Not all of us are newsies but those who are have probably been riveted recently by the war against Hamas going on in Israel since Hamas's brutal attack against Israeli civilians who were outside attending an all night concert or sleeping in their kibbutzes two weeks ago.

A few of us military and retired military were talking after church recently and remarking that we never expected to be still alive and still working for the military when World War III broke out. But really, neither did the Christians who helped fight World Wars I and II!

Noel likes to remind me (and it is such a blessing that he does) that we have no idea how it is to live in Israel or Ukraine, with bombs raining down upon our heads as we go about our daily business. Both of those wars are ostensibly about land. Russia wants to incorporate Ukraine back into its nation, like it was during Soviet times. Hamas (and many other Arab/Palestinian entities) want to push Israel into the sea.

Our trip out west last month showed us how incredibly vast our country is. We toured six new states we had never seen: North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Nebraska, and South Dakota. They are all high beauty, low population states. We even drove through one Native American reservation and did not realize it until we saw the highway signs that we were under laws made by the Tribal Council, then saw on the map that our highway went straight through Rosebud lands!

Since we went to a few places off the beaten trail, we ended up off of interstates for most of our return trip from Idaho to Joey's place in Union Grove, Wisconsin. We observed that even Iowa and Wisconsin are mostly unpopulated areas (farms, forests). And outside of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota is the same.

We are so blessed! We could literally take every Jewish refugee, every Palestinian refugee, every Ukrainian refugee, and every Russian refugee and put them all in separate states, far away from each other, and never even notice a difference. I am not recommending that, for many reasons, just saying the logistics would work.

And Noel kept reminding me to look up at the vast skies and realize, while we are safe from being bombed in Virginia, there is so much space where we can drive and hike in the U.S. where the whole idea of war would never enter your mind! Such relaxing places. Such a blessed people.

Now that we are back, I am paying attention to when I hear my mouth complaining. It is almost always about the traffic here (since we are a relatively crowded area of the U.S.) and when something breaks unexpectedly.

For the first case, I remind myself we chose to live here. There are options. Actually, my new motto in life is I would like to pick up Tab and the houses of all our members and drop them into Idaho. I am in love with that state!

For the second case, I remind myself we are not in eternity yet. Until then, things are meant to break. I try to remind myself to thank God we will live with Him forever in a perfect place.

I feel like my thankfulness factor has increased 1000% after the trip out West. God is so good.

P.S. The map captures worldwide Jewish population sometime since 2019. I thought Russia and Ukraine had more Jewish people than us but I was wrong.