Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth greets employees on her walk from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center mission control to a reception in the center’s main auditorium in Greenbelt, Maryland, 2007. Photo: NASA.

By Steve Beard

There is an intriguing scene in Season 2 of the wildly successful historical drama, The Crown, on Netflix. For the uninitiated, the award-winning series revolves around the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, the now 91-year-old sovereign of the United Kingdom.

At the beginning of episode six, Elizabeth (played by Clare Foy) is studiously watching Billy Graham preach on television in 1955 while sitting with her mother in Buckingham Palace. The Queen Mother (played by Victoria Hamilton) finds Graham to be more than an acquired taste for the upper class British religious sensibilities. She appears perturbed that the public is captivated by a man who learned his trade “selling brushes door-to-door in North Carolina” and that British subjects turned “out in droves for an American zealot.”

“He is not a zealot,” Elizabeth responds.

“He’s shouting, darling,” her mother replies. “Only zealots shout.” Continue reading →

Stamp of Albania

By Steve Beard, 1997

Even weeks after the fact, people are still talking about it. After all, within five days the world lost its two most beloved women. Mother Teresa died at age 87 of a heart ailment. Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris. She was 36.

The comparisons were inevitable. Of course, they could not have appeared more different in appearance or lifestyle. Princess Diana lived in a London palace and was a jet-setter among the richest of the rich. Mother Teresa’s vow of poverty took her to the poorest of the poor in a Calcutta slum. Nevertheless, the two shared a common care for the less fortunate, although they used drastically different approaches.

As perhaps the most photographed woman in the history of the world, Princess Diana successfully used her dynamic charm and beauty to campaign for righteous causes such as extending compassion to AIDS patients, banning land mines, and comforting the poor. Continue reading →

“We are together” by Kateryna Shadrina in Lviv, Ukraine. Used by permission of the artist.

By Steve Beard

It was standing-room-only for the noon Ash Wednesday service at my local church. Ushers were pulling folding chairs out of a closet and people were sitting in the hallway outside the sanctuary. Parishioners were literally standing against the back and side walls. It was probably a fire hazard. 

We were all squeezed in to be reminded of our mortality. “Remember that you are dust,” the pastor said as the sign of the cross was smudged on my forehead, “and to dust you shall return.” Stark and sobering.

Six thousand miles away, there were believers in Ukrainian bomb shelters. At the time, the brutal invasion had only been a week old. “We survived yet another horrible night,” reported the archbishop of the Cathedral of the Resurrection in Kyiv on the first Sunday of Lent – the introspective season of denial leading up to Easter. 

“But after night, there comes day, there is morning,” he said. “After darkness, there comes light, just as after death there comes resurrection, which we all today radiantly celebrate!” Continue reading →

“Station of the Cross: Fall” by Ostap Lozynsky of Lviv, Ukraine. Special thanks to iconart-gallery.com.

I was in elementary school when I first grasped that the death of Jesus was a big deal. On Good Friday, my mom and dad signed me out of class in time for the noon church service. It was somber and stiff and formal – but I was out of school for the rest of the day. It got my attention.

“On a hill far away, stood an old rugged cross,” we sang. “The emblem of suffering and shame / And I love that old cross where the Dearest and Best / For a world of lost sinners was slain.”

Modern day hipsters may roll their eyes at the sentimental lyrics, but they stuck with me. It was a sing-a-long song about the most brutal injustice in human history and it became a well-known gospel chorus for an entire generation. Johnny Cash recorded four different versions. It was also recorded by Al Green, Ella Fitzgerald, Merle Haggard, Mahalia Jackson, Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson, and Loretta Lynn.

“The Old Rugged Cross” was written in 1913 by a Methodist preacher named George Bennard (1873-1958) who was converted to faith as a young man after walking five miles to a Salvation Army meeting. At age 15, he had lost his father in a mining accident. Bennard found new life and inspiration in giving his heart to a Savior riddled with nail scars who had conquered death. Continue reading →

According to Brandon Schreura of CBR (Comic Book Resources), a revelation in Marvel’s Immortal X-Men #1 suggests that Jesus Christ, himself, may have actually been a mutant in the Marvel Universe.

“Immortal X-Men #1 — which comes from writer Kieron Gillen, artist Lucas Werneck and cover artist Mark Brooks — hints that Jesus was actually an X-Men mutant during a moment in which former supervillain Exodus and Hope Summers are conversing on the mutant island of Krakoa. Exodus is insistent on calling Hope “Messiah,” given that she was the first mutant born after M-Day and considered by some to be the hero destined to save both mutantkind and humankind. Hope also is hosting the power of the Phoenix Force, which greatly strengthens her already pre-existing superpower abilities.”

Read the wh0le story HERE.

Grace’s Nutrition Market in Spring, Texas

One set of my maternal great grandparents migrated to the United States in 1875 from Ukraine. They moved here shortly after they had been married in Odesa. Today, there are Russian battleships off Odesa’s coast in the Black Sea.

A few days ago, I had seen a young Ukrainian couple on the local news collecting blankets and jackets and socks to send to refugees. I had made a mental note to stop by their business, Grace’s Nutrition Market, not far from where I live.

Today, I went in to give a contribution. That is the reason you are seeing the photo of the diapers. Local people have been dropping supplies by their shop in order to help the beleaguered Ukrainians who are trying to flee a war zone. Greeted with warmth and a smile by those at the shop, I made a donation and asked about the diapers. The woman helping me asked if I wanted to see the rest of the operation. Moments later we were walking through the shop and through a dimly lit storage area before she opened up the door to the back alley.

Continue reading →