Tinkering is like prayer

When he was kid, my dad turned on his model airplane engine in the garage to let it run a while and unwittingly splattered oil all over the walls. His dad, my grandfather, bawled him out.

The maiden flight was a failure. My dad was discouraged but kept tinkering. Eventually, he graduated from Berkeley and worked at Lockheed’s super secret skunkworks in Rye Canyon. He worked on the now-outmoded stealth fighter, which crashed in test flight and very nearly killed the pilot.

Eventually, the engineers got it right, and the strike plane was used against Iraq, its radar-evading technology confounded enemies. Tinkering won the day.

Tinkering reminds me of prayer, which people view as a waste of time. True, we Americans are very busy. But time spent with God is never wasted.

Prayer is like research and development, cutting edge change, because you are consulting the all powerful God.

An Egyptian who converted to Christ is persecuted

An Egyptian Muslim who converted to Christianity in 1998 after he found God’s love began a hunger strike in prison this week to protest his mistreatment, persecution, and “illegal” sentence, his lawyer said.

Bishoy Armia Boulos, 32, is the first Egyptian to legally attempt to change his religious identity from Muslim to Christian on his official ID, which rankled the 90 % Muslim population.

In 2007, when he filed the lawsuit to change his religion, he said he wanted to raise his children as Christians, which is illegal if the father is registered as a Muslim. He was the first Muslim in Egypt to file such a suit, and it sparked a national uproar that caused his lawyer to stop representing him. Bishoy changed his name from Mohammad Hagazy after his conversion to Christ.

In January 2008, a Muslim judge denied his petition.

Hardline clerics called for his execution, and he received death threats by telephone, prompting Bishoy to go into hiding for months. His apartment was burned.

But as the years wore on, Bishoy grew in courage and he itched to bring change to his nation. He approached a Coptic Christian television station news producer and offered to work as a journalist, but the station turned him down.

After hardline Muslim President Mohamed Morsi was ousted in July 2013, Bishoy began documenting abuses against Christians – a practice that led to his arrest in December of that year.

Bishoy’s own father condemned him for his conversion in 2008. “I am going to try to talk to my son and convince him to return to Islam” he was quoted in an Egyptian newspaper. “If he refuses, I am going to kill him with my own hands.”

In response, Bishoy issued the statement: “I would like to send a message to my dad. I saw what you said in the newspapers. You say you want to kill me; to shed my blood in public. But I love you so much because you are my dad and because Jesus taught me to love. I accepted Jesus Christ willingly and nobody forced me. I forgive you. No matter what decision you make. No matter what you do. To my dad and mom, I say Jesus Christ died to save me.” Read the rest of the story.