Have you ever hidden so well during a game of hide and seek that no one could find you? Was it a little scary? Can icebergs play hide and seek? In 1999 an iceberg the size of Rhode Island broke away from Antarctica and went missing! That’s right, but let’s back up a little.

In the Northern Hemisphere, from February to July, chunks of ice break off or calve from Greenland’s glaciers. Some also calve from glaciers in Alaska. Chunks may be small or as large as the ones shown in Church’s painting. Most of an iceberg is out of sight below the water, and it’s this part that’s so dangerous to ships.

The Icebergs by Frederick Edwin Church, Dallas Museum of Art, public domain

In the North Atlantic, ocean currents often carry icebergs from Greenland to an area off Newfoundland called Iceberg Alley. This was where Church went to…

By Elizabeth Prata

I grew up in a family of means, where the breathless rush of the ‘new’ was king. We bought the first and newest of everything. Color TV? Got one. Remote control? First on the block to have it. 27″ TV? Over there in the living room. Pong just came out? We played it. Central vacuum? Installed. And so on.

When I met my husband in 1990, I decided to switch gears, and we went the frugal route. Downsize. No debt. Use things till they break, and then if possible, fix them instead of buying new. I sold my new house with its mortgage, and he sold his. He owned a camp by a lake that had been in the family since the 1950s. Thus, it had no mortgage. “Camps” were the name for a summer seasonal dwelling by the lake to which the family would…

I still get push-back when challenging the popular eschatological narrative: that a seven-year tribulation period is coming, that the Jews will build a Temple and resume animal sacrifices with God’s approval, that there will be a seven-year peace treaty, that God will seal 144,000 Jewish evangelists who will win countless souls to Christ during this “tribulation period,” and so forth. It pains me to repeat this foolishness. People who make this stuff up have made the eschaton into a comic book and have done a HUGE disservice to the body of Christ.

Today’s little rant won’t start with Revelation, but rather at the other end of the Bible’s chronology. Many scholars believe the oldest book in the Bible is the book of Job. Most of us are (hopefully) aware of it. Job was a fabulously rich man who lived in the middle east at about the time of Abraham. Satan…