Remember that article I did for you called, “Hoover Dam or Boulder Dam?” I thought I had visited “Boulder Dam,” but I learned 40 years later it’s named “Hoover Dam.” The point was that we can be sincere, but wrong.

I’ll go about 30 miles from Hoover Dam to tell you another story. When Louise and I visited the dam, I looked at the map and said, “you know, we’ve heard so much about the bright lights of Las Vegas…it’s only a half-hour or so from here…let’s just go take a look.” And so we did. It was time to find a motel, so we found a place, then went to see the lights.

It was all they say. I’ve also read that the casinos there have no clocks and no windows. Once they get you, they want to keep you, so they don’t want you to be aware of the time. And so with our curiosity aroused, we went in one of the places (no, I don’t remember the name of it) and what they say is true. There were hundreds of people, pulling slot machine arms as fast as they could feed in their money, and acres, it seemed, of people at game tables with only two things on their minds; black or red.

And do you know…I started getting a bad feeling. Call it my conscience if you wish, but I’ll call it the Holy Spirit, telling me we didn’t belong in there.

Talk about the “very appearance of evil.” We left it to them.

One more example: On another vacation, we went through Salem Massachusetts, and I remembered that’s where back in 1692, some young girls claimed a woman was a witch, and stories grew until about 20 persons had been killed before the girls admitted their claims were made up.

At any rate, we dropped into a tourist trap to hear to whole story, and in leaving, I thought a ballpoint pen would make a good souvenir. But do you know, as we drove down the highway, I had that feeling again, like on that look-see at a Las Vegas casino, so we stopped at a dumpster and threw away the pen. And we were ok again!

Call me crazy, but call me a Christian. With the Holy Spirit as a guide.