What if you could travel the Earth, expenses paid, from Africa to Jerusalem and from Asia to the Americas? Well, one man is doing that, right now! No, he will not literally tread across the Pacific Ocean on some kind of special rubber gadget footgear… but he is covering a lot of distance on foot, in service of National Geographic.

Many people enjoy a good mystery. Mystery books by authors like Agatha Christie, Alfred Hitchcock and a host of others appeal to the desire for suspense and intrigue—and memorable characters such as the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes capture our attention with their adventures. But what about another book, that far predates these others? Do you regard the Bible as a “book of mysteries?”

Once, while I was waiting to watch the news, I remember several ads that were playing. There was nothing remarkable in this, by itself; ads are part of the daily bombardment of modern society. What got my attention this time, however, was that one ad was about a video game, and the narrator mentioned right from the start: “Rated for Teenagers.” I then saw image after image of men in body armor shooting other men in body armor, of explosion after explosion.

All day, every day, our “inner voice” chatters away at us in an internal monologue we have with ourselves. This “discussion” can be positive or negative, and it greatly impacts our lives in many ways we might not often think about.

On Thursday, May 5th, in Syria’s war-torn Homs province, beautiful music temporarily drowned out the echoes of bombs and gunshots. On a stage where Islamic State militants once murdered their victims and destroyed ancient artifacts, a Russian symphony orchestra played familiar classics. What prompted this brief interlude of peace and normalcy amid the ongoing terror?