intentional. While many pastors won’t invest in people they think will move on and not benefit their church. Aaron delights in training and sending. Kudos, my brother. May your tribe increase. And may all of us minister with the expectation of transformation.

He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. (Colossians 1.28, NIV)

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4.11 – 13, NIV)

It’s become my tradition on this blog to recognize our wedding anniversary, September 7, 1968, 57 years ago!

It’s also becoming tradition to include a picture from Estes Park since we usually vacation there the last two weeks of August. This year’s “vacation” was a bit different. We arrived on Monday, August 18, and spent all week getting ready for a piano concert as I’ve written about before. The concert went as well as it could have, and you can watch it here if you like. Music starts about 2:20 in, and the concert lasts about 85 minutes. You can’t see the speakers since the camera is trained on the piano. Someone captured June and me giving our opening remarks:

We spent the second week of vacation trying to recover from the first week!

I usually include a hiking picture, sometimes of Bible Point, a short, steep hike: 500-foot elevation gain in 0.8 miles. Because it was cloudy, we could shoot toward the YMCA of the Rockies, where we stayed and where the concert was.

An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. (Proverbs 31.10, ESV)