As we drive our way through everyday hardships and avoid the potholes and pitfalls of life, we always need direction. Whether itaEUR(tm)s from an app or from our Bibles, we are searching for the best way to get us to our final destination. Through my own physical difficulties (MS unclaimed), death, and the heartbreak of divorce, I have come to know the only true consistent part of my life is Jesus, and I choose to love Him and bring Him everywhere I go and everywhere I drive, serving my Uber God!

We once idolized tech entrepreneurs for creating innovations that seemed like modern miracles. Yet our faith has been shattered. We now blame them for spreading lies, breaking laws, and causing chaos. Yesterday’s Silicon Valley darlings have become today’s Big Tech villains. Which is it? Are they superheroes or scoundrels? Or is it more complicated, some blend of both? In The Venture Alchemists, Rob Lalka demystifies how tech entrepreneurs built empires that made trillions. Meta started as a cruel Halloween prank, Alphabet began as a master’s thesis that warned against corporate deception, and Palantir came from a campus controversy over hateful speech. These largely forgotten origin stories show how ordinary fears and youthful ambitions shaped their ventures—making each tech tale relatable, both wonderfully and tragically human. Readers learn about the adversities tech entrepreneurs overcame, the troubling tradeoffs they made, and the tremendous power they now wield. Using leaked documents and previously unpublished archival material, Lalka takes readers inside Big Tech’s worst exploitations and abuses, alongside many good intentions and moral compromises. But this story remains unfinished, and The Venture Alchemists ultimately offers hope from the people who, decades ago, warned about the risks of the emerging Internet. Their insights illuminate a path toward more responsible innovations, so that technologies aren’t dangerous weapons but valuable tools that ensure progress, improve society, and enhance our daily lives.

Take comfort in knowing that God hears you. The story of Hannah in 1 Samuel tells of one woman’s personal heartache and trust in the One who could fulfill her desires. She poured her heart out to God, and He heard her. The Our Daily Bread devotions selected for this collection reassure you that God is with you, God is for you, and God hears you. The personal stories and Scripture passages lift you up and remind you that God is bigger than the trials you face.

If God exists and is perfectly good, God tries to guide people. A twofold question then arises: How does God (try to) guide people, and to what end? Problems of divine guidance for humans, according to this volume, are real and serious, but they are manageable once we clarify the kind of God at issue. According to the volume's main thesis, if God has a perfect moral character accompanied by certain redemptive purposes for humans, the puzzling nature of divine guidance for them need not preclude the reality of such guidance. It is, this volume contends, a live option for God to guide or lead humans toward goodness, even if the leading is not fully explainable by humans. The voluntary moral attraction of cooperative humans by divine goodness is central to divine guidance, and it can illuminate the kind of evidence to be expected from God.