The Rod Martin Report: November 27, 2014, Happy Thanksgiving Edition

You can read about the world anywhere. You read The Rod Martin Report to understand it.

by Rod D. Martin
November 27, 2014

Dear Friend,

What a joy it is to share this Thanksgiving holiday with you, even if only virtually. Among those things for which Sherri and I are most grateful, you are certainly amongst the very top rank. We thank you for your friendship, and we thank our God for you.

Indeed, God has blessed us all in so many ways, and we are so prone to overlook many of the biggest. It would be good to reflect today, for instance, on the fact that a billion people were lifted out of poverty in the last 20 years. Or the fact that we’re very close to curing liver fibrosis and cirrhosis, which affect five times as many people as cancer.  Or the fact that for many people, like Sherri Martin, cancer is no longer a death sentence.  Or the fact that Elon Musk has reduced the cost per pound to orbit from $10,000 to under $1,000, unleashing a new age like the Wright Brothers and opening the door to new worlds.  Or the fact that over half the populations of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras came to faith in Jesus Christ in just this last generation.

Sherri and I are thankful for all these things, and many more too numerous to count. A few of them:

We are grateful that our friend David Bahnsen has achieved his lifelong dream of establishing a Christian high school.

We are grateful that our friend Tom DeLay has been vindicated in the courts, and that he has a beautiful new granddaughter.

We are grateful that our daughter Haley had the courage to launch her own business this year, and that she's been extremely successful with it.  We're awfully grateful that she, her big sister and her big brother are all sweet to their parents and have never once given us reason for shame.

We are grateful that the forces of reason prevailed -- overwhelmingly -- in this month's general election.  We are hopeful that the newly elected Republicans will have the wisdom and courage to stop the cascading disasters befalling this country at the hand of incompetents and socialists (but I repeat myself).

We are grateful that this month, the United States will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's second largest oil producer. We are grateful and encouraged that this is the result of an American technological achievement driven entirely by market forces, a development and a result I predicted at the very height of the gloom and doom about "peak oil" (it sounded like crazy talk at the time).

We are grateful that we've had numerous unexpected opportunities this year to serve through our beloved Southern Baptist Convention.  We are even more grateful for an SBC President, Ronnie Floyd, with the overwhelming burden to call for -- and act toward -- a new Great Awakening.

We are grateful for the opportunity to work in technology, wherein we are able to strive for a world without want, to aspire to help create a future wherein peaceful entrepreneurship and intrepid wonder carve new and better worlds out of as-yet-unknown wilderness.

And above all, we are grateful for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the firstborn of many brothers and sisters adopted by God and made co-heirs with His only begotten, that we may be not slaves but sons. Non nobis, non nobis, Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam.

Next week we'll resume our normal politics, technology, futurism, market analysis and so forth.  But for today, thank you, for you.

Oh, and Go Cowboys!  They don't have to win for me to love them.

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You can read about the world anywhere. You read The Rod Martin Report to understand it. Do your friends a favor and pass it along; and remember, there’s a lot more we publish each week that doesn’t make the newsletter.

Happy Thanksgiving,

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