Heaven Board #20

Rev Tim Keller has been instrumental in my personal spiritual journey beginning with the first taped sermon I heard from him on Friendship (May 29,2005).   Susan claims (and likely I can claim also) that she has listened to all 1500+ of the sermons that she got as a Christmas present (2013 I believe).  It was a very sad day  May 19, 2023 (we were volunterring at a J.H. Outback weekend) that we learned of his passing.  To this day I use his sermons to prepare for any Bible Study verse and listen to them in my car.  Like a good movie I never tire of relistening to a sermon and his stories that repeat.  

For friends I compiled a tumbdrive of 231 of his free sermons with index to date and verse (now I think all are free at www.gospelinlife.com/sermons/).  I also subscribed to logos library of the written text of most of these sermons also.

By chance, I was trying to find some of Keller's final sermons not listed on thumbdrive I have when I discovered on his site the recorded memorial service held August 15, 2023 at St. Patricks Cathedral. What a moving homily by Rev. Sam Allberry.  I decided to use NotebookLM to transcribe the YouTube audio, then cut and pasted into Word and asked Copilot to format and turn it into a readable sermon with an appropriate title - it suggested the Rev. Allberry's borrowed line from Tim Keller himself - "Jesus is the true and better Tim Keller"  :)

But what struck me most about this message was this statement:

 

 "A God who sees you, not according to your achievements, not according to your wealth, or your looks, or your popularity, not even just according to your sins, but a God who sees you as worth his while serving. Some of us here this afternoon will be unsure whether we believe in God. Some of us may be very sure we don’t believe in God. But I wonder if the God you don’t believe in is like this. And if God did exist, wouldn’t you want him to be just like this?  Jesus came to serve."

Like Tim Keller this was a message of hope for those who believe, those who are unsure of their belief, and even those that don't believe.  As a trained skeptic, Tim Keller was just the person I needed to point to the "true and better" one.

Weather or Not

Susan asked what would Armstrong Men do regarding a rain out of the 5th annual golf outing at Hamilton Elks?  The forecast was 98% rain for the entire day.  The actual outcome - overcast with a slight "spit" on the windshield driving up at 7:30am and complete sunshine and hot weather by the third hole after a 9am start.  Steve. M. won the bragging rights for our foursome when he had a natural birdie on the same par 3 course I had "beat the pro" three years earlier!

Great memories also of that year with Joe R. (now in heaven) in our foursome at the hole sponsored by Glenn Bitzenhofer!  What a God wink with the reflection of a spiritual symbol of "Fishers of Men".  

2013 Armstrong Men Golf Outing

Steve Z.'s email Thursday evening about option plays on USO (ETF proxy for the price of oil) and today's WSJ article about "War leaves Economy with more Stubborn Inflation, Economists predict" got me questioning who is the most accurate - Weathermen or Economists?

Copilot weighed in -  "Weather forecasters, and it's not particularly close."

The rational is that Economists are trying to predict human behaviour and Weather forecasters operate under the laws of physics!   

Copilot goes on to chastize the Economists with:  "A famous comparison comes from economist Kenneth Galbraith, who joked that the only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable." 

For proper parity -  "The weather forecaster is the only person who can be wrong half the time and still keep his job."

 But in the end - this says it all:  "Weather forecasters and economists have one thing in common: when they're right, nobody remembers; when they're wrong, everybody does."

Who Goes First?

The Wed. 7:15BC mens bible study group are concluding a study on Forgiveness using Fr. Thomas Berg and Dr. Timothy Lock's book "Choosing Forgiveness - Unleash the Power of God's Grace".  The book was excellent but the implementation is challenging.  As we learned together with the Made4More videos during Armstrong's Supercharge 2026 and subsequent small group study - the power comes with "WHO GOES FIRST?".  

The book stimuilated me to construct a Copilot assisted PowerPoint visual of Divine Forgiveness and Reconciliation.  I continue to be amazed at how AI increases my productivity, creativity, and skills.

 

One insight that I personally discovered in this study is the need to separate the offense ( or the wound) from the offender.  God hates sin (the offense) but still loves the Offender.  Only when the Wounded sees the divine forgiveness that God provides the Offender can he/she begin the process of healing and softening the heart with God's power.  

Still this is easier to display, intellectualize, and discuss - much harder to emotionally and prayerfully accomplish.  

One thing is for certain - GOD always goes FIRST!

If I Were King

It's appropriate to acknowledge 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence today.

Happy 4th of July!!!!

Actually I have little memory of July 4th 1976 ( The150 anniversary) celebration since I was deep into my Internship at Arthur Andersen (Administrative Services Division) inserting BAL subroutines into an RPG software package called MAC-PAC; then recompiling the programs so that the DOS 360 IBM mainframe could execute the software package.   We were working evening shift when the mainframe was not in heavy use. But.... I digress in my memories that dominated my life 50 years ago.  I had little thought then of freedom and philosophical matters. I was just focused on completing my Masters Degree the next fall and getting a job!

What todays blog is really about is a journey in a thought experiment (similar to our Founding Fathers) that is also the topic of choice for the Vistage Alumni Group this month.   Here is the question.  

                    "If you were King of the World, what would you do?"

Naturally I took the "high tech" (or lazy) approach and asked AI for help.  I posed this question to Copilot, Gemini Pro, Claude, Perplexity, ChatGPT-5, and Grok in two ways - first as if they had to answer themselves and second for structuring my answer to my Vistage buddies for the July meeting.  

One thing for certain is that these AI engines are USA and freedom biased because everyone of the AI engines said they would abdicate authority as soon as feasible. George Washington is considered our best president because he abdicated power and refused to be King.  Good to know AI has the same philosophy and courage.  

As for helping me decide what I would do as King, my dialogue with Copilot and Gemini Pro (the two AI engines that I use the most) went about 11 chats deep and came close to the same conclusion.  Abdicate power and don't focus on rule making.

Loading the Copilot chat data into NotebookLM produced an interesting video available on my Youtube channel.

The key punchline:  

"Maybe the most important job of a king is not governing behavior. Maybe it's giving people a reason to hope."

You Dig

Amazon Prime Days are over (4 days this year - June 23-26) and I have been hooked on purchasing all kind of gadgets, gifts and uneeded stuff for the last 5 years during this event.  This year a spontaneous purchase of yet another Firestick for $25 just to test the AI and voice integration feature.  

Last night I decided to install it on my 2019 LG ThinQ TV to determine compare the voice and lookup features.  The real effort in installing the Firestick is adding the apps and getting them authorized for the TV.  After adding nearly 20 apps, it was time to test.  My first observation is how confusing it is on so many streaming services with paid subscriptions - Netflix, YoutubeTV, Disney +, Apple TV, HBO Max, Hulu, Paramount +, Amaxon Prime, MGM, the list is endless.  That presents the paradox of choice - a seemingly infinite set of content to choose from.

So ... what movie popped to mind?  "The Good the Bad and the Ugly" classic Clint Eastwood flick.  So with a voice prompt - there it was.  I watched two of my favorite scenes about "Two Kinds of People"

First was the interaction of Tuco and Blondie (Clint) regarding the partnership, risk, and how to split the robbed treasure once found.  Tuco defines his definition of "Two Kinds of People".   

Best yet - was the quote by Blondie (Clint) at the graveyard scene after killing Angel Eyes and responding to Tuco's question about removing the bullets from his gun. 

     "There are two kinds of people my friend. Those with loaded guns, and those that dig.  YOU DIG  :)

Fake Family Fotos

Back from a Wisner Family Reunion at Oglebay Resort W.V. Three Wisner Siblings with spouses, five childen and their 4 spouses and seven grandchildren (22 total).  Not huge - but not insignificant.  Organized by Dayna and D'Lane the location and available activities was both convenient and great fun for all (but especially for the grandchildren).  

Like the Blue Danube Cruise organized by Mom and Dad (July 8 - 18 2006), there was 100% participation. Twenty six years ago none of the kids were married so the numbers were lower (13 total).  

Family Genelogy and numbers are fascinating.  The Vistage Alumni exercise we did in May looking at three generations back and forward was interesting as it showed me how my family tree was so much larger in the 1800s smaller in the 1900s and now more expansive in the 2000s.  Of course it is all in how you count - one surname or all inlaw surnames. 

The family picture was morphed several times via AI - first with March Madness college jerseys, then NFL Teams and finally with a 1925 black and white photo of all 22 of us (as if back in time).  

It seems AI also changes faces, sex, weight, or many other features as it reshapes people to fit the style (basketball players, football players, 1925 folks) of the requested theme.  It favors visual style over accuracy.  My opinion is that with all the deep fake liability issues that AI is purposely trying to make adjustments to avoid problems.

It does beg the issue of what photo can you even trust and how do you know if a photo has been modified.  For digital photos there is the original timestamp, device, GPS and whether the file has been re-saved or edited.  Compression levels, pixel forensics, lighting and geometry play a key role in deep fake detection.  Bottom line images and video can no longer be trusted alone - other collaboration of multiple witnesses and physical evidence are required.

So did the Family Reunion really occur?  Only the participants can attest. 

Made 4 More

Father's Day June 21, 2009 was an eventful spiritual event for me when Armstrong United Methodist Church handed out Patrick Morley and David Delk's "Dad in the Mirror" book to all the Fathers. I used that book in my daily devotional and spiritual journaling that I had started October 2016.  The message from the penetrated my heart then.... and Now - Am I Fathering for performance or Fathering to the Heart?  Behavior flows out of Belief and the goal of a Father is to disciple the heart of his child to Love God and Others. That book also started my devoted support and gifts to Man in the Mirror Ministry. 

This afternoon at lunch I reiterated that Father's Day memory and pivitol moment in my spiritual development as a Son, Man, Husband, and Father.  At lunch was  TD. D. .and his son J.D2. of Made4More (M4M) Ministry. and Pastor Brown whoinitiated this introduction and meeting.  How appropriate that Pastor Brown brought two copies of the June 22, 2026 Father's Day gift to them.  I pray that the Men who took home their copy of  Patrick Morley's new book  "What if Christianity is True?" will do the same with it as I did 17 years ago. 

The only Armstrong Supercharge event I had missed (due to a family death - M.S.) was last March 7. 2026 where Made 4 More presented their excellent material (7 Videos and Group Discussions) to 50 or more Men encouraging them to join a small group and helping them in transformation as Men, Husbands, and Fathers. Man Fully Alive was permission to "Go First" in sharing your story (like the videos) and allowing others into your real life and challenges as a Man.

Our Wednesday Bible Study took the next 7 weeks to dive deep into these discussions and found them transformative. Armstrong UMC supplimented the Made 4 More video material with practical spiritual disciplines as follow-up.   I committed to the "Pain Journal" disciple - now on week 4 of a 52 week exercise in healing.  

God puts people together for a purpose and this meeting will surely produce fruit.  TD. D. offered me the M4M band and asked for prayer for this minstry -  NO PAIN there - I will were it proudly withthe TETELESTAI  33AD band that stays on my right arm!