Today the world commemorates what remains the ultimate demonstration of worldly might and power: the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, by the United States in 1945.

Looking for buried treasure was a big pastime for kids in my neighborhood 40 years ago. Not that there was likely to be much treasure in the coalfields of central Pennsylvania. That didn’t keep us from looking and hoping, though.

Here’s my latest idea for our T-shirt-and-bumper-sticker culture: “Those who are just must be kind.” OK, it’s not my idea; the Wisdom writer came up with it first.

Good parents are, by nature or necessity, persistent people. They call and call us to the dinner table until we straggle in. They nag us about our homework until the last worksheet is covered with the appropriate words and numbers.

Most of us have our hands full just taking care of what’s right in front of us. I can’t remember the last time I woke up in the morning, stretched and yawned and wondered what the day might bring.

Loyalty is a quality we value highly. We want our friends to be loyal. We expect our families to be. We hope for some modicum of reliability from bosses or employees. In fact, every meaningful relationship involves loyalty to be viable.

My Audubon friends refer to sparrows as “junk birds.” What this phrase suggests is that sparrows are too common, plentiful, and uninteresting to merit any attention.

A lot of folks are puzzled as to why Jesus asked his disciples not to go into pagan territory or to visit Samaritan towns on their first foray into ministry.

Opinion polls have become the thermometers of our society. With them we take the temperature of the body politic and find out what is ailing us as a community. Like a thermometer, the polls are not a cure of any kind. They simply report a result, and only by taking the right action does this information have any usefulness.

Moses is hands-down the greatest figure in the Hebrew story. But his outsized significance is not as well appreciated in Christian circles as in Jewish ones. Before Moses, God looms in scripture as creator and judge and absolute authority—a distant Almighty figure who might share a few words with one of his creatures but was otherwise unapproachable.