Lent began as a way for professing Catholics to remind themselves of the value of repentance. Many people believe that giving something up or fasting for Lent is a way to attain God’s blessing and grace. But the Bible teaches that grace cannot be earned; grace is, by definition, a gift. Also, ...

They say that who you are is a product of the books you read and the people you spend time with. They also say that kids are sponges, that the brain reaches 90% of its adult size by age 7, and that these early years lay the foundation of learning and personality that will last the rest of their ...

Beef. It’s what’s for dinner. Well, for some, Argentinian beef. On February 6, President Trump signed an executive order to permit “an additional 80,000 metric tons of lean beef trimmings per year from Argentina to be imported tariff-free in four quarterly tranches of 20,000 metric tons ...

The U.S. needs a great amount of new energy, mostly due to the massive data centers that power artificial intelligence. This electricity should be provided at the lowest cost, with the fewest environmental impacts, and as quickly as possible. The answer would seem to be a mix of electrical ...

January 2026 has come and gone and cold temperatures are here, per normal Iowa weather. The Supervisors had our organizational meeting to start off the year, and I will continue to serve as Vice-Chair. The Boards I will represent for Tama County are the following: Tama County Economic ...

For a person who is not actively farming, I spend a lot of my time thinking about agriculture. One question which has puzzled me is how farmers are expected to have a second job. What other profession has this expectation? No one tells a doctor, lawyer, or HR person, they need another job to ...

“And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Colossians 3:17 Today, you and I have work to do. In his first letter to the Corinthians, when the apostle Paul instructed the church to welcome Timothy ...

Last fall, I wrote several articles about fairy tales (accessible here, here, and here) as an essential part of our cultural inheritance from Christian medieval Europe, stories that teach us about the real world of good and evil described in the Bible by shaping a child’s imagination. But so ...

One of the pillars of our cultural inheritance is the fairy tales that have been handed down through the generations. These stories are memorable because they are logical, enjoyable, and profoundly true, steeped in the biblical truth of Christian medieval Europe. They are second only to the ...

Shrek is a 2001 animated comedy movie featuring the voice acting of Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy. The movie begins with a telling of a fairy tale from a beautiful gilded book, much like the beginning of Disney’s Snow White and Cinderella.The story is the traditional St. George fairy tale: the ...