There are few in North America who don’t recall the horrifying pictures and stories from the southern coast of the United States in late August 2005 when Hurricane Katrina roared out of the Gulf of Mexico.

I began taking piano lessons with Mrs. Bell in third or fourth grade. I continued with her until well into high school, when her husband, a pastor, was called to a church in another town, and she moved away.

Perhaps none of this year’s news stories illustrates the importance of being ready as that of U.S. Airways Flight 1549. On January 15, having just taken off from New York’s La Guardia Airport, the plane apparently hit a flock of geese and lost power in both engines. The pilot landed the jet aircraft intact in the Hudson River, and all 155 passengers and crew survived.

In October 1982, when I was a senior at Goshen (Indiana) College, one of my classmates, Mark Schmucker, was tried in federal district court in Cleveland for refusing to register with Selective Service for the draft. As the editor of the school news­paper, I attended the trial and was present when the jury found Mark guilty. The judge sentenced him to three years of probation, two years of service (which he did at a facility for mentally disabled adults in Missouri), and a $4,000 fine—but did not require him to register.

In 2002, I spent three months in Guatemala City studying Spanish. For about half that time, I lived with a single mother, Sheny, and her three young children.

Recently I watched a video of a speech that Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft Corporation, gave to influential lead­ers in the field of technology. In it, he told how he would boost edu­cation standards in the United States.

As a child, I visited the Western Wall of Old Jerusalem—the remains of Herod’s temple, destroyed by the Romans in AD 70. The scene is etched on my memory: Orthodox Jewish men in hats and prayer shawls, standing before the huge limestone blocks of the wall, bent over their holy books, heads and shoulders rocking in prayer.

I was raised to be suspicious of Christians who made too much of saints, especially if they prayed to them. Our model for living is Jesus, not other humans. God alone is to be our source of joy.

I remember the day in 2006 when I heard that a leading megachurch pastor in the United States unexpectedly resigned. Although he had taken strong public positions against homosexuality, it was revealed that he had a homosexual affair and abused drugs. The pastor’s board dealt swiftly with the crisis, and he agreed to a stiff course of church discipline.

The sixth-century monk Benedict of Nursia grew up in Italy at a time when the Roman Empire was crumbling. Barbarian hordes were invading from the north, and many peo­ple thought the end of the world was near.