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Human sympathy for those who are suffering has impelled some medical, charitable, and religious organizations to find ways to comfort people as they are dying—or even to help hasten death. Some have attempted to comfort people by explaining why they feel God would allow or even cause death.

My first memory of hearing about Jesus was my mother reading the story of the Master throwing the money changers out of the Temple (see Matthew 21:12, 13 ). I couldn’t have been more than three years old, but the story made a distinct impression on me.

Oh, no! There it went—my friend’s brand-new cellphone—over the side of her kayak and into the lake. The water was only about five feet deep, but the lake floor was too soft to support the weight of a person, so we four friends in four kayaks gently searched the ground beneath us with our paddles.

I am currently a business manager, and during my career, I am grateful to say I have hired many more people than I have dismissed. The process of dismissing an employee is not very pleasant for anyone.

In the prophetic book of Isaiah in the Bible we read, “With everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer. For this is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee.

As a teen, I learned to drive in a sports car. Exceeding the speed limit was of no concern.

Seen from space, the earth is beautiful, like a bright blue marble with white swirls encircling it amidst colors of brown, yellow, and green. It is amazing to think that we, as children of God, have been given loving dominion over it!  In Genesis, we read that God gave man “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” ( 1:26 ).

Are you an Ananias or a Barnabas? In the Bible book The Acts of the Apostles, chapter 9, Saul is on his way to Damascus to arrest and take back to Jerusalem anyone professing what we now call Christianity. Saul was a dreaded figure to the followers of Jesus.

Are we attempting , with God’s help or without, to build a grand and noble life? Or are we allowing the excellence of the life God has already given us to appear? Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures states, “We must form perfect models in thought and look at them continually, or we shall never carve them out in grand and noble lives” (Mary Baker Eddy, p. 248 ).

Like most small airplanes, ours has something called a transponder. This instrument allows an airplane to be recognized by an airport control tower.