Shannon Berry

[Tara LaRosa @TaraLaRosa]

Greatest new song to come out of the World Cup! ⚽️❤️🇺🇸 Welcome To The Land Of The Free!🇺🇸❤️⚽️

[Shannon Berry @srberry89]

@shaunvlog_ Seward, Nebraska!

[Rodney Smith Jr @iamrodneysmith]

Dear @WhiteHouse, my name is Rodney Smith Jr., founder of Raising Men & Women Lawn Care Service in Huntsville, Alabama. Through our 50 Yard Challenge, over 6,000 kids across the country have signed up to mow free lawns for the elderly, disabled, veterans, active-duty military, first responders, and single parents. With America celebrating its 250th birthday this year and me also being born on July 4th, I wanted to humbly ask if a few kids from our program and myself could travel to Washington, D.C. to help mow the White House lawn for this historic celebration.

More than anything, I want these kids to see how a simple act of service something as ordinary as mowing a lawn for someone in need can lead to extraordinary places. What better lesson in community service than showing them that helping others can take them all the way to our nation’s capital? I’d also love to bring my American flag-themed mower in hopes that the President might sign it, so I can later auction it off and donate 100% of the proceeds to a nonprofit supporting veterans. It would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to highlight the importance of service, patriotism, and the impact young people can have when they choose to make a difference. 🇺🇸

[CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil @CBSEveningNews]

When firefighters found a dog left at their station with a note pleading, “Please help my baby,” they set out to find the owner. What happened next proved that sometimes the hardest act of love can lead to the happiest ending. @SteveHartmanCBS is On the Road in Texas.

[mrs. bendell werry @bebookled]

this is absolutely one of the best tiktoks I’ve ever seen

[Nebraska Football @HuskerFootball]

Congratulations on a legendary career, Lavonte. 🐐

[Nebraska Football @HuskerFootball]

One of the best to ever do it 🫡

[Barstool Sports @barstoolsports]

Kent Pavelka Nebraska’s play by play announcer for 41 years had the best call you’ll hear today.

[NCAA Buzzer Beaters & Game Winners @NCAABuzzerBters]

41-year Nebraska announcer Kent Pavelka’s (@KentPavelka) call of the end of #4 Nebraska’s win over #5 Vanderbilt and advancement to their first Sweet 16

[Clayton Collier @ClaytonJCollier]

Complete and utter #Huskers takeover.

I have never seen an NCAA Tournament session so one-sided.

Nebraska fans showed up big time.

#GBR

[CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil @CBSEveningNews]

A 10-year-old boy who once arrived at the hospital alone for heart surgery is now celebrating his birthday surrounded by family after the doctor who cared for him stepped in to change his life. @SteveHartmanCBS is On the Road in Omaha, Nebraska.

[The Biblical Man @Biblicalman]

There are pictures on my wall that don't exist anymore.

All seven of us. Five kids. Two parents. Two dogs. Taken before the exodus started.

Three of my kids live in Florida now. The oldest two left first. The third followed when he turned eighteen. My wife and I are in North Dakota with our two youngest girls and two dogs who still answer to the names of the ones we buried.

Chester. Ginger. We call the new ones by their names without thinking. Our mouths remember the ghost dogs before our brains catch up.

Thomas Wolfe wrote a novel in 1940 called You Can't Go Home Again. Published after he died. The last lines still cut like a blade:

"You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood... back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting, but which are changing all the time—back home to the escapes of Time and Memory."

I didn't understand that quote until this year.

My dad was an Army Ranger. Police captain. The kind of man who made you feel like nothing on earth could touch you as long as he was in the building. I remember the smells of my mom's cooking. The noise of me and my brothers fighting and doing dumb things. My younger brother getting caught up in our foolishness whether he wanted in or not.

I remember the feeling of safety. That bone-deep knowing that your father has it handled.

I can't go back there. Those smells are memories. That noise is silence. That safety was a season—not a permanent address.

I'm a child of the 80s. Music was always playing. Always. And now a song doesn't remind me of a time—it relocates me.

Duran Duran and I'm in Germany.
An old country song and I'm in North Carolina.
A 90s track and I'm in Hawaii.

Three chords and I'm standing in a place that doesn't exist anymore.

The other day I was writing. Apple Music dropped in a song I didn't ask for.

"Welcome to the Machine" by Pink Floyd.

The opening synth hit me first. Then the lyrics.

Welcome my son. Welcome to the machine.

I stopped typing. Looked at that picture on the wall. All five kids. My wife next to me. And the thought came uninvited—are we inside a machine? Some system grinding us through its gears while we smile for photos we'll weep over later?

I grounded myself fast. The Word of God is my anchor and I don't drift long.

But the thought stung.

Because this week "Christian social media" was buzzing about the Grammys and Kid Rock and the TPUSA Super Bowl halftime show. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone was outraged or celebrating or performing discernment for an audience.

And all of it, every take, every hot post, every argument, reminded me of one thing:

We are not home.

Wolfe was right. You can't go home again. But Wolfe didn't have the answer. He diagnosed the ache. He couldn't name the cure.

Solomon could.

"He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end." —Ecclesiastes 3:11

That word—world—is olam in the Hebrew.

Eternity.

God set eternity in your heart.

That's why the pictures make you ache. That's why old songs teleport you. That's why you call the new dog by the dead dog's name. That's why you sit in a quiet house remembering when it was chaos—and realize the chaos was the gift.

You were built for a home that doesn't decay. Where time doesn't steal your children or silence your kitchen or bury your dogs in the backyard.

The ache isn't a malfunction. It's a homing signal.

"These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth." —Hebrews 11:13
That's what Wolfe felt but couldn't name. That's what Pink Floyd reached for but couldn't grasp. That's what every 80s kid feels when the right song plays and the chest tightens and you're eight years old again for three seconds before time drags you back to the present.

You can't go home again.

Because you were never home to begin with.

"In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you." —John 14:2

He's building it right now.

And when you walk through that door, you won't have to leave again.

I wrote the full version of this tonight on Substack. It goes deeper. If this hit you in the chest, go read it.

@biblicalman

[Interesting things @awkwardgoogle]

A woman asked her boss if he remembered how to skip. What he does next will make your day

[Jaden Pappenheim @PappenheimWx]

Stunning drone footage from earlier this afternoon shows a major ice jam triggering significant flooding along the Platte River south of Grand Island, Nebraska.

[Shannon Berry @srberry89]

@JeffAWalker14 @beaglefacts I am so, so sorry!!

[Shannon Berry @srberry89]

@omaha_scanner Powdered sugar from the muddy buddies!

[Evan Closky @ECloskyWTSP]

This was our shot of Lavonte David walking off the field tonight at Raymond James Stadium.

📹: @AngelaWTSP

[Hail Varsity @HailVarsity]

♥️

[Will Compton @_willcompton]

The best Nebraska LB to ever do it

[Mitch Sherman @mitchsherman]

Incredibly disappointing for Nebraska volleyball. Its only goal was a national championship.

But that was spectacular — for the sport and for everyone involved in that match. One or the greatest sporting events I’ve seen in person. It had everything.

That is what Nebraska and other leaders in this movement have been aiming to build. It was the best of what volleyball can be. Even the best teams cannot win every match. There are young athletes who will choose volleyball because of what they saw on TV today.