70-75% Do Not Qualify For Our Military

General Collin Powell gave this statistic in his talk at St. Christopher's Leadership Symposium. Here are the reasons he gave: 1) Obesity 2) Criminal records 3) Not fit. Let that sink in - 70-75% of military applicants can not even qualify. Another speaker, Wes Moore quoted the same stat- only 30% qualify for military service. Wes More in his book "The Other Wes Moore" describes 2 lives- he came from inner city Baltimore and went on to be a Rhodes Scholar, paratrooper in Afghanistan and a White House Fellow- now youth advocate. The other Wes Moore, grew up several blocks away, also from inner city Baltimore, is now serving a life sentence for murder. In his talk, Wes Moore emphasized how much education matters. He believes we have had a holistic break down to create these problems with our youth, and we need a holistic build up to get back on track. One small step for mankind would be to get back to having a dinner hour- I would even settle for a dinner 1/2 hour. We have just celebrated Thanksgiving and what a great time of enjoying good food and family. The other stats are- kids who eat 4 or more meals with their family per week are less overweight, better students and less involved in risky behavior. What if here in Virginia we could change the above statistic to 1 in 2 (50%) of youth applying for military service DO qualify for the military? Is there a better place to start a holistic rebuild of our society that a simple dinner table?

O Taste And See...

That The Lord is Good. Friday morning, as I was eating my breakfast, I read, "...who have tasted the goodness of the word of God..." Humm. Why not use "...who have felt the goodness?" So what's the difference between feel, felt and taste, tasted? So maybe taste is sharper and more true- hard to mask- than feelings. I looked up in the concordance and found a number of passages using taste , tasted but found 0 passages using feel, felt. And as I pondered this in church yesterday, the words in our last hymn, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, listen to this:"...Prone to wander- Lord, I feel it- prone to leave the God I love. And so the point is TASTE is a very important sense and FEELINGS can cause us to wonder. You might not FEEL like cooking, but let's cook and excite those taste buds while you have them. A very dear lady and great cook in our church made me realize how I take my taste buds for granted as she described how her food tasted like metal due to the radiation treatments. O taste how see how wonderful your family and friends are as you cook and share dinner with others!