Opinion

“Forrest, were you scared in Vietnam?” Jenny asked. “Yes. Well, I-I don’t know. Sometimes it would stop raining long enough for the stars to come out... and then it was nice. It was like just before the sun goes to bed down on the bayou. There was always a million sparkles on the water... like that mountain lake. It was so clear, Jenny, it looked like there were two skies one on top of the other. And then in the desert, when the sun comes up, I couldn’t tell where heaven stopped and the earth began. It’s so beautiful.” What Forrest Gump was describing were “thin places”—places where some unseen reality was feeding his very soul; some higher power. Perhaps, even the God of Christianity. So close.

A few weeks ago, we looked at the beauty beheld in the Golden Ratio, and last week, we looked at the beauty found in music that follows the Golden Ratio. But it is the beauty of nature that surpasses all else. After all, God used the wonder and beauty of nature to defend Himself against Job (Job 38-42). And it is from the beauty of nature that Paul claims we cannot deny that there is a Creator of all that we see (Rom 1:19ff).

Is God Dead?

Credit is a tool that lets you borrow money or access goods and services with the promise to pay later. It’s essential for personal and business finances, enabling large purchases like homes or cars and helping small businesses grow. Lenders use credit reports and scores to decide whether to approve loans and set interest rates.

The ancient Egyptians built the pyramids with the ratio of the height to the base equal to 1:1.618—The Golden Ratio. The ancient Athenians, those masters of architecture, built the Parthenon with its column configurations and dimensions based upon the Golden Ratio. We looked last week at several examples from nature that satisfy the Golden Ratio as well: the facial features of people that society generally deems “attractive” is one fascinating aspect of the Golden Ratio. In a sense, facial recognition technology can be thought of as a method that analyzes how much a person’s facial proportions deviate from the Golden Ratio. In fact, Leonardo da Vinci painted portraits using the Golden Ratio; the Mona Lisa is a fine example. And it is not just facial features, the Golden Ratio is present in a rose as well as many other flower petal and leaf configurations, and it is present in all sorts of seashells such as the Nautilus. But these are all tangible, concrete forms of soul food. What about the semi-abstract world of music? I say semi-abstract because although you can see music on paper, the notes played and traveling through the air are essentially abstract, they linger in the air just for a moment then they are gone . . . abstract.

Rural communities are seeing a boom in renewable energy development. Whether it’s wind energy or solar energy, communities reap the benefits from increased tax revenues, new job creation, and local lease payments. Better yet, communities can unlock additional benefits through Community Benefit Agreements (CBAs)