As our nation prepares to celebrate our Independence Day, baseball stadiums are empty, our “national pastime” a victim of the pandemic. But the game is starting up again for an abbreviated season, with workouts scheduled to begin today.

And when (or if) games are played, they will be without fans in the stands.

Enter Chip Messenger, a forty-five-year-old financial planner who is about to become the most popular baseball fan in Southern California. He leases a private condominium in the Legend, a luxury building in downtown San Diego. His private balcony on the fifteenth floor provides a clear view into Petco Park, the home of the Padres.

As a result, he is one of the few people in America who will actually be able to see live Major League Baseball this year in person rather than on television. He plans to share his good fortune, saying that he’ll open his balcony to other Padres fans (with appropriate health-related precautions).

“I’m holding the winning hand right here,” Mr. Messenger said. “I’m sure I’ll make some new friends.”

The necessity of firsthand experience

I first began attending baseball games as a young boy in Houston. My dad bought tickets for my brother and me to attend games in the Houston Astrodome. They were in the upper section of the upper section. The players looked like ants running around on a green carpet. But there is nothing like being at a ball game in person.

Chip Messenger’s balcony serves as a parable, illustrating the fact that firsthand experience is essential to understanding relational truth.

I can do my best to explain what it is like to be married or to be a father, but so much of the joy of both cannot be communicated in words. The same is true with our Father: he wants an…

On this day in 1775, George Washington took command of the Continental Army. How different would the world be if he had refused?

Washington took over an inexperienced and poorly equipped army of civilian soldiers and faced the mightiest military empire the world had ever seen. The nation on whose behalf he served was bitterly divided as well: when the Revolutionary War started on April 19, 1775, with “the shot heard round the world,” at least a fourth of the colonists supported England.

After leading his army to victory in 1781, Washington retired to his estate at Mount Vernon (an amazing site I have visited and encourage every American to see). However, he heeded his nation’s call six years later and agreed to preside over the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The drafters created the office of president with Washington in mind. In February 1789, he was elected the first president of the United States, the only person ever elected by the unanimous vote of the Electoral College.

Henry “Light Horse” Lee, one of his officers, summed up the nation’s feelings about their new president: “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” The Philadelphia Journal said of him in 1777, “Had he lived in the days of idolatry, he would have been worshiped as a god.”

Abigail Adams, the wife of our second president, described Washington as “polite with dignity, affable without familiarity, distant without haughtiness, grave without austerity, modest, wise, and good.” Her husband agreed, stating that Washington’s character “will remain to all ages a model of human virtue.”

But Washington knew that the American people’s future depended not on his character but on theirs. And he knew that religion was the foundation of the morality that was essential to their nation.

“Religion and…

On the eve of our nation’s Independence Day, let’s talk about masks. US Surgeon General Jerome Adams stated this week, “This mask, this face covering, actually is an instrument of freedom for Americans if we all use it.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wrote, “We must have no stigma, none, about wearing masks when we leave our homes and come near other people. Wearing simple face coverings is not about protecting ourselves, it is about protecting everyone we encounter.”

President Trump said in an interview with Fox Business on Wednesday, “I’m all for masks.” Yesterday, Fox News aired a public service announcement with Sean Hannity encouraging viewers to wear masks. And effective today, Texas joins a growing number of states requiring masks in public. 

Answering four medical objections to wearing masks 

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimated recently that thirty-three thousand lives could be saved if at least 95 percent of Americans wore masks in public. Opponents, however, claim that masks are more harmful than helpful. Let’s consider their objections. 

First, some claim that masks decrease oxygen levels and increase carbon dioxide levels for those who wear them. Dr. Russell Buhr, a pulmonary and critical care physician at UCLA Health, disagrees. He explains that gas molecules are much smaller than the pores in the material, meaning that the mask does not keep oxygen or carbon dioxide from moving through it. “Medical professionals wear these masks for hours a day for entire careers,” he notes. 

A second objection is the claim that masks increase our risk to viruses by triggering dormant retroviruses in the body which take advantage…

The Mona Lisa is the world’s most famous painting, which makes Leonardo da Vinci the world’s most famous painter. Now we learn that he may have possessed a genetic advantage common to some baseball players and tennis stars.

David Thaler is a geneticist at the University of Basel in Switzerland. He has been studying higher flicker fusion frequency, a trait he calls “quick eye.”

He believes that some people have this capacity as the result of genes that govern the development of the potassium channels in the cells of the retina. It enables them to see what the rest of us cannot, such as the seams of a baseball in flight or the trajectory of a tennis ball.

In his view, Leonardo’s ability to capture the Mona Lisa’s enigmatic half-smile is evidence of this ability. Her smile does not seem posed and held steady. Rather, Thaler notes that the artist captured the “passing instant when the smile is in the act of becoming.”

Thaler was first inspired to investigate Leonardo’s vision by a comment the artist made in one of his notebooks on the flight of dragonflies. “The dragonfly flies with four wings, and when those in front are raised those behind are lowered,” he noted.

However, as Thaler discovered, the insect’s front wings are out of sync with its back wings by only a hundredth of a second. This corresponds to a flicker fusion frequency of 100 hertz (100 times a second), which is roughly twice the flicker fusion frequency of most humans.

Thaler notes that Leonardo’s painting of The Last Supper also captures the fleeting expressions of the apostles after Jesus told them that one of them would betray him.

Finding and developing your uniqueness

Reading about Leonardo’s “quick eye” makes me feel better about my artistic limitations. My most significant achievement in the world of painting is a…