The docks are on dry land in Lake Lanier. Why does God withhold the rain? Why does he send the wildfire? It’s for the same reason my car doesn’t start sometimes. The Lord calls us to trust him.

Sure, there are responsible things we can do to help sometimes. I don’t know what we could do about the drought other than conserve water now that we’re in the middle of it, but proper forest management can cut back on wildfires, and if a mechanic could discern my car trouble, we could fix that too. But in all trouble, especially the natural disaster type, God’s message is to trust him.

Even the sparrow finds a home,

and the swallow a nest for herself,

where she may lay her young,

at your altars, O LORD of hosts,

my King and my God. (Psalm 84:3 ESV)

So have no fear . . .

How often does the Lord tell his people not to fear, and how much fear do we, Christians in America, struggle with? I speak for myself here. Why am I afraid of nothing? And here I claim to trust the Lord with my life.

This October 31 is the 490th anniversary of the day Martin Luther nailed a few minor concerns about the Catholic Church to a cathedral door. For that reason, I offer this link to quotes from Luther’s guide to prayer.

I have wanted to be a man of prayer for a long time, but it is one of the hardest things I try.

Charles Colson writes, “Darwinist accounts of human morality bear such little resemblance to the way real people live their lives that the late philosopher Michael Stove, an atheist himself, called them a ‘slander against human beings.’ . . . Nietzsche would laugh—and wonder why they don’t make atheists like they used to.”

One of the things The Most Reverend Henry Luke Orombi, Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, said tonight to a packed sanctuary was “Jesus of Nazareth is the only person who draws people to himself. The church must lift him up so He can draw all men to himself.” I was blessed to sing “We are God’s People,” “Shine, Jesus, Shine,” and “Christ Shall Have Dominion” with Presbyterians and Anglicans. It’s too easy to doubt the faith of those unlike me, especially with news of terrible things in the other denominations. It’s too easy to broadbrush without learning any details about individual congregations. But tonight we celebrated Jesus in unity under the teaching of a man, from halfway around the world, who is just like us.

Via World Views, this fascinating article by the English writer and physician Theodore Dalrymple, on the question of whether religious people are, or are not, actually nicer people than the secular kind.

You won’t agree with everything, but it’s a fascinating snapshot.

A Litany of Humility. “From the desire of being esteemed, Deliver me, Jesus.”

I’m happy to report that my TV has decent color again. I told you a couple weeks ago how a nearby lightning strike messed up its color, leaving the people with purple faces. The set’s internal degaussing function may have been gradually mproving the problem, but the progress was at a rate of about one pixel per start-up.

My renter persuaded me to take a magnet and pass it over the screen in the bad places. Not just a couple passes, but a real “scrubbing.” And behold, I’ve got my picture back.

Now if only there were anything worth watching on.

The weather today was wonderful (or so I surmised from looking out the library windows and checking the temperatures online). One of those ideal days—lightly clouded skies (though it was clouding up by the time I took my walk), neither too cold nor too hot—that you imagine when you’re young, thinking about what the future will be like. It’s never like that, of course, but sometimes you get a little of the weather.

The world is a-buzz today with news of the publication of letters from Mother Teresa, in which she expressed feelings that God was far away from her.

This is news?

Only to people who a) have never been serious Christians (granted, there are a lot of those) or b) have never read any serious Christian writers. Sure, you won’t get much about Dark Nights of the Soul from Joel Osteen or Benny Hinn, but try reading St. Augustine. Or Pascal. Or C.S. Lewis.

Make up your minds, folks—you can criticize us for being Pollyannas, out of touch with the harsh realities of life, or you can call us posers because we don’t always feel the joy of the Lord.

But you can’t have it both ways.