Editor’s Note: This occasional column will publish weekly beginning in September.

1. Biden and black voters

When an African American radio host told Joe Biden he had more questions near the end of a recent interview, the former vice president replied: “Well, I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out if you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

Biden later said he shouldn’t have been cavalier, but the remark played into a talking point of the Trump campaign: Democrats take black voters for granted. 

Editor’s Note: This weekly feature will publish Fridays during the 2020 election season.

1. Amash’s adieu

Less than three weeks after jumping into the presidential race, Rep. Justin Amash (Libertarian-Mich.) jumped back out. Amash was exploring a bid for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination, but the congressman said on May 16 he realized success isn’t likely under the current circumstances. 

If working from a makeshift office in a corner of a bedroom proved taxing for millions of Americans sheltering at home during the coronavirus shutdown, imagine running for president from a basement.

That’s been Joe Biden’s subterranean plight for some eight weeks.

At a campaign event in South Carolina on Feb. 26, dozens of reporters crammed onto aluminum bleachers as Democratic presidential candidates shook hands and greeted local Baptists clustered around folding tables in a church gym.

The Possibility of Prayer by John Starke: Starke’s book about waiting on God hit the market a few weeks before the coronavirus plunged the world into waiting on relief. But even in the forced stillness of quarantine, noisy souls need reminders to wait for God alone. Starke offers reflections on praying the Psalms to meditate on the character and care of God.

FOR RUTH TIALPAR, learning that her children’s Christian school would shift to online instruction during the coronavirus shutdown wasn’t the first time she had faced educational adversity: Growing up in a village in Burma, Tialpar suffered crippling polio and sometimes literally dragged herself to school.

While church leaders across the United States scrambled to organize online worship services in mid-March, pastor Rodney Howard-Browne told a large crowd gathered in his Tampa church why he would never cancel public gatherings: “This Bible school is open because we’re raising up revivalists, not pansies.”

Jim Davis remembers one of the last games he played with elderly residents at White Oak Manor in Newberry, S.C., before the threat of the coronavirus largely confined the vulnerable population to their rooms for the foreseeable future.

On a pleasant afternoon, Davis—the facility’s activities director—led a group through a word game about flowers and pies. Between turns, the residents talked about their favorite blossoms. Some chatted about the tastiest desserts.