Now that readers have taken WORLD's quick tour of the past millennium, here's one more comment about the Life magazine top 100 that I mentioned last week: Life's editors viewed the past through today's secular lens when they listed only five events connected to Christianity.

This is a column about the difference between history as seen by Life magazine and by the New Testament martyr Stephen. But first, an apology. Three months ago I wrote a column about stonewalling at some Christian organizations and mentioned in passing that I had seen the same when I worked at Du Pont 20 years ago.

Practical Christian living is all about taking reasonable risks by trusting God but understanding man. For example, the New Testament teaches that we are to invite in strangers. It also teaches that those who do not work should not eat, and that churches should be careful in dispensing aid even to widows. It takes great discernment to be both warmhearted and tough-minded toward irresponsible men who come to church doors requesting aid.

Samuel Johnson, the British wit who lived from 1709 to 1784, would have been wonderfully effective on The McLaughlin Group or any of the other Beltway journalist mud-wrestling TV shows. Johnson created soundbites that have been quoted for over two centuries, such as "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

This issue's publication date is my 49th birthday, and I'm feeling dumber and dumber in relation to, and thus more and more in awe of, the wisdom of God and the way He works in human lives.