Melania Trump – Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment.

But God. Why evangelicals have hope. The story of the song “How great thou art” and its journey around the world.

In 1995 a girl was born with undeveloped optical nerves and mild cerebral palsy. She was not expected to live more than at most one year. But God had other plans for her. At age two she began to sing. Her love for singing praises to God has never ceased. And so, in God’s providence she was chosen to sing at the 2017 inauguration interfaith prayer service. And sing she did! Her name is Marlana VanHoose, a little girl, but with a voice.

Image result for the 2017 inauguration prayer breakfast how great thou art

Meanwhile, the media was busy tracking the protest rallies all around Washington that day. I watched all day and never saw it.

How did the audience that was privileged to watch react? It is worth to listen to it a second time, this time around watching the reaction of the public in attendance, notably Melania Trumps reaction.

After the song Melania led the standing ovation to acknowledge God’s grace, not only for the song, but for the whole day and for the whole presidency.

This is what give us evangelicals hope. She not only sang it, she also sang the third and fourth verses, so often omitted in public settings, especially in interfaith services. Why is that so important?

Let us look at the history of “O store Gud”, and how it came to be the most favored Hymn of at least three presidents before Donald Trump!

Clouds have always been my fascination. They come and go, form and disappear, cool by day and warm by night. But most impressive of all are thunderstorms, forming when the temperature and humidity are high, transport a lot of water vapor to higher elevations, there condensing as rain or ice, coming down, cooling and watering the earth. Clouds and thunderstorms are the thermostat of the earth. Without it the earth would respond like climate models, predicting a sharp temperature rise as carbon dioxide levels increase. The models are all flawed, since they predict a hot spot in the troposphere over the equator, but there is none. The thunderstorms in the tropical doldrums take care of that. “Settled science” instead has settled on ignoring the lack of the hot spot, for to acknowledge it would make the global warming claim invalid.

I thank God for providing us with a thermostat that protects the earth from overheating, and especially for thunderstorms!

Such was the case in July 1885, when Carl Boberg, a 26 year young pastor of a small congregation of the Swedish Missionary society was the honored guest of the ladies’ auxiliary annual picnic, held in a meadow near Mönsteråsviken, (a bay of the Baltic Sea in southeastern Sweden). The day was perfect, the sky was clear, pleasant temperatures, the cows were grazing on the meadow, the birds were singing, in short, a pastoral idyll. Then it happened. In a few short minutes thunderclouds appeared out of nothing. There was no time to go home, so they all sought shelter in a barn close by. The rain came down hard, and lightning struck a nearby tree. Then as suddenly as it started the rain stopped and all was calm. In Sweden it turns much cooler after a thunderstorm, and the birds sing like they got a new lease on life.

They all went home, and the young pastor pondered the events of the day. He

080419-11, digital 28,8 mb RAW, 12-00 Koltrast, Turdus merula Uppland — 080419-11, digital 28,8 mb RAW, 12-00
Koltrast, Turdus merula
Uppland

heard the Koltrast singing its melodic, beautiful drill

and in a distance he heard the church bells ringing from Kronobäck’s church. The bay was calm like a mirror, and inspired he started penning the song “O store Gud”. Here are the first four verses in Swedish:

O store Gud, när jag den värld beskådar
Som du har skapat med ditt allmaktsord
Hur där din visdom väver livets trådar
Och alla väsen mättas vid ditt bord
/: då brister själen ut i lovsångs ljud:
O store Gud, o store Gud!

När jag hör åskans röst och stormar brusa
Och blixtens klingor springa fram ur skyn
När regnets kalla, friska skurar susa
Och löftets båge glänser för min syn –
/: då brister själen ut i lovsångs ljud:
O store Gud, o store Gud!

När sommarvinden susar över fälten
När blommor dofta invid källans strand
När trastar drilla i de gröna tälten
Vid furuskogens tysta, dunkla rand
/: då brister själen ut i lovsångs ljud:
O store Gud, o store Gud!

När jag i Bibeln skådar alla under
Som Herren gjort sen förste Adams tid
Hur nådefull han varit alla stunder
Och hjälpt sitt folk ur livets synd och strid
/: då brister själen ut i lovsångs ljud:
O store Gud, o store Gud!

He continued to write and write of all the mighty works that God has made and what He has given us through His word, and continued long into the night. Before going to bed he had penned over twenty verses. The next Sunday he wove the poem into his sermon. The congregation loved it, but that was about it. Slowly the word got around that the poem was pretty good, and after much editing 9 verses were published in the local newspaper Mönsteråstidningen in 1886. Carl Boberg didn’t make any efforts to publish it further, and was surprised when he heard it sung a few years later to a Swedish folk melody (in 3/4 tempo). This was then published in the periodical “Sanningsvittnet” (witness of the truth) in 1891.

It was translated into German by an Estonian, Manfred von Glehn. Five years later it was translated into Russian by Ivan S. Prokanoff, the Martin Luther of modern Russia. It was published in a book with the title “Cymbals”.

Later, while in the Carpathian Mountains of what is now Western Ukraine the English Missionary couple Mercy and Stuart Hine heard the song sung in Russian, this time as a wandering song in march tempo. He got impressed by God’s great works in the Polish mountains, and as Stuart Hine heard the people singing it on their way to church he penned a translation. This became the first and second verse:

O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the works Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Refrain:
Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

When through the woods, and forest glades I wander,
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees.
When I look down, from lofty mountain grandeur
And see the brook, and feel the gentle breeze.

Refrain:

From now on the English version is different from the Swedish original, and it is time to step back and look at a very brief history of Eastern Europe. Before World War I Eastern Europe was basically under the Russian Tsar. Finland was a grand Duchy under Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were separate entities but under Russia. Poland was under Russian rule. Belarus didn’t exist and what is now Ukraine was part Russian and part of the Austrian/Hungary empire. The Russians tried to stamp out the Ukraine language but were only partly successful. Then came the Great War and the world changed. Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland and some more became independent states . During the Great War the Russian Revolution started and civil wars broke out. Nowhere was the fighting worse than in what was to become independent Ukraine. Up to six armies were fighting for control, and the corruption was unimaginable. Finally the Bolsheviks took control of Ukraine and Joseph Stalin “restored order”. One of the Bolshevik ideals was to control all production and that included all farming. Ukraine was then known as “the bread basket of Europe”. It was during this time the Hines started their ministry in Ukraine. The collectivization of the farms was disastrous to say the least. Farmers know the right time to sow and harvest, they look at the clouds in the sky, pray and go ahead. This is far more efficient than centrally planning when to sow and harvest by order from bureaucrats in a city far, far away, and so there was famine in both Russia proper and Ukraine. But the Ukrainians had put up a lot of resistance, so Joseph Stalin decided to punish the Ukrainians by taking away all their harvest and dole it out to the starving Russians. This resulted in the Holodomor (death by hunger) and at least 3.9 million Ukrainians died. This was in 1932-33 and the Hines were forced to evacuate to Poland, in what is now South West Ukraine.

This is the origin of the third verse: It was typical of the Hines to ask if there were any Christians in the villages they visited. In one case, they found out that the only Christians that their host knew about were a man named Dmitri and his wife Lyudmila. Dmitri’s wife knew how to read — evidently a fairly rare thing at that time and in that place. She taught herself how to read because a Russian soldier had left a Bible behind several years earlier, and she started slowly learning by reading that Bible. When the Hines arrived in the village and approached Dmitri’s house, they heard a strange and wonderful sound: Dmitri’s wife was reading from the gospel of John about the crucifixion of Christ to a houseful of guests, and those visitors were in the very act of repenting. In Ukraine (as I know first hand!), this act of repenting is done very much out loud. So the Hines heard people calling out to God, saying how unbelievable it was that Christ would die for their own sins, and praising Him for His love and mercy. They just couldn’t barge in and disrupt this obvious work of the Holy Spirit, so they stayed outside and listened. Stuart wrote down the phrases he heard the Repenters use, and (even though this was all in Russian), it became the third verse that we know today:
And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing;
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.

Refrain:

The second world war broke out, and the Hines were forced to return back to England, but they continued their ministry. The fourth verse was was added by Stuart Hine after the Second World War had ended. His concern for the exiled Polish community in Britain, who were anxious to return home, provided part of the inspiration for Hine’s final verse. Hine and David Griffiths visited a camp in Sussex, England, in 1948 where displaced Russians were being held, but where only two were professing Christians. The testimony of one of these refugees and his anticipation of the second coming of Christ inspired Hine to write the fourth stanza of his English version of the hymn. According to Ireland: One man to whom they were ministering told them an amazing story: he had been separated from his wife at the very end of the war, and had not seen her since. At the time they were separated, his wife was a Christian, but he was not, but he had since been converted. His deep desire was to find his wife so they could at last share their faith together. But he told the Hines that he did not think he would ever see his wife on earth again. Instead he was longing for the day when they would meet in heaven, and could share in the Life Eternal there. These words again inspired Hine, and they became the basis for his fourth and final verse to ‘How Great Thou Art’:

When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation,
And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart.
Then I shall bow, in humble adoration,
And then proclaim: “My God, how great Thou art!”

Refrain

It became so popular that in Billy Graham’s 1956 New York Crusade it was sung at all 99 events, and from there the song spread throughout all the world, even back in Sweden where the new version became the popular one. One of the visitors to this Crusade was the little boy Donald Trump, who went with his Father and Mother and Brother (and Sisters?) to listen. God’s word never returns void.

Years have passed since Donald Trump was inaugurated. This is one exchange of views he had with Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO:

The main stream media interpreted this as President Trump wanted to weaken NATO

Joe Biden is now President. Again Ukraine is the center of events, and Putin has decided to invade and subdue Ukraine because they decided to direct their corruption to the West rather than go along with the corruption of Russia. The battle of Kyiv is in its third day, and the people of Kyiv has decided to battle it out rather than surrender. It is beginning to look more like the battle of Stalingrad in WW II where the citizens fought and prevailed, so Germany could not get at the Russian oil in Baku. The Ukrainians hatred for Russia is that great. They remember the Holodomor as told them by their grandparents.

Putin seems to have miscalculated badly. He had his eyes on quickly absorbing Ukraine, then taking the Baltic countries, and maybe even Poland. He is getting more and more desperate and has begun to threaten Finland, and even Sweden to not even think of joining NATO.

The people of Ukraine are joining the military, all males 18 to 60 are forbidden to leave the country, forced to join the defense forces in one form or another, and even many women are joining. They are issued a gun, mostly AR 15 or equivalent and some ammunition. What they lack is military training, so the major purpose is to prevent an easy takeover of the cities. There will be many lives shed. When I saw on the TV the heart rendering farewells of the men separating from their loved ones, knowing full well they may never see each other again in this life, the fourth verse of “how great thou art” flashed back in my mind, and when Putin threatened even neutral Sweden, I realized the song had made its journey around the world, and I realized that after the thunder, the still small voice of the Koltrast singing: God is still in charge, but we must still do what we can, and above all, pray for a revival and a great awakening. As the song was sung in Billy Graham’s Crusades to about two billions all around the world, so will our prayers be a part of the greatest revival and awakening the world has ever seen.

God works in all and through all.

God is.

June 25: The word for today.

^{Ephesians 4:4}There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; ⁵one Lord, one faith, one baptism; ⁶one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Twenty-two years ago a girl was born with undeveloped optical nerves and mild cerebral palsy. She was not expected to live more than at most one year. But God had other plans for her. At age two she began to sing. Her love for singing praises to God has never ceased. And so, in God’s providence she was chosen to sing at the 2017 presidential inauguration interfaith prayer service. And sing she did! Her name is Marlana VanHoose, a little girl, but with a voice.

Meanwhile, the media was busy tracking the protest rallies all around Washington that day. I watched all day and never saw this.

After the song Melania led the standing ovation to acknowledge God’s grace, not only for the song, but for the whole day and for the whole presidency.

This is what give us evangelicals hope. The young woman not only sang it, she also sang the third and fourth verses, so often omitted in public settings, especially in interfaith services. Why is that important?

Let us look at the history of “O store Gud”, and how it came to be the most favored Hymn of at least three presidents before Donald Trump!

I thank God for providing us with a thermostat that protects the earth from overheating, and especially for thunderstorms!

Such was the case in July 1885, when Carl Boberg, a 26 year young pastor of a small congregation of the Swedish Missionary society was the honored guest of the ladies’ auxiliary annual picnic, held in a meadow near Mönsteråsviken, (a bay of the Baltic Sea in southeastern Sweden). The day was perfect, the sky was clear, pleasant temperatures, the cows were grazing on the meadow, the birds were singing, in short, a pastoral idyll. Then it happened. In a few short minutes thunderclouds appeared out of nowhere. There was no time to go home, so they all sought shelter in a barn close by. The rain came down hard, and lightning struck a nearby tree. Then as suddenly as it started the rain stopped and all was calm. In Sweden it turns much cooler after a thunderstorm, and the birds sing like they got a new lease on life.

They all went home, and the young pastor pondered the events of the day. He

heard the Coalthrush singing its melodic, beautiful drill, and in a distance he heard the church bells ringing from Kronobäck’s church. The bay was calm like a mirror, and inspired he started penning the song “O store Gud”. Here is the first verse:

O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the works Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Refrain:
Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

He continued to write and wrote of all the mighty works that God has made and what He has given us through His word, and continued long into the night. Before going to bed he had penned over twenty verses. The next Sunday he wove the poem into his sermon. They all loved it, but that was about it. Slowly the word got around the poem was pretty good, after much editing down, 9 verses were published in the local newspaper Mönsteråstidningen in 1886. Carl Boberg didn’t make any efforts to publish it further, and was surprised when he heard it sung a few years later to a Swedish folk melody (in 3/4 tempo). This was then published in the periodical “Sanningsvittnet” (witness of the truth) in 1891.

Later, while in the Carpathian Mountains of what is now Western Ukraine the English Missionary couple Hine heard the song sung in Russian, this time as a wandering song in march tempo. He got impressed by God’s great works in the Polish mountains, and as Stuart Hine heard the people singing it on their way to church he penned a translation. This become the second verse:

Refrain

From now on the English version is different than the Swedish original. This is the origin of the third verse: It was typical of the Hines to ask if there were any Christians in the villages they visited. In one case, they found out that the only Christians that their host knew about were a man named Dmitri and his wife Lyudmila. Dmitri’s wife knew how to read — evidently a fairly rare thing at that time and in that place. She taught herself how to read because a Russian soldier had left a Bible behind several years earlier, and she started slowly learning by reading that Bible. When the Hines arrived in the village and approached Dmitri’s house, they heard a strange and wonderful sound: Dmitri’s wife was reading from the gospel of John about the crucifixion of Christ to a houseful of guests, and those visitors were in the very act of repenting. In Ukraine, this act of repenting is done very much out loud. So the Hines heard people calling out to God, saying how unbelievable it was that Christ would die for their own sins, and praising Him for His love and mercy. They just couldn’t barge in and disrupt this obvious work of the Holy Spirit, so they stayed outside and listened. Stuart wrote down the phrases he heard the Repenters use, and (even though this was all in Russian), it became the third verse that we know today:
And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing;
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.

Refrain

The second world war broke out, and the Hines’ were forced to return back to England, but they continued their ministry. The fourth verse was was added by Stuart Hine after the Second World War. His concern for the exiled Polish community in Britain, who were anxious to return home, provided part of the inspiration for Hine’s final verse. Hine and David Griffiths visited a camp in Sussex, England, in 1948 where displaced Russians were being held, but where only two were professing Christians. The testimony of one of these refugees and his anticipation of the second coming of Christ inspired Hine to write the fourth stanza of his English version of the hymn. According to Ireland: One man to whom they were ministering told them an amazing story: he had been separated from his wife at the very end of the war, and had not seen her since. At the time they were separated, his wife was a Christian, but he was not, but he had since been converted. His deep desire was to find his wife so they could at last share their faith together. But he told Hines that he did not think he would ever see his wife on earth again. Instead he was longing for the day when they would meet in heaven, and could share in the Life Eternal there. These words again inspired Hine, and they became the basis for his fourth and final verse to ‘How Great Thou Art’:

Refrain

The complete song was soon published, not in England but in the Soviet Union (in English). The famous Gospel singer George Beverly Shea got hold of it, liked it a lot, but he wanted to change two words in the first verse: Instead of works, he wanted to use worlds, and instead of mighty he wanted to use rolling. Very reluctantly Stuart Hine agreed, but only for use in the Billy Graham Crusades. It was first sung in Canada in 1955. It became so popular that in Billy Graham’s 1956 New York Crusade it was sung at all 99 events, and from there the song spread out through all the world, even back to Sweden where the new version became the popular one. One of the visitors to this Crusade was the boy Donald Trump, who went with his Father and Mother and Brother (and Sisters?) to listen. God’s word never returns void.

God works in mysterious ways.

God works over all and in all and through all.

God is not finished with us yet.

God is.

Melania voted in person in Palm Beach. A message on her dress?

Melania did vote in Palm Beach

in person with fraud out of reach.

With the mail not secure

we can still find a cure

and secure our right to free speech.

Did she secretively give a message with the pattern in her dress to promote blockchain?

Yes, there is a secure way to vote, if we will use the blockchain technology. It works for money transfers, so it should be possible to be used for the voting public. The results would be automatically collected and tabled and be available to the public within an hour of poll closings. One problem remains. It cuts out the power of corrupt politicians to manipulate the voting results, so it may never pass the different states’ legislatures. One can always hope though.

First Lady Melania Trump at Mount Rushmore, A Limerick.

First Lady in dress on Mount Rushmore

from Central Saint Martin’s design floor,

where some girls got a chance

make designs, think of dance,

a dance of a lifetime, and much more.

https://http://www.papermag.com/alexander-mcqueen-dancing-girls-dress-2645945769.html

Some lucky design students at Central Saint Martins got the opportunity of a lifetime last year when Alexander McQueen enlisted their help to contribute in the making of its Spring 2020 collection.

Worn by British model Stella Tennant, Look 10 consisted of a white sleeveless midi dress featuring abstract line drawings of “dancing girls” that were done by the aforementioned students. (All of their names were credited in the show notes.)

Alexander McQueen gave PAPER a behind-the-scenes look at the making of this dress. The students’ dancing girl sketches were done on long white sheets during a life-drawing class led by fashion illustrator Julie Verhoeven at the brand’s flagship store in London.

Afterwards, creative director Sarah Burton enlisted the entire McQueen staff to hand-embroider and stitch over the sketches of a single ivory linen dress.

The Stitch School, a group that fosters community through needlework, provided the teams in London and Paris with specialist tables and looms so that every single person could contribute in the making of this look.

Tennant’s dress went on to inspire the dancing girls embroideries in Look 12: a blue linen dress with an open neckline and short, bulbous sleeves.

Between the school kids and her entire staff collaborating on this dress, it all amounted to the sense community spirit and togetherness that Burton championed this season. As she wrote in her show notes back then, “I love the idea of people having the time to make things together, the time to meet and talk together, the time to reconnect to the world.”

First Lady Melania’s dress on the 4th of July speech. Was there a message? A Limerick

What gives with Melania’s dress?

“abolishchildtrafficking” mess?

For it’s vive la différence

and it’s vive la résistance

it’s all “save the children”, my guess.

Fullsized image

Melania Trump never ceases to amaze me. Everywhere she goes, she sends a message with what she is wearing. The rest of the world is fascinated by it, but here in the U.S.A it is ignored, even by the fashion magazines. It was made by the Venezuelan designer Carolina Herrera: site called abolishchildtrafficking.org sells her cosmetic stuff.

http://abolishchildtrafficking.org/product-tag/carolina-herrera/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolina_Herrera. This dress was probably ordered directly from her and not through a store, even though it is for sale.

There are seven very interesting bands on the dress, and look similar to the bands put on an electric resistor to tell it’s Ohmage and tolerance, but there are no seven band resistors.

Fullsized image

Next guess, seven bands: God’s rainbow? No, not the right colors. And it is definitely not the LGBTQ rainbow, it has only six colors, the number of man.

The verdict? It was a very nice dress, fit for celebrating the 4th of July

But God. Why evangelical Christians have hope. “How Great Thou Art”

Twenty-two years a girl was born with undeveloped optical nerves and mild cerebral palsy. She was not expected to live more than at most one year. But God had other plans for her. At age two she began to sing. Her love for singing praises to God has never ceased. And so, in God’s providence she was chosen to sing at the 2017 inauguration interfaith prayer service. And sing she did! Her name is Marlana VanHoose, a little girl, but with a voice.

Image result for the 2017 inauguration prayer breakfast how great thou art

Meanwhile, the media was busy tracking the protest rallies all around Washington that day. I watched all day and never saw it.

After the song Melania led the standing ovation to acknowledge God’s grace, not only for the song, but for the whole day and for the whole presidency.

Let us look at the history of “O store Gud”, and how it came to be the most favored Hymn of at least three presidents before Donald Trump!

I thank God for providing us with a thermostat that protects the earth from overheating, and especially for thunderstorms!

They all went home, and the young pastor pondered the events of the day. He

heard the Coalthrush singing its melodic, beautiful drill and in a distance he heard the church bells ringing from Kronobäck’s church. The bay was calm like a mirror, and inspired he started penning the song “O store Gud”. Here is the first verse:

O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the works Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Refrain:
Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

He continued to write and write of all the mighty works that God has made and what He has given us through His word, and continued long into the night. Before going to bed he had penned over twenty verses. The next Sunday he wove the poem into his sermon. They all loved it, but that was about it. Slowly the word got around the poem was pretty good, after much editing down 9 verses were published in the local newspaper Mönsteråstidningen in 1886. Carl Boberg didn’t make any efforts to publish it further, and was surprised when he heard it sung a few years later to a Swedish folk melody (in 3/4 tempo). This was then published in the periodical “Sanningsvittnet” (witness of the truth) in 1891.

Refrain

From now on the English version is different than the Swedish original. This is the origin of the third verse: It was typical of the Hines to ask if there were any Christians in the villages they visited. In one case, they found out that the only Christians that their host knew about were a man named Dmitri and his wife Lyudmila. Dmitri’s wife knew how to read — evidently a fairly rare thing at that time and in that place. She taught herself how to read because a Russian soldier had left a Bible behind several years earlier, and she started slowly learning by reading that Bible. When the Hines arrived in the village and approached Dmitri’s house, they heard a strange and wonderful sound: Dmitri’s wife was reading from the gospel of John about the crucifixion of Christ to a houseful of guests, and those visitors were in the very act of repenting. In Ukraine (as I know first hand!), this act of repenting is done very much out loud. So the Hines heard people calling out to God, saying how unbelievable it was that Christ would die for their own sins, and praising Him for His love and mercy. They just couldn’t barge in and disrupt this obvious work of the Holy Spirit, so they stayed outside and listened. Stuart wrote down the phrases he heard the Repenters use, and (even though this was all in Russian), it became the third verse that we know today:
And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing;
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.

Refrain

The second world war broke out, and the Hines were forced to return back to England, but they continued their ministry. The fourth verse was was added by Stuart Hine after the Second World War. His concern for the exiled Polish community in Britain, who were anxious to return home, provided part of the inspiration for Hine’s final verse. Hine and David Griffiths visited a camp in Sussex, England, in 1948 where displaced Russians were being held, but where only two were professing Christians. The testimony of one of these refugees and his anticipation of the second coming of Christ inspired Hine to write the fourth stanza of his English version of the hymn. According to Ireland: One man to whom they were ministering told them an amazing story: he had been separated from his wife at the very end of the war, and had not seen her since. At the time they were separated, his wife was a Christian, but he was not, but he had since been converted. His deep desire was to find his wife so they could at last share their faith together. But he told the Hines that he did not think he would ever see his wife on earth again. Instead he was longing for the day when they would meet in heaven, and could share in the Life Eternal there. These words again inspired Hine, and they became the basis for his fourth and final verse to ‘How Great Thou Art’:

Refrain

The complete song was soon published, not in England but in the Soviet Union (in English). The famous Gospel singer George Beverly Shea got hold of it, liked it a lot, but he wanted to change two words in the first verse: Instead of works, he wanted to use worlds, and instead of mighty he wanted to use rolling. Very reluctantly Stuart Hine agreed, but only for use in the Billy Graham Crusades. It was first sung in Canada in 1955. It became so popular that in Billy Graham’s 1956 New York Crusade it was sung at all 99 events, and from there the song spread out through all the world, even back in Sweden where the new version became the popular one. One of the visitors to this Crusade was the little boy Donald Trump, who went with his Father and Mother and Brother (and Sisters?) to listen. God’s word never returns void.

God works in mysterious ways.

God works in all and through all.

God is.

What a difference between Trump and Obama on meeting with Putin. Two Limericks.

President Trump met Vladimir Putin July 7 2017 in Hamburg. The meeting was scheduled for 35 minutes to shake hands and size each other up, instead it lasted for over 2 hours. It lasted so long that at one time Trump’s support team sent in his wife Melania to remind him he was to meet with Theresa May in a few minutes, but he continued for another hour, so his meeting with the British P.M. got postponed. The meeting was frank and robust, and they agreed on a cease fire in Syria and a common goal with respect to North Korea, but disagreements were out in the open to be tackled by normal diplomacy.

With Putin and Trump face to face

Which alpha-male did win the race?

It’s the art of the deal.

With T. Rex it’s for real.

Poles Missile Defense back in place.

Trump made an end-run on Putin by going first to Poland, a former Warsaw Pact country and re-arming them with the Patriot missile defense system and making preparations for exporting Liquid Natural Gas to Eastern Europe, thus making them independent of Russian Gas.

This is leadership.

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This too is real leadership, Melania Trump explaining something to Putin (in perfect German, which they both speak), and Putin, starstruck listens.

Totally opposite to Obama’s lack thereof.

Headline in Washington Post Aug. 6 2013: Obama cancels summit meeting with Putin. Obama will still attend the Group of 20 economic summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, but a top White House official said the president had no plans to hold one-on-one talks with Putin while there. Instead of visiting Putin in Moscow, the president will add a stop in Sweden to his early September travel itinerary.

Crybaby, why go to Sweden?
Putin will not give you Snowden?
Air Force One is no toy
You’re a man, not a boy.
Face it Obama, you’re beaten.

Why did he go to Sweden?
Was it to learn of the success of the 25% VAT (National sales tax)?
Was it their success in rooting out home schooling?
Was it their solid support of the Palestinians over the Israelis?
Was it confusion between Sweden and Norway? Norway, not Sweden gives out the Nobel Peace Prize, and he needs people who still admire him.
Was it to learn more about green energy?
Was it because Sweden has the ideal welfare state where even the conservatives are for it?
Was it because everybody belongs to a union in Sweden, even the employers have their union?
Was it to show Putin he is having more flexibility after the election?

Was it because Sweden now has 123 young men for every 100 young women thanks to taking in so many “refugees”, mostly young Muslim men of draft age?
Whatever the reason, it was not leadership.

Potica, a bread for life and celebration, a Limerick.

Potica, now cherished in Rome.

Slovenia is really its home.

So the Pope was all right

to Melania’s delight;

that nutcake fits Donald’s genome.

Visiting the Vatican, President Trump, his wife Melania and daughter Ivanka had a meeting with His Holiness, Pope Francis. The meeting started out tense, but after the half an hour private one on one audience, the President and the Pope emerged all smiles. President Trump said: “Thank you. I won’t forget what you said.” Later he tweeted: “Honor of a lifetime to meet His Holiness Pope Francis. I leave the Vatican more determined than ever to pursue PEACE in our world.”

The Pope, smiling broadly even cracked a joke with Melania Trump. His Holiness the Pope asked Melania (in Italian): What do you feed your husband? ‘Potica?’ Melania laughed and answered in Italian “Potica, si, … yes”, the perfect answer. After all, Melania is fluent in six languages: Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, Italian, German, English and conversational French. The Pope is fluent in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, German, Ukrainian and Piedmontese and, of course, Latin.

The mike feed wasn’t all that great, so many newspapers got it all wrong. The Guardian(UK) thought Melania responded “Pizza”. Huffington post seemed to indicate the Pope suggested that Trump looks like he’s filled with yeast, milk, butter, eggs and lots of nuts. Washington Post got it all wrong and called it an awkward exchange. The Pope and Melania understood each other perfectly in Italian, but the interpreter (interruptor) had to mistranslate Potica to Pizza. The Pope loves Potica, and it is the traditional cake for Christmas and Easter in Slovenia, Melania’s native country. It was the perfect small-talk.

Speaking of nutcake, or more properly nutbread it is really much more healthy if you mix in nuts or almonds with the bread as a substitute for shortening. We used to live in Lancaster County, where Ephrata Cloister is located. Once visiting the cloister we took a tour of the graveyard and noticed the brothers and sisters lived long lives, most reaching their 70’s, a rare occurrence in the 1700’s. They lived an ascetic life, sleeping six hours a night in two three hour shifts on a 15 inch wide wood bed with a wooden block as a pillow. They ate only one meal a day, vegettarian, but … it was rich in nuts, walnuts, black walnuts, Chestnuts, Lancaster County is rich in nuts. My wife tried them all in breads and cakes, also almonds, filberts, pecans, but not macadamia nuts, and no cashews.

Life is wonderful.

Different strokes for different folks. Who’s bowing now? A Limerick.

Melania, no hijab in Riyadh

was greeted as equal, I’m glad.

For King Salman shook hands;

bowed to western demands.

Obama submitted, bowed down. Sad.

Three pictures say it all: The 81 year old and in frail health, King Salman Himself welcomes President Trump and his wife Melania as Air Force 1 arrives.

Compare this with 2016, Apr 20.President Barack Obama is greeted by Ambassador Joseph W. Westphal, U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as he arrives. No royal welcome at all.

A few years earlier Obama showed his true colors: The gesture of submission. Times change and elections have consequences.

American golfing and Japanese gardening diplomacy. A Limerick.

First Lady MelaniaTrump revealed her interest in gardening as she accompanied Mrs Abe on a tour of Morikami Museum and Japanese Garden in Delray Beach, Florida, while her husband took the Japanese P.M. golfing.

This is golfing and gardening diplomacy at its best.

Melania Trump is an asset

With Japanese PM she has it.

In the garden’s still life

she was hosting his wife.

Diplomacy coup, Donald aced it.