Larry Lomascola

Proud husband, loving leader & servant of @KeelynLomascola

[M.A. Franklin @FoundationDads]

This checks out, and we saw it cranked up to 11 in the COVID era.

Just like smarter people are better at coming up with excuses to justify their sin.

"The more scientifically literate adults are actually more likely to become dogmatic about politically polarizing topics in science." From Range.

[Shahriq Khan @RealShahriqKhan]

The Bible I was told to fear turned out to be the love letter I’d been kept from.

For years I was warned away from it. 

I believed it was corrupted and dangerous. Changed. Don’t trust it.

So imagine my shock when I finally opened it and found, not a corrupted mess, but the most
coherent, historically anchored, prophetically stunning story ever told. 

A story that ran from a garden to a cross with a thousand threads all pulling one direction.

And at the center of it: not rules to fear, but a Father running to embrace a prodigal. A Shepherd leaving ninety-nine for one. A God becoming flesh to die for His enemies.

The book I was told to fear was a love letter, and I’d been kept from reading it. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16.

That’s not the sentence of a corrupted book.

That’s the heart of God, written down, waiting for me the whole time.The corruption claim didn’t just cost me the truth for years.

It cost me the love letter.

Don’t let it cost you too.

Open the book you were told to fear.

You’ll find the God who’s been loving you the whole time.

[M.A. Franklin @FoundationDads]

I see people are misunderstanding the One Ring from LOTR again.

The One Ring represents the corrupting influence of power, but some people make the leap to say all power and authority is therefore suspect.

But just as one does not simply walk into Mordor, one does not simply get corrupted by power. The last book is called The Return of the King. Obviously, Tolkien’s vision is more nuanced.

When we meet Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, he has spent most of his life seeking the authority and power that is his birthright. The Aragorn from the books, that is.

(Maybe people getting confused have only watched the movies)

Aragorn seeks to fulfill his responsibility and so desires the power and authority that comes with that responsibility. Do you think he's just going to sit on his throne and twiddle his thumbs? No, he’s going to use that power. That’s why his ascension to the throne is a big deal.

Other characters in the books also have authority and power and do not hesitate to use it. Gandalf, Galadriel, Glorfindel, and Elrond all use their invested powers. In the Scouring of the Shire, the hobbits use the power and strength they have gained through adventure to cleanse their home.

A simplistic reading of the One Ring doesn't hold up, though it does comfort those who wish to avoid hard questions. They can pat themselves on the back while they sneer at Boromir.

The One Ring represents power gained through dishonest means and detached from any sense of responsibility.

It is power gained too easily.

It is power gained too hastily.

It was forged as a means of control and not as a means of leadership.

Good men should seek power and authority. They should not shy away from it. Becoming a father, for example, is one of the surest ways to be invested with authority. But men seeking such power should avoid easy solutions. They should embrace the long, hard path. They should be driven by a love for others, which helps weigh them down and keeps them grounded.

It took decades and decades of work, preparation, and maneuvering for Aragorn to finally be crowned king of Gondor. He sought out the crown. He desired it with a holy ambition. Because he did so, he is one of the great heroes of literature.

Tortured appeals to the One Ring can come up in the context of politics. Some pundits on the Right warn against the use of any power because that would be like embracing the One Ring. They warn that it would lead to corruption and eventual destruction.

In some cases, they might be right.

But that is not automatically true.

It does not follow that a man, invested with power and authority, will become a Dark Lord if he uses that power and authority. It depends on where that power comes from, how it was forged, and how he subordinates that power. Often, an appeal to the One Ring is a cover for cowardice or an excuse to abdicate.

It is saying that Aragorn should have remained a ranger in the north and avoided the messiness of Pelennor Fields.

It is a father refusing to discipline his children.

It is a senator refusing to fight for his constituents.

God has made the world in such a way that *someone* will hold power. The world is hierarchical. If good men refuse, evil men will accept.

Sauron desired absolute control and would submit to no one. Aragorn desired the throne to protect his people, which came with a framework of mutual love and responsibility, things he had prepared decades for.

These are not the same.

[M.A. Franklin @FoundationDads]

The word "husband" comes from the world of animal husbandry and household management.

Being a husband is a job description, not a romantic sentiment, and one with a long list of responsibilities. The woman you choose as a wife will make those responsibilities easier or harder.

Take off the rose-colored glasses and pay attention because the early days of heady romance can blind you to reality, and while the ride might be exciting, you'll have to pay for the ticket eventually.

[Shahriq Khan @RealShahriqKhan]

Back when I was Muslim, I never connected these dots. This is the one that kept me up at night.

I always argued, “We honor Jesus MORE than Christians. We protect his honor by saying he never died such a shameful death.”

I thought avoiding the cross was respect. That’s just what I was taught from a young age.

…then I understood what the cross actually was.

I was “honoring” Jesus by stripping Him of the very thing He came to do. Like praising a firefighter while insisting he never ran into the fire.

Jesus said no one took His life. He laid it down on His own authority. John 10:18.

I was deleting His glory, majesty, everything the Messiah was foretold to accomplish in His brutal life.

The most honoring thing you can say about Jesus is the one thing Islam forbade me from saying:

He chose to die for me.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

People ask me why I'm so passionate about cattle, and I walk away every time thinking I let her down.

Take the trick nobody else on this planet can do. A cow walks onto a hillside that will never grow a crop, a slope too steep, too wet, too thin, too rocky, the sort of ground that breaks a plough and bankrupts anybody who tries it, and she eats the only thing living up there. Grass. A substance from which no human being has ever extracted a single calorie. Then she stands out in the rain and turns it into steak.

She is doing the impossible half of agriculture, on land nobody else wants, in weather nobody else will work in, for nothing.

The machinery is properly deranged. Four chambers, the first a fermentation vat holding tens of gallons at a steady temperature, running a microbial population she farms inside her own body and feeds by hand. She sends the food back up and chews it again for eight hours a day, producing well over a hundred litres of saliva in the process, which is more fluid than most people drink in three months, entirely to keep the bugs comfortable. She is a brewery with legs, and she is also the brewer.

Those bugs make B12 out of cobalt and grass. She grows her own vitamins in her own stomach. No plant makes it, no human can make it, and every vegan alive is buying in a tablet what she produces for free, standing up, in a wet field, while thinking about nothing.

Then she gives the lot away.

Milk, a complete food that arrives warm. Butter and cheese, which is milk built to survive a winter. Beef, carrying the heme iron and the zinc and the retinol and the creatine in exactly the proportions you need, because the assembly was done by an animal built along the same lines as you. Tallow for the pan. Leather for your boots. And dung, which grows next year's grass, so the fertiliser plant sits on the same site as the meat operation and nobody drives anything anywhere.

Sunlight and rain in one end. The finest food available to a human being out of the other. On ground that grows nothing else. Using an engine that laboratories have spent a fortune failing to copy, in a warehouse, on a grant, with a press release.

For this she has been declared an environmental problem by people who have eaten her their entire lives and could not tell you what a rumen is.

I have never met a cow that was underperforming. I have met a great many committees.

Get her on your plate and be grateful.

[Larry Lomascola @LarryLejund]

@NatalyaOba Yes, you’re overreacting. Everyone on my street puts their trash cans out the night before.

[Larry Lomascola @LarryLejund]

@tyromper @Katy_Faust Incredible! Praise God!

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

My car was covered in dust from a country road in Missouri.

I pulled into a drive-thru car wash called "Mister Sparkle."
The machine offered the "Ultimate Ceramic Shield" for fourteen dollars.

I paid, shifted to neutral, and folded my hands across my lap.
I expected a modest rinse.

The steel garage door slammed shut behind me.
The chamber plunged into total darkness.

Suddenly, pulsating purple and neon-green strobe lights illuminated the room.
Three massive overhead cannons fired glowing, hot-pink chemical foam directly across my entire windshield.

I sat rigid in my seat.
A warrior does not panic when his vehicle enters a psychedelic purification ritual.

The pink sludge was immediately attacked by four gigantic spinning blue tentacles that whipped against the glass with the fury of a typhoon.
High-pressure jets blasted the steel roof with the roar of an erupting volcano.
Finally, a roaring hurricane of hot air shook the entire chassis down to the tires.

I gripped the steering wheel in total silence, praying for the structural integrity of my Toyota.

The exit door rolled open.
Blinding sunlight poured over my hood.

A young attendant named Travis walked up to wipe down my side mirrors with a clean rag.

"How was that, boss?" Travis smiled.

I rolled down the window two inches, exhaled with discipline, and gave him a solemn nod.
"My steed has endured the trial of the seven colored foams."

Travis laughed and gave my hood an approving slap.
"Fourteen bucks, man. Smells like bubblegum, runs like a dream."

In Japan, monks sit under freezing mountain waterfalls for three days to cleanse the spirit.
America traps you inside a neon laser disco with forty gallons of hot strawberry soap and achieves the exact same enlightenment in ninety seconds.

My car was completely spotless.
My soul had been washed on the heavy-duty cycle.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

I was eating dinner at a diner in Pennsylvania.

Near the bathroom, there was a glowing screen mounted to the wall called "TouchTunes."
A man could insert one dollar and select music for the entire hall.

I wanted something quiet and respectful.
I selected a gentle-sounding song named "Sweet Caroline."
I returned to my booth to eat my potatoes in peace.

The horns began to play.
The melody was innocent.

Then the chorus arrived.

Suddenly, six truck drivers in the corner dropped their forks, slammed both fists onto their table, and screamed at the ceiling:

"BA! BA! BA!"

The waitress holding a pot of decaf yelled:
"SO GOOD! SO GOOD!"

The cook kicked open the kitchen doors, pointed a tongs at me, and roared:
"GOOD TIMES NEVER SEEMED SO GOOD!"

I grabbed my butter knife and stood on my seat.
Clearly, the tavern had come under ambush and the war horn had sounded.
A samurai does not abandon his allies during a raid.

I raised my knife to the sky and bellowed:
"I'VE BEEN INCLINED TO BELIEVE THEY NEVER WOULD!"

The entire diner erupted in cheers.
A guy named Big Mike sent a basket of onion rings directly to my table.

The bartender leaned over the counter and wiped a tear from his eye.
"You picked the right hymn, brother."

My grammar textbook taught me how to ask for the train station.
Neil Diamond gave me forty armed brothers in Pennsylvania.

I stand with Neil.

[The Biblical Man @Biblicalman]

Satan is not opposed to good morals.

He is opposed to Jesus Christ.

A man can feed the hungry, keep his promises, pay his debts, and remain completely lost. Satan does not need to turn every man into a monster. He only needs to teach a respectable man that he has no need of a Savior.

The deception is that morality and salvation are not the same thing.

The men arguing with Christ in John 8 claimed Abraham as their father. They knew the law and trusted their religious standing. Jesus told them, “Ye are of your father the devil” (John 8:44).

Their problem was not that they lacked religion. Their religion had become a refuge from the Son of God standing in front of them.

Good works cannot do what the blood of Christ does.

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8–9)

You can be kind without Christ. You can be disciplined without the Holy Spirit. You can be respected by your neighbors and still refuse the King who made you.

Satan is perfectly content with morality that keeps a man from repentance.

He wants you trusting your record instead of Christ’s sacrifice, your discipline instead of God’s grace, and your reputation instead of the finished work of Jesus.

A repentant thief beside Christ had no religious résumé left to offer. The woman in Luke 7 was known only as “a sinner,” yet Christ told her, “Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.”

The respectable man who rejects the Son is not safer than either of them.

“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” (John 3:36)

Your neighbors may call you good. Your church may call you faithful. Your own conscience may point to a clean record.

None of those voices can save you.

Satan does not have to make you wicked in public. He only has to keep you from bowing to Jesus Christ.

Stop trusting your morals to do the work of a Savior. Bring your sin, your goodness, your reputation, and your empty hands to Christ.

Only Jesus saves.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

I went to Trader Joe's to buy provisions.

I placed a single red bag of chili-lime tortilla chips onto the conveyor belt.

The cashier, a young man named Kyle wearing a bright hibiscus shirt, suddenly froze.
He lifted the bag with two hands and looked at me with wide, intense eyes.

"Bro," Kyle whispered. "Have you had these before?"

A samurai does not display weakness before an inspector of rations.
I squared my shoulders. "I am prepared for the experience."

"They will change your life," Kyle declared to the entire front of the store. "I ate a whole bag in my car yesterday. My tongue went numb and I saw god."

I gave him a slow, disciplined nod.
Clearly, this man was a veteran scout testing my courage before a perilous march.

"I do not fear the spice," I told him.

Kyle's face lit up with pure joy.
"If you dip them in the garlic sauce, bro, you will literally ascend to another dimension."

"Then I shall make peace with this dimension before dinner."

Kyle slammed the register in triumph.
He scanned the chips with lightning speed, reached beneath the counter, and tossed a small dark chocolate bar directly into my paper bag.

"On the house, my man," Kyle beamed. "From one flavor warrior to another."

I bowed from the waist.
"Our alliance is sealed, Kyle-dono."

My doctor told me to reduce my sodium intake.
Kyle told me to touch the heavens.

I stand with Kyle.

[M.A. Franklin @FoundationDads]

When people are quick to bring up "abuse" as a reason for divorce, it's typically the same people who think any type of sadness felt by the wife is the result of "abuse."

A husband telling his wife "no" to her third pair of shoes in a month is not abuse.

When you're desperate to find an excuse to break your covenant, or looking for an excuse to assuage your conscience, you're a big part of the problem.

Just because the husband might be foolish or a blowhard doesn't mean he is abusive. Unless you were walked down the aisle at gunpoint, you chose him.

[A Gene Robinson @AlGeneRobi96834]

🚨 THIS YOUNG MAN IS A HERO.

Fourteen-year-old Acie Holland III was riding home from school, looking at his phone, when something felt wrong.

The bus had passed his stop.

Then it began accelerating.

Acie looked toward the front and saw the driver unconscious over the steering wheel. The moving bus, carrying 14 students, was drifting across the centerline toward oncoming traffic.

Acie did not scream.

He did not freeze.

He did not wait for an adult to save them.

This eighth grader ran forward, seized the steering wheel, guided the bus back into its lane, moved the driver’s foot from the accelerator and pressed the brake until that enormous bus came safely to the curb.

He could not find the parking brake, so he turned the wheels hard toward the curb to prevent the bus from rolling away.

That is presence of mind under pressure.

Then Acie checked on the younger students, told them to contact their parents, made certain 911 had been called and went to get his grandmother, Phyllis Holland, who is a nurse.

The driver regained consciousness and received medical care. Every student made it home safely.

Acie had worked on cars with his father and enjoyed go-karting, but nothing could have completely prepared a 14-year-old boy to take control of a moving school bus.

Something had already been built inside him: courage, mechanical understanding, responsibility and the instinct to protect others.

His classmates gave him a new name:

“AC-Hero.”

That name fits.

While the world spends enormous energy telling us what is wrong with young men, Acie Holland III reminded us what can be right with them.

Fourteen students reached home because one young man recognized the danger, stepped forward and acted.

May God continue to strengthen this remarkable young man.

#AStoneGroove #SilentMajoritySpeaks

[Ryan @RyanF786]

THE GREATEST LL MOUND VISIT OF ALL TIME!!

“If you walk the next 5 batters Jesus is still lord,if you strikeout the next 5 batters Jesus is still lord”

🙏🏻 ✝️🙏🏻✝️ #llws #espn #patmcafee

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

A Little League game in Indiana. Two teams, ten-year-olds, a Saturday morning in June.

The visiting team is called the Cardinals. Their catcher is named Owen. He has been the catcher for three seasons. He has, this spring, stopped growing, and he has, this spring, been given a diagnosis, and his parents have been told they should let him play as long as he can stand.

The home team is called the Falcons. They were told about Owen on Wednesday.

The Falcons are ten. They spent Wednesday night, together, at their coach's house, arguing about what to do.

Owen does not know any of this.

He arrives Saturday in his catcher's gear. He walks slower than he did last spring. His mother sits in the aluminum bleachers with a small cooler that has, in it, three kinds of pills.

The Falcons take the field.

The first Cardinals batter comes up. He hits a ground ball to shortstop. The shortstop, a Falcons boy of ten who has practiced this play a thousand times, fields it cleanly, and then throws it, very deliberately, ten feet over the first baseman's head.

The runner is safe.

The next Cardinals batter comes up. He hits a fly ball to left field. The left fielder, who is the best left fielder in the county at his age, catches it, and then, very deliberately, drops it.

The runner is safe.

The Cardinals coach begins to understand something.

The Cardinals parents begin to understand something.

Owen does not, yet.

He comes to the plate in the second inning. The Falcons pitcher, whose fastball can genuinely hurt at this age, throws him a slow, straight pitch down the middle of the plate. Owen swings. Owen makes contact for the first time in three weeks. The ball rolls, weakly, toward the second baseman.

The second baseman looks at the ball. He looks at Owen, running.

He picks the ball up.

He puts it in his back pocket.

Owen reaches first, then second, then third. Nobody is chasing him. The Falcons players are jogging beside him in a loose cluster, cheering, in the way children cheer when adults are watching them cheer for the right reason.

Owen crosses home plate. His mother, in the bleachers, has not moved for four minutes. The Falcons catcher, a boy of ten who has never met Owen, hands Owen the ball he hit and says, quietly, "Home run."

The final score is not recorded.

Nobody writes it down. Nobody keeps the box score. Ten-year-old boys, in Indiana, on a Saturday morning in June, have collectively agreed that some games do not need a winner.

Owen played every inning.

He played the whole game.

He went home with the ball in his glove and the ball in his back pocket and no fever until Sunday.

He died in August.

The Falcons went to the funeral. They wore their uniforms. The coach had asked them to. They stood in a line, ten of them, in green and white polyester, and they gave his mother the ball from second base, which the second baseman had kept in a drawer since June, and which he had, for reasons he could not explain, been unable to give up until then.

She keeps it now.

Ten strangers, on a Saturday, decided a boy would round the bases.

Some innings are longer than others.

[Dhee✨🌎 @UncleDhee]

She wasn’t just teaching him a lesson, she was preparing him for life 👏

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is guarded twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

It has been guarded, without interruption, since 1937.

In September of 2003, Hurricane Isabel reached Washington. The National Park Service, out of concern, gave the sentinels of the Old Guard permission to stand down for the storm.

They did not stand down.

The sergeant of the guard on duty that night refused the permission, calmly, and without further comment. He would later say, in an interview, only that permission was not the same as an order, and that in the absence of an order, the walk continues.

The walk continues.

Twenty-one steps. Turn. Face the tomb. Twenty-one seconds. Turn. Face the other way. Twenty-one seconds. Twenty-one steps.

The rain came sideways.

A tree fell in the cemetery a hundred yards to the east.

The wind lifted a portion of the roof from a nearby maintenance shed.

The sentinel did not break stride.

He walked. He turned. He walked.

At 3 a.m. the wind reached seventy miles per hour, and a sentinel weighing 175 pounds in soaked wool, carrying a rifle, and wearing sunglasses in the dark because the manual requires them, walked twenty-one steps, turned, and walked twenty-one steps back.

Nobody was watching him.

Nobody could have watched him. The cemetery had been closed. The public had been evacuated. The only witness was the storm.

He walked for six hours.

He was relieved at 6:12 a.m.

The tomb had not been left, at any point during the storm, uncovered.

There is no medal for this.

There is no ribbon. There is no citation. There is no commendation in his file.

The Old Guard does not require one.

The walk is the point.

The walk was the walk before there was a country to record it, and the walk will be the walk after everyone who remembers this night is gone.

Somewhere in America, at this moment, in whatever weather, a sentinel is walking twenty-one steps beside a marble slab, facing an unknown man whose name he does not know, for an oath he took to a country that will never see him take it.

That is what the promise looks like when nobody is watching.

[Lincoln @WaitWhat]

I'm sorry, but this is the most inept person I've seen.

[Katy Faust @Katy_Faust]

This little girl is not in the video. She wasn't even born. But she is moved to tears watching her mother and father get married. Why?

Marriage researcher and family therapist Pat Fagan once told me:

"When a child sees their mother loving their father they feel like their mother is loving them. When they see their father loving their mother they feel like their father is loving them. It is the only time in the human experience where you can be loved indirectly. No one's even looking at you or touching you or talking to you, but you feel loved."

That is not the case with a step parent, he said. The child may tolerate the romantic expression. But they do not experience that same circuitous love. More often they feel competition or jealousy.

If every child could order their own world, this is what they would say:

"I want my mom and dad to love me and I want my mom and dad to love each other."

Sometimes that's not possible. Woe to a culture that intentionally denies that to children in the name of adult freedom.