Pray for Rain: These days, sometimes I find myself praying for rain. Sometimes, I pray for a heart attack instead. Mostly, I don’t pray at all.
This Sunday, however, I found myself attending church services at the True Vine Bible Fellowship in Lompoc. I was told the new pastor, James Earl Cray, packed a 20,000-volt preaching style. Mostly I was on hand to witness what I was hoping would be a carefully choreographed act of grace designed to tear down the walls.
But the not-guilty-on-all-counts verdict had just been rendered after the Kyle Rittenhouse trial in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Final arguments were also still underway in the murder trial of three white men accused of shooting a 25-year-old Black jogger in Georgia — Ahmaud Arbery — whom they had chased down the road in two trucks, cornered in a ditch, then shot and killed. They likewise have claimed self-defense. Given the peculiarities of Georgia law, they have a better than average chance of prevailing.