Bob Lees

We have agreed to trade QB Baker Mayfield to the Carolina Panthers for a conditional 2024 draft pick

Good morning. The reason you feel Charlie’s death so deeply is because grief doesn’t measure itself by proximity. It measures itself by meaning. You didn’t have to know him personally to feel the sting of his absence, because when a voice like his goes silent, something in the atmosphere shifts. The reason it feels heavier than so many other tragedies is because your spirit recognizes that this is not just about a man, it is about a battle. Scripture says eternity is written on our hearts, and when someone who carried truth with boldness is suddenly gone, eternity aches within us. It’s like our souls know instinctively that the darkness celebrated, and that strikes us at the core. The reason you can’t shake it is because psychologically, we don’t only attach ourselves to people…we attach ourselves to symbols. Charlie became a symbol of conviction in a time of compromise, courage in a time of fear. And when a symbol is struck down, it rattles something primal and eternal inside us. That’s why even those who never met him feel it. There is a strange thread pulling at us, and it is not imagined. It is real. We are bound together by shared purpose, by shared longing for truth, by the Spirit of God Himself weaving us into a fabric that cannot be torn apart. This loss pulled at that fabric, and every one of us felt the tug. So if you’ve wondered why this hits so hard, it’s because your soul knows. This is bigger than news. This is bigger than politics. This is about eternity, about truth, and about the weight of a man whose life carried both. Love y’all.

"No other theory is adequate to explain or comprehend the Declaration of Independence. It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people. We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshiped." -Calvin Coolidge, on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 5, 1926