I must say, the smell of coffee can be very, very good.

Let’s say God is leading me down my life’s road in a big Hummer, my aforementioned life is a Ford Thunderbird, and my future plans are the windshield--a little dirty, with a few cracks in different places—but still usable. Today, God decided to take the hulking rig through a deep patch of gravel, picking up a piece as He drove through and sending it hurtling at the protective glass in front of me. It didn’t shatter, but it did send a myriad of cracks shooting in all directions. And it made a big impact on me, because I was clinging to the security of that windshield, however imperfect and tenuous it was. Now who knows much of anything except that I need a new windshield.

People say that the world is worse now than it’s ever been and it’s declining all the time. I think I disagree. Do you know what they did to torture people back in the Middle Ages? Exhibit 1: place a cage, with no bottom, on the bare abdomen of subject. Place rats in cage. Place hot coals on top of cage. The rats, seeking to escape the heat, burrow through the subject until free. Exhibit 2 is just as bad, just as completely barbaric and inhuman. And then there’s Sodom. You know how messed up they were. For all the sin and debauchery in our society, I don’t know, for sheer brutality and acceptance of atrocities and evil in the name of whatever, there may have been ages in the past that make our own pale in comparison.

The children of Israel passed through the Wilderness of Sin, and that is not a metaphor. Exodus 17:1.