Your DNA Doesn't Lie    

   Recently in California, police went to the crime scene and swabbed it for DNA. This practice, once limited to high-profile crimes, is now routine with local cops and ho-hum burglaries.

   A crime lab can use relatively inexpensive equipment, affordable to smaller police forces. Within minutes, the California lab produced a match to a local man.

   DNA has gone mainstream. California authorities used it to identify victims of recent wildfires. DNA also helps solve an old problem: How do you prove people are who they say they are?  

   This trend, leaving fingerprinting somewhat behind, has implications for your privacy. You can leave DNA on everything you touch - good for crime fighters -but the government can track you more easily.

   Early in the last century, authorities began to believe they could solve social problems with pure reason and precision. A law professor says, "It was tied in with ideas of science and progressive government, and having archives and systems for tracking people." 

   If facial recognition wasn't possible, fingerprinting was the solution. But that method is also prone to error and sloppy work.

Smithsonian

Tomorrow: More methods for identifying you.

      Jimmy

When God Seems Absent     

   Where is God when we are suffering? 

   Long ago, Satan challenged God, asserting that Job loved the Lord only because of his many blessings. Satan gets permission to harm Job, who shortly loses every possession and blessing - including his sons and daughters - except for his wife.

   At first, he responds, "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." Then to his wife who told him to curse God and die, "Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?"

   Then as dreary days come and go, Job begins to complain - big time - to his three friends. He doesn't understand why God doesn't explain himself, or do something...anything.

After God Speaks     

   When the griping had run its course, God addressed Job. He doesn't mention his conversation with Satan. He just lists dozens of reasons Job has to be in awe of God's creativity and power. 

   Humbled, yet thrilled that God knows and God cares, Job responds, "My ears have heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you." That's enough. 

   In ancient times, it was all about the men, and the sons. After Job experienced the presence of God, he was a changed man.

   The Lord restored Job's life, and gave him seven sons and three daughters. Acquainted with Genesis, we would expect the writer to name the sons. No.

   Only the daughters. The Hebrew names mean "dove," cinnamon" and "horn of eye-shadow." Makeup? 

   Experiencing the Lord. It can be almost hilarious! Joyful. New life.    

      Jimmy

Yes or No     
The Human Body     
       
   Spirit or matter? Many on earth might say, matter is all that matters.

   The Spirit, Creator, by his will built the material universe...light, darkness, water, material, lights in the sky, creatures...all that we know about. 

   Then He took some matter aside and formed a man in his image, to rule over the earth He created. He breathed special life into Adam, uniting biological life with soul, the immaterial that sets the material apart.*

   Ancient philosophers considered the human body to be of little purpose.

   Contemporary intellectuals conclude the soul does not exist, and the body is an accident. Therefore, they also despise the body.

   Some of us average types don't think much of the body either, abusing it with alcohol or drugs, tobacco or poor diets. We avoid exercise and routinely take chances on the highways. 

   Some of us, not satisfied with the looks our Creator gave us, present ourselves with tattoos or makeup. (It's not a sin.) 😏 Credit, or blame the person who invented the mirror.

   When God created Adam, He knew that one day He himself, in Christ, would occupy a similar body - by the way, with no beauty or majesty to attract us. (Isaiah 53:2) 

   Then He allowed himself to be tortured beyond recognition, even to death, all to redeem us. There is no greater love, Jesus himself had said. 

   On the third day, resurrected and glorified, He showed us the eternal body of our future, if we will stop listening to the world and heed the Lord and King. 
 

   * Janie B. Cheaney, WORLD magazine

      Jimmy

   

   

Explain This, Evolutionists    

   While Chinese authorities oppose God or whatever challenges their national (world?) sovereignty, another discovery that defies evolution occurred under their noses, in South China.

   A study published in Science last week describes 101 animal species preserved in detail, dating to the Cambrian Explosion. The find includes soft tissue like gills, muscles, digestive systems, appendages and eyes. Some 53 percent of the species were previously unknown.

   Paleontologists say mudflows quickly swallowed the animals and buried them in fine-grain soil. As sediment "cemented" around the tiny bodies, it locked out microbes and halted the process of decay, said the co-author.

   The Cambrian Explosion refers to the appearance of a huge diversity of complex animals in a relatively short period of time.

   Evolutionists can offer no explanations for how these complex animals showed up so abruptly in the fossil record, say Discovery Institute's experts. 

   The newly discovered fossils could exist in detail with soft tissue only if their burial occurred very rapidly, as during the global flood described in Genesis, said a scientist with Answers in Genesis. 
 

WORLD online

      Jimmy

Naming the Culprits    
      Part II of Cell Phone Crisis   

   Researchers theorize that an increase in social media and gaming are the culprits in anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts among people age 25 and under. 

   Those who spend more time on social media and less time with others report feeling more depressed.

   General internet use goes with depression, self-harm and suicidal thoughts and behavior. 

   Sleep deprivation is tied to technology use. Insomnia is on the rise.

   Time spent on portable electronic devices, especially in the evening, leads to poor sleep quality. Lack of sleep in turn contributes to depressive symptoms.

   Another study released in March found that the amount of time teens spend face-to-face with friends is the lowest since the 1970s. They go to fewer hangouts, fewer parties, on fewer dates, and spend less time shopping or going to the movies. 

   But not because they are busy. They hold fewer jobs and don't spend much more time in extracurricular activities. 

   What are they doing? They're on their cell phones. 

   Teens are lonelier today than in 1977. Text messages, Snapchat and Instagram "likes" are not making up for human association. 

   A WORLD online contributor writes, "Although technology promises instant connection to other people, God created us for community, and science is finding that digital community is not an equal substitute."  

       Jimmy




   

Cell Phone Mishap   
  

   Sunday evening in Georgia, on our way home from a visit with Mrs. Donut's relatives, we went to a fast-food place for a bite. It was dark and lightly raining.

   Returning to the car, I noticed a wet cell-phone case on the dimly-lit pavement, phone inside. Oops! It was mine.

   This Samsung is fairly new; I have many months yet to pay on it. 

   If I had chosen to enter the other side of their car..... If someone had parked in that space, hiding the case from view...same result. Who knows when I would have noticed it missing?

   This case has a belt clip, not a loop through which to pass my belt. It's been a problem all along, and Sunday night, a near loss.

   Yes, the phone was wet, but it works.

Cell Phone Crisis    
     A study of 600,000 people found that teens and young adults face an epidemic of anxiety and depression. Psychologists think the effects of screens are to blame.

   Rates of depression, distress, suicidal thoughts and deaths all have increased over a decade, primarily among those 25 and under, and especially among girls.

   Over several years, major depression and distress more than doubled among 20 to 21-year-olds; by 69 percent among 16 to 17-year-olds, and by 71 percent among 18 to 25-year-olds. Twice as many 22 to 23-year olds attempted suicide in 2017 compared to 2008. 

   Several possible causes were ruled out: the economy, drug and alcohol abuse, academic pressure, and the opioid crisis (which largely affects people over 25).

   See Views tomorrow for more findings and theories of researchers.
  

WORLD online

      Jimmy

Why Socialism?     

   Despite socialism's lousy track record, some American politicians think they might get elected by identifying with failed economic policy. Others, running on the free-market side, could see defeat.

   Joel Belz, WORLD magazine, thinks our Creator, who knows what is beautiful and proper, approves of voluntary and lawful agreements to exchange items of value - in good will - to the advantage of both parties. In any case, free enterprise works.

   Belz also notes that abuse sullies the case for capitalism. That doesn't mean the system is all wrong, just as abuse doesn't mean God's design for sexuality is wrong.

   The free market is clouded, he says, with "greed, laziness, impatience, pride and failure to love others." The U.S. is no longer a pure example of a free market economy at work.

   Many restraints have been laid on it by government. If we had been doing business as God intended, with more truth and justice, young voters might be far less attracted to an alternative.

   If imposed on us, American "Christians should be prepared to live under any kind of economic or political system," Belz writes. 

   But that's a different argument. 

       Jimmy