All right, hi everybody, thank you so much for coming today. I know it's 4.30, and I'm probably your last session of the day, so I'm happy to get started on time, and I'm really happy to see so many of you here. When I was thinking about what I wanted to present at DrupalCon, I was having this challenge with a project that I was on, and I wasn't sure how much interest there would be in it, or how universal the challenge would be, and so I'm excited to see so many of you here today. I'm also excited to be back in person. I was at DrupalCon Seattle in 2019, which I know is the last in-person event, and despite everything, it feels really good to be back in person, so thank you so much for coming to this session today. As the title suggests, we'll be talking about ways to audit PDFs for 508 compliance at scale. I'll talk about what happens when you have a lot of content that is nested within PDFs, and then your job is to make that content 508 compliant in Drupal. It's something that I'm still working on, and I've learned a couple of things that I would love to share with you on the topic today. So, to start, my name's Lauren Maffaeo. I am a service designer at a company called Steampunk. We do technical projects and assessments for federal government agencies. I live in the other Washington, Washington, D.C., and we work with all government agencies to do everything from database redesigns to front-end user interface updates. We also practice human-centered design first and foremost, so I'm part of the design and strategy practice, and we really take a participatory design approach to every technical project that we take on, and that will become important later on in this presentation. I am also under contract to write a book for pragmatic bookshelf on data ops and data governance, specifically how to build and implement a data governance program from scratch if you don't already have one, so if that's a topic that you have knowledge about or interest in, I'd love to connect with you at some point during the conference. I'm also in my third year as a volunteer for opensource.com, as one of their community correspondence and total. I've spent over 10 years in tech and four actively involved in various open-source communities. I started my career as a reporter covering the tech sector in London as it was rapidly growing, and I've since gone on to have various roles in tech myself. So as I mentioned already, I'm here to share with you some advice that I gained from a Drupal project that I'm currently on. It's an ongoing project, so I will keep the client's identity private, but we've learned some valuable lessons about auditing content at scale to prep for a Drupal migration. And specifically, the big takeaway that I have learned is that it's really important to design Drupal sites and content for 508 compliance from the start, regardless of the content format. So I'd love to share with you what we've learned today. This was a pretty big and exciting project. It was a small team, so they're in phase one, we're about six to eight of us full-time on it, including three designers. And we were tasked with auditing the content and information architecture for our clients.gov website. This website is written in PHP, and we were tasked with repairing the content for migration to Drupal 9, which will be the client's first ever CMS. We were tasked with ensuring that all content meets 508 requirements once it's in Drupal, and we need to account for all of the content in both HTML and PDF format right now before we eventually do the migration in the future. So I mentioned 508 compliance on my past slide. It's in the title of this talk. And if you're not familiar with it, you might be wondering what it is. It is a legal requirement. The U.S. government is required by law to make its digital content accessible to everyone. And so someone who is deaf, for instance, shouldn't be prohibited from listening to a meeting recording just because they can't hear. And likewise, someone who's blind should be able to get the information that they need from a website no matter what format that information is in. And so this is a quote about what is required of federal agencies. Under section 508 agencies must give disabled employees and members of the public access to information that's comparable to how other people would get it. You've probably heard of accessibility in the tech world and 508 compliance is a big part of that. I really like this quote about how access to the internet by everybody is a crucial aspect of it from arguably the father of the internet. And you might be thinking that this is applying to a niche group of people, but according to the World Bank, one billion people globally have at least one disability and that's 15% of the total human population. So again, 508 compliance is a way to make sure that all of those citizens can access the internet regardless of their disabilities. Before we continue, I'll give the caveat the disability spectrum is very broad. For this presentation, we'll talk about accessibility in the context of screen reader technology and making sites accessible to folks who are deaf have hearing loss and are blind. And so I mentioned that this has been a really exciting project. It's been truly design led and the opportunity to audit a really big site that shares a lot of important information before its first ever migration to Drupal is a really exciting career opportunity. But it's also a little scary because once my design team and I started auditing the current sites content, we quickly realized what a challenge this would be. There are clients primary way of sharing information was through PDFs and it had been using that format for decades. That's a big barrier to 508 compliance which I'll talk about soon. This site also had a lot of content. It had 5,000 PHP webpages, 75,000 PDFs and it didn't really have any existing hierarchies so there weren't any real taxonomies behind the information architecture. And so it was very, and the search functionality wasn't very good as a result of that. So they had a lot of valuable insightful content and it was very difficult for users to find. And so that made our work difficult because we were tasked with figuring out what they had and that before we could even talk about what a migration would look like or what designs would look like on the new site. And this got even more complicated when I realized that 508 compliance for HTML is different than for PDFs. So the Department of Interior has a lot of really good information about 508 compliance and HTML really is the gold standard when you're talking about that because HTML is the expected 508 compliant content format for screen readers. It's also quicker to update than a lot of other formats. It's responsive across desktops, tablets, small tablets and mobile and it's better for multimedia than if you were to, for instance, embed an image into a PDF or a PowerPoint. Conversely, 508 compliance for PDF is a challenge. It's the hardest format for 508 compliance. PDFs are challenging to update. They're not easy to make responsive on other tablets and phones and they're not the expected default format for screen readers and so screen readers don't always know what to do with PDFs. And so that means really that if PDFs are not designed for 508 compliance from the start, making them compliant retroactively, you can do it, but it's difficult and it's manual and so you think about doing this with information in 75,000 PDFs and my team and I had to get creative about how we were gonna make that, all of that information accessible to people on the Drupal site. So we started out, we just finished phase one of this project and it is still in progress so the actual move to Drupal will take some time but we completed a few things in phase one that did really help prepare the content for compliance and help us design their Drupal 9 site with 508 in mind. The first thing that my designers and I did was we went in and made an as is information architecture diagram in a tool called Mural. I really, my design team at Steampunk really relies on Mural. I really enjoy it and I think it's great for collaborative workshops. You actually don't need a Mural account or to download the software onto your computer to access the Mural boards and so they're great exercises if you're looking for an opportunity to have a collaborative working session and so it was actually very easy, not the audit itself, but capturing that information architecture in Mural and so my colleagues and I in design had a lot of co-working sessions where we would go in and make note of the content as it existed on the site. That was also important because in doing so we realized there was a lot of PDF content on the site but you wouldn't necessarily know that if you were just looking at these individual PHP pages because they were lacking icons that showed you when content was not in HTML. So we actually made a key, like a legend within Mural that noted where this PDF content lived so that we could audit that now and then decide what to do with it as we moved closer to Drupal. We also hosted a lot of human center design workshops with our client stakeholders and so this took several forms. We hosted a workshop once we finished auditing the information architecture where we asked our stakeholders where they thought the content on their website should go. That had several benefits and several, the rationale behind it was that we wanted them to think a little more critically about what made sense because typically in government what you tend to find broadly is that sometimes they build services that are unintentionally or not built for their teams and then that content doesn't really make sense to people who are outside of the organization and when you're a government site that is built to serve the public that becomes a challenge and so having that session with them where we asked them to imagine where their content should go was very helpful. We also hosted a stakeholder mapping workshop really early on with them because it's again a big agency. We knew that this site migration will affect many different teams at the agency and it will affect how their information that they put out in PDF format or otherwise shows up in Drupal. So we wanted to get very clear early on with them about who we should talk to and when so that we knew that we were prioritizing the right people in our user interviews and our work. We also collected data on their site from Site Improve and Google Analytics and this was very helpful because one thing if you own a website and have looked at analytics you'll probably find that the majority of your traffic is going to a pretty small section of the site. That was true in this case as well so once we looked at the statistics for where people were going we saw where the biggest opportunity was to focus on improvements and once we had collected that secondary data we started prioritizing user interviews and eventually usability testing on the wireframes and mockups that my UX colleagues built. We also prioritized participatory design which I mentioned already and this is a specific type of design practice that actively engages all stakeholders in the design process both in the organization you're working for and the users themselves and it prioritizes processes and procedures not style. Typically when we think of design we think of just UX work, just wireframes and mockups but again steampunk practices, HCD from the very beginning to the end and that involves a lot of service design work which is what I do and really the ultimate goal is to give everybody a vested interest in a product or services success because it's much harder for someone to reject or be apathetic to a tool that they helped co-design and so we took the attitude that if we were involving the right people at the right time through participatory design we would get a lot more buy-in a lot sooner and that could starve off challenges in the future especially we're trying to avoid technical debt and get the right people involved and the right feedback captured before we start building which is supposed to happen fairly soon. So for us, participatory design took a few forms. We wanted to make sure that we were interviewing people who had accessibility needs from the start and that we were including them in the design process and so we as part of my user research for this project I interviewed some users of the site who were deaf, blind and hard of hearing so more specifically one person that I interviewed is blind and also deaf. So my user interview with her was through an interpreter but she was able to communicate with me completely through her interpreter and then we also interviewed a woman who had had hearing loss throughout her life and so she was not deaf but she was hard of hearing. She was also really helpful because she taught me a lot of nuances about designing for instance for hard of hearing users versus deaf users. She said for instance that if someone is deaf English is typically their second language, American Sign Language tends to be their first and so that comes up when you're talking about things like closed captioning on a website and so those are things I wouldn't have necessarily known if I hadn't included her in the interview process and we also got lucky with who we included in the interview process because these women did not just have lived experiences of accessibility needs, they had expertise auditing digital websites for accessibility so the woman who had had hearing loss throughout her life she had spent over a decade auditing websites for community colleges in North Carolina to make sure that they were in compliance with 508 so she was an expert on the topic along with having that lived experience and so her expertise was really valuable to us. We also included them in usability testing so the rough order of things is that we would conduct the user interviews, we would capture the results and report out on the results of those interviews to our stakeholder team during biweekly sprint demos and then we would incorporate that design feedback into the wireframes and mockups that my UX designer colleague built and so we included these folks not just in the user interviews but then in usability testing to ensure that what we were designing was going to be compliant on the new site. So this took, and this took a few forms in terms of the results of the participatory design. As mentioned, we did present their recommendations at sprint demos and we were pleasantly surprised to find that the site is actually already quite compliant. There are definitely things to improve upon but the overall feedback from this group is that it was pretty good and actually they were already using site improve to audit and crawl the site for accessibility regularly and the score was quite high so the qualitative feedback validated the data that we had. We also, as mentioned, prioritized the feedback from this group in our Adobe XD mockups and in our JIRA backlog. We also, in the future, when we start building out committed to 508 testing pre-production so we have a QA team at Steampunk and their job is to make sure that I do smoke testing on all of our content and products before they go to production so that's something that we will test for in advance of the new Drupal site and long term what we're thinking and what the client really wants to do is rethink the entire content delivery experience. So this is a long term goal that's going to take years to achieve. It's going to extend way beyond the Drupal website when it gets there but as mentioned they've historically delivered their content through these PDFs and it's left them with a pile of digital content that they're not totally sure what to do with and so in the future the idea is to move away from that. The idea is to have that content when it's delivered be on the site more interactive and take a different form that is 508 compliant so it's again another example of how we really tried to design this site to be compliant from the start. But that still leaves us with a challenge. How did we solve the PDF problem? Because again we had 75,000 PDFs that currently live on the site. You have all of the content within them, images, words, data points that you need to then migrate over and this I should say is post audit. I mean they had already, before we started this project the client had already gone through their content and gotten rid of stuff and so the 75,000 was what was left and so there was still a lot to manage. And so we have some ideas about how to handle it in the future and again this is an ongoing project so these are just that ideas but here's what we're exploring as a way to make the content in those PDFs accessible and at least more organized to more users. We're considering making a PDF repository where all of the PDFs would live. Again currently they are all over the website. Sometimes you will have a PDF that is in the center of a PHP page and then there will be a URL to the exact same PDF in the left hand navigation of that same page and there's no icons showing that it's a PDF and so there's a lot of discombobulation and so we're considering making a repository of PDFs so that people know where to go to find that data and that content. We also are exploring ways to provide optional word and text versions per PDF. This is something that again came up from one of the user interviews that I did where that source said that for someone who is blind text files are actually a better way for Braille readers to consume content and so providing alternative formats for PDFs can be a good solution for compliance. As mentioned, we want to add icons that denote any non-HTML content so that people know what they're getting and our client also has staff on site who are able to give content in different formats upon request. We obviously don't want to over promote that because the idea is that we really want to make this Drupal site as self-service as possible and so it should really only be a last resort that people are reaching out if they can't get content in a PDF that they need but we are considering if we do that make this PDF repository an option for giving the content details for somebody who can possibly help. So in terms of what I've learned and some things that I hope will help you if you're in a similar situation auditing PDFs are a few things. As mentioned, I think it's really important to consider 508 from the start of whatever content you're creating whether it's HTML, PDF or another format and I would really encourage you to consider the best format for your content and I think that really starts with knowing what your users use. So for instance, if they are downloading stuff as PDFs often but you're offering CSV as the only download option, there's a mismatch there and so there is a time and place for PDFs but I would argue that it's not as common as it is often used maybe and so I would encourage you to be very thoughtful when you're building your Drupal site, when you're adding new content to your Drupal site to really think about why you are offering content in certain formats. That's also important because you want easy editing access. You want to limit ideally the amount of cooks in the kitchen with who can edit this content but you also do want to be able to make changes if you need to and as you heard already, editing PDFs is difficult to do. Once you are in the process of designing pre-migration you really do want to practice participatory design by collecting feedback from users who have accessibility needs so that you can make sure that you are building a product that is truly built for them. You also want to be testing for 508 compliance pre-production to make sure that you're in compliance and you want to make sure that you are doing regular scans and audits for compliance and there are tools that will help you do that. I keep mentioning site improve because that's what our client uses. I hadn't used it before and I do find it very helpful and user-friendly and it does crawl websites. It has a pre-determined amount of requirements that it's scanning websites for and so it will automate that process for you. And again, I sound like a broken record but what I've learned is that retroactively making PDFs 508 compliant is hard. Doing it with 75,000 is almost impossible and so then you have to really get creative about how you're going to deliver that content in a way that is more helpful for people. Having said that, like I said, there are times and places for PDFs and you can design them to be accessible from the start so that's the good news and there are some tips. Indiana University has several tips on their website for how to make PDFs accessible to screen readers using Adobe Acrobat Pro. We use it in my day job and so if you're working with PDFs, it's almost a guarantee that you will be working in Adobe in some form or fashion. So there are a few things to keep in mind when you are building PDFs to make sure that they're in compliance. The first thing is that you want to convert text that is an image to selectable text and you can do that using the series of steps below. You also want to make sure that you're denoting your headers so you want to add tags to the PDF that indicate the heading structure and you can do that below as well. You might have heard of alt text and adding alt text to images. Alt text helps screen readers understand what is happening in an image so it's basically an image description and so you want to add those where possible so that if your PDFs have images that people can understand what's going on in the picture even if they can't see it and to add alt text, you can take this series of steps here to add it. You also want to set the reading order. The reading order tells screen readers which order they should read content in for users and this again is something you might not think about. If you don't use a screen reader, it's not something that I had typically thought of but screen readers typically read from left to right and so if you set these parameters you can actually tell the screen reader which order they should read in to help the person using it. And finally, you can set the language for a PDF and you can do that through here. So again, it's a difficult challenge auditing PDFs for 508 but it's certainly not impossible and if you do want to build accessible PDFs there are ways to do that. Thank you. I think we're relatively early so if anybody has questions or wants to talk afterwards I'm happy to take them, yep. They don't click the content in the PDFs. Yeah, so for folks who couldn't hear, it was a comment about auditing broken links in PDFs especially long PDFs. Did you say it was a thousand pages? Wow, okay. Wow, yeah. That's, mm-hmm, yeah. Right, yeah, so that's interesting. I know that on my client side we do have somebody internally as a stakeholder who is focused on 508 compliance and so my assumption and hope is that along with the QA engineer on our side as we keep building that she on the stakeholder side knows what to look for but I think not every agency has that and so yeah, it's also a question of what are you even auditing for? I mentioned earlier that site improve will crawl your website to check for 508 compliance but again, that relies on you putting in the correct parameters in the first place so then it becomes a question of what are you auditing for? But yeah, no, it's a, and I will say too, I just expected that there would be some program to, you know, it's 2022. I expected there would be some way of crawling PDFs like you can crawl a website to automatically make changes as far as I know there isn't. If there is, I would love to talk to you but based on what I've heard, that's not the case and so again, that's why it's so important to design for 508 from the start because if you get into a situation where you have to retroactively edit these it could be a lot of manual labor as I understand it. Yep, go ahead. That's the hardest thing in government is changing the culture. I mean, you're totally right. This is a challenging problem but it's a solvable problem. The much harder part is getting people on board and in this particular case, it gets more complicated because I mentioned already that they don't have existing hierarchies or information architecture. They also have a lot of pages on the site that are managed by different sub-bureaus and there's no content standardization across those pages on the site and so everyone who owns the site as a director kind of has free reign to do what they want with it. That means that the quality is really different across those pages. Some of them are really good, some less optimal. There's no uniformity and so I can tell you that we are prioritizing taxonomy changes and updates as soon as possible. I know that our developer has said he wants to figure that out ASAP because it's really going to affect all of the ways that he builds out the site and so I will say, I think this is also, again, I'm biased as an HCD person because I work for a firm that practices it and I am a service designer but this is again also why it was really important for us to start doing these workshops with key people really early on because we knew that could be a problem. Actually, as I understand it, a prior contractor tried to do this exact project and if I heard correctly, it was something about not involving the right people at the right time and so basically they did six months of work, they got to a meeting with someone, that person was like, I hate it and the project kind of died and so we wanted to make sure that we were taking to use jargon, an iterative approach and that we were involving them from the start because the progress on that culture front is slow but it is possible but it's slow. Yep, yep. Yeah and our developer is also very familiar with Drupal roles and responsibilities and content types which I think is also super important. I imagine sometimes you get on these Drupal migration projects and the person isn't familiar with the CMS and so that can become a challenge but I feel like we're really well positioned to move that forward but 100% as soon as they start to build, that's where the tough conversations about content types and culture will start. Yep, there's, yeah. Yeah, so the comment was about Adobe Acrobat Pro having a built in accessibility tool and also being compatible with screen readers. My question about Pro is does it, like it will tell you what to change but you still have to go in and manually do it, right? Yeah, okay, so this is wishful thinking on my part. I was like looking for something that would just like make the changes for me but go ahead. It's like well it's gonna cost you 60 bucks an hour and it's gonna take 200 hours or hey, why don't you just build this on a content page in Drupal in 15 minutes? And when you start to do that, it's like oh yeah, maybe this is a better way. Yeah, and I don't wanna be, I mean that's a great point and I don't wanna rag on government agencies for just defaulting to PDFs because the reality is there are reasons why they do the things they do. I've worked with agencies before where they are legally, they are required by law to deliver content in a certain way and so it's not even necessarily their preference, it's what they historically have had to do but a lot of those laws were not written when content was as digital as it is now and so then it gets complicated so there are reasons why they do the things they do but again, if there's no order to things, if it's just kinda left to continue in that format then it can become a really big challenge and that's the thing is it's not that it's a hard challenge in and of itself, it's the scale that is the hardest part but yeah. Yeah, I remember, I mean the big one is if I might be mis-speaking but I think the New Jersey state website is still built and running on cobalt and that was a problem in 2020 when a lot of people were applying for unemployment and other benefits and the site kept crashing and they needed developers and a lot of developers working today were not born when cobalt was a thing really and so yeah, it's a very multi-pronged problem and again, it's a solvable problem but it can create a lot of headaches and a lot of confusion about even where to start because for a couple of weeks I was like how do I begin with 75 PDFs that I can't automate the process of making compliant, yep. Yeah, no, that's a great question so we took the attitude that we wanted to call out because that was the other thing, I mean my immediate thought was okay, 5,000 PHP pages, 75K PDFs, how do we even begin to account for all of that and so we took an approach where the UX designers that I work with really highlighted the key areas of the site and then narrowed it down to secondary and tertiary pages and then we had about six stakeholders in that card sorting workshop and what we did was we didn't want their answers to influence each other and so we were actually able to host a session in mural where we gave each of them their own mural board so they each had a unique URL to their own board in mural where they would complete the exercise on their own and then at the end we came back to talk about the results and that was again really productive just because again I think a lot of times in the government too you inherit these things, you inherit these massive websites, you inherit this technical debt and even if you, a lot of people I don't think stop to again think about the why even if they do there's not much they can really do about it until there's an initiative to change and so the opportunity for them to even think that way it might sound really basic but that's actually somewhat novel to them. Now having said that we definitely, my design team and I saw some people reverting back to old habits like we, like for instance we did not have any quantitative or qualitative data that the new section should be as prominent as our stakeholders wanted it to be and so then there are questions that you know there are always gonna be things about that and I think something I had to make peace with as a service designer is that ultimately those things are not my decisions to make I have to do the best I possibly can to give the best advice I possibly can and to facilitate that collaboration but ultimately the decisions are theirs to make and I think that's how it should be because we're not, we're consultants really we're not part of the organization and we will never know their culture as well as they do and so giving them that freedom to kind of play around with what they have and then hopefully empower them to make those decisions again, those workshops don't solve everything but I do like to think that the fact that we did them early on helped and the stakeholder workshop also helped too because again big agency, everybody has varying degrees of involvement with the content on the website but everybody's content will be affected and so talking to the key people on our project to figure out who we should engage when that only took about an hour or two and that was I think very helpful in terms of helping us make progress throughout phase one. There was a, yep. I believe it does and that's what makes it complicated too is that the requirements for those different file formats is different and so that's again why it's a challenging issue because you need somebody who knows that nuance of HTML compliant versus PDF compliant and things like that but I will say the fact that you would offer that PDF content in text files is, I mean that goes, stuff like that does go a long way but again it's not something that you would necessarily know to do at the outset. I mean I was like who uses text files but people do, I mean people do and so it's something that you have to seriously consider. Yep, yep. So in a perfect world you will have somebody, you will have a QA engineer who can go in and they understand what to look for. I know that's a rosy answer because not all of them have that expertise but I do know that it's something that we practice on another project. I was on at Seampunk, I know that we didn't deploy anything to dev before it had been tested by our QA engineer and I know that she does regularly test for 508 compliant so ideally your QA can go in and take stock of that but again that's a rosy picture because I know that not every organization has a QA person or that QA engineer doesn't have the 508 expertise. I will say that because governments have to be 508 compliant their websites are actually a really good resource for figuring this stuff out so when I was preparing this presentation the Department of Interior has a lot of really good content. Like I said Indiana University has a page where they talk about making PDFs accessible so finding reputable .gov and .edu sources for 508 compliance can go a long way but ideally you really want to have somebody involved who knows what to look for. Yep. Start with the most popular, the PDFs are never accessed and even if you can't say that all your PDFs are compliant you can at least say that 90% of the PDFs that are actually used are compliant start with those. Yep. PDFs that you put on the website because they're compliant. Set in Drupal, set up the media library as one of your media types PDFs set up to the workflow so when it's saying your reports that we've published it has to be there. Yeah, no that's super important. So the last point was about using the PDF setting in Drupal to make sure that everybody who uploads is able to and that it does pass compliance and I completely agree with the prioritization point you made especially if the thing is that if you're dealing with content at that scale you have no choice but to prioritize because again you can't manually audit 75,000 PDFs and even if that had been my full-time job for six months on this project I don't know if I would have finished and so you have to start by looking at what's the most popular, what's the most useful and site improve is very helpful with that because we saw very quickly that 90% of the most popular pages were in one section of the site and so I mean to your point most people don't even access the majority of content on a site and that's standard across the board. Once you go in you'll see very clear patterns about where people are going, what they're using the site for and then when you conduct your user interviews ideally what they're telling you should explain those numbers. They don't replace each other because I think if you just look at the data then you're making a lot of assumptions about why that behavior is happening but if you can interview some users to figure out why that content is so helpful then you can make a lot of progress because yes the reality is the majority of content is actually never looked at to begin with. Yep, that's helpful. Oh nice, wow. And so it's accessibility and it's accessibilitychecklist.com and what's the name of the podcast? Chatschat podcast, okay. Got it, yes so I attended so Dexter Castro is one of the hosts and I went to a webinar early in this project that he was doing on PDF accessibility and again I was looking for, I was young and naive and looking for a tool that was going to fix the PDFs for me and so he is very helpful. There's also a Facebook group that Dexter Castro runs that is specifically on PDF accessibility and I'm blanking on the name of it but if you are on Facebook and you search Dexter Castro PDFs or Dexter Castro PDFs accessibility that group should come up and people will post their questions about PDF accessibility and 508 compliance and that group is a good resource for those questions if you have them, yep.  That's great, yep. Equidox, like E, Q, U, I, D, O, X? Okay, cool and they scan, they're another tool that scans PDFs for? So Equidox is like an automated checklist before you would upload to tell you what to fix. Oh, nice. Well and something you just said actually gave me an idea for something that you mentioned earlier which is just the governance aspect and the culture because if you're using a tool like Equidox that requires licenses then most organizations aren't going to want to give everybody a license and so then actually I'm wondering like if you implemented a tool like that in theory at least that could solve as long as you're getting the right people licenses to post that could actually cut down on giving everybody the ability to post. It's just an idea but then when you said that I was like oh, maybe that could help solve the challenge. Yep, yep, yep, yep, sorry, go. Exactly, yeah, right. Yeah, AI is notorious for especially image classification focusing on like the context instead of the subject and things like that and so you're right, it wouldn't even in that case solve all your challenges. So yeah, like I said, we have not solved the challenge of how to make every single 75K PDF compliant but there are ways to move it into the future where it is compliant and more accessible and then sorry, you were gonna say one more thing? Yeah, wow, so if you write a script you can actually like convert the PDF content into XML and then like make it compliant that way. All right, I think that's officially the end so thank you again for it, thank you again for coming. I really appreciate it, thanks.


Hey, it's alex here from alexfirst.com and I've got some great news, Juve the manufacturers of these red light panels I'm standing next to have just released some information on a new product It's called the Juve Go and it's a handheld red light device, red light therapy device So I'm gonna go through what we know about it and what we don't know about it in this video I'm really excited by it because I think this device is gonna be awesome for myself You know when I'm traveling and going to the beach and whatnot and for sport application And I'm sure you guys are gonna love it as well So if you don't know what red light therapy is or why I'm excited by this new Juve product I check out all the links below put reviews on Juve devices and red light therapy devices and Including article on everything you need to know about red light therapy So check that out if you think what the hell is all this stuff So check that out first as for what we know about this new device like I said, it's called the Juve Go It's smaller than the current smallest device in the Juve product range, which is the Juve Mini I don't have one right here with me now, but the Juve Mini is a Yay big Design for like, you know doing your face or a particular body part So it's gonna be a lot smaller than that a lot lot smaller It's gonna use the same high-power low EMF LEDs that these devices use these are the first-generation devices the Juve products So they'll be using the LEDs from the second gen Juve panels, which is going to be great Which means, you know, you're going to get a lot of good energy red light jewels coming coming into the body And also we know those units are low in EMF, which is great It's portable meaning it runs off batteries. So there's no cord. Well, they might be a cord I don't know how we charge it up yet. I can't find out that information yet But we know it runs off batteries. So, I mean, this is why we great unit for traveling You know, if you go away for the night, you don't want to take your big panel You can pop this in your suitcase or your handbag or your backpack and know you can still get you can still get your red light Hit in the morning or wherever you may be even when you're traveling, you know on the plane in the bus So if you might get some weird looks given how powerful these devices are it'll be great for like sports if you're I don't know hitting to your soccer game or Event and you want to use the red light therapy to help warm up or to treat a niggling injury on the bus right there Or when you're there, I mean, they'll be great because that's one downside with these big panels You know, they're great when you're at home or in the clinic, but not when you're out and about another thing I am excited by is um the application with going to the beach and sunburn because Red light therapy is amazing for someone seriously like I've talked about another video, so I don't need to go into it again But a few times I'll go to the beach and you're overdo it And you think I can't wait to get home to hit the red light panel Now if there's a handheld device then You know as soon as the beach session is over you can you can start working on that sunburn What else it comes with a travel case a special cable travel case again I haven't seen images of that. This is just pulled from their website Based on the product images. I've seen of the Juve go it has 12 LEDs in total so three across and four down So, I mean again if you look at this, this is what five five across here Six down so, you know, it'll be smaller than this unit You will to choose whether it's all red 660 nanometer or near infrared, which is 850 nanometer, which is a neat feature Like the Juve panels now the the Juve go will be if the cleared which is cool And it also has built-in Bluetooth With the ability to turn that on and off and I think that's to sync to an app I mean personally, I don't really use that but some people like that feature. So that's what we know What we don't know is the price Given the Juve mini couple hundred block or about five six hundred bucks, you know Surely it will come on a come in at a price point below that I know maybe three four hundred bucks. I don't know. I guess time will tell we don't know how long the battery will last I'm hoping I mean given the LEDs. They shouldn't draw too much power And I doubt it will have a fan in it like these these bigger units have fans in them I'm sure that's pulling a lot of power So, I don't know.  Hopefully you hopefully there'll be enough power in there for a couple of sessions Hopefully because otherwise if it's only one Nice, but I don't know. We can only guess and we'll wait and see, right? We don't know the exact size. So we know how many LEDs that are in it in the unit Three, what I said three across and four down based on this size That would make it about three inches across by four down What's that ten centimeters across by twelve down? I think it'll be smaller than that though I wouldn't be surprised if the LEDs are a little bit more Squished in then these ones and you know, there's a lot of frame here Which hopefully isn't the case with the Juco as well But the website which I'll put a link to below you can go to the official Juve website to find out more or what I'm telling you now They state on it and I've got these quotes here light therapy in the palm of your hand Slip one slip the Juve go in your personal backpack. It's lightweight and handheld So, I mean maybe the size of the iPad mini which I have but it's not here I mean here's a book. Love to it 2.0. Check it out. I was reading it the other day You know if it's something like that size, then yeah, that would fit in the backpack It's a bit bigger than hand size, but I mean, that'd be pretty cool The issue though is going to be how thick it is.  So I Mean the guys that do the pretty switched on right? They've made some pretty cool products. So If the acclaims are legit, it's gonna fit in the size of your hand And and we'll fit it slipped into the purse or backpack when you go traveling. So we'll see What else what else what else when what ship the Juve website doesn't reveal anything about pre-order shipping or anything like that? That that page I was just referring to the teaser page has just gone live like a few days ago So you can go on there and sign up to put your email in and sign up for for updates and again I'll put the link to that below But given that's just gone live you'd have to assume that the shipments not far away Recording this on the 12th or 13th of December. So, um, I don't know if it will come in time for Christmas Because you think you know that have to start shipping taking orders like right now So that's a bit of a shame is I think it would be an awesome Christmas gift Like seriously be wicked Christmas gift for the biohackers out there. Um, but maybe they'll start pre-orders before Christmas Yeah, but anyway, I guess we can just wait and see and and hope that it's shipped soon and not later Anyway, if you're keen to sign up for more news and release announcements for the Juve go head to the Juve website below And just enter your email and you'll get updates from Juve but also be sure to subscribe to my youtube channel, but I don't know one of those corners and Because I'm gonna put a lot of information as soon as I get it about the new device So I'll be bringing you updates and of course a review as soon as I get my hands on this new Juve go And be sure to leave questions that you might have about this product Like if there's something that you'd really like to know the answer to Put it below and if we get enough questions, what I'm gonna do is go out to Juve and be like, hey Can you give me some answers? You know, can you help me out with a bit more information here? So again, leave your questions below and be sure to subscribe so you can be the first to hear about those new updates and info tidbits and Yeah, let me know your thoughts as well If you think this is a great product, let me know because I'm keen to hear what the feedbacks like out there I know I'm excited by it. Obviously price point will be a big factor But yeah, so give me a thumbs up be sure to subscribe leave your questions below signing out


Today, we're going to be looking at a father. We're going to be looking at David. It's found here in chapter 18 of 2 Samuel. And I chose to call this particular installment in our verse-by-verse study of 2 Samuel simply by the title of Father's Pain. And we're going to see why I chose to entitle it a Father's Pain in just a moment because we're going to see David, the king of Israel. And we're going to see the grief that he is about to endure because of a relationship that had gone bad with his son. And so here we are in 2 Samuel chapter 18. We're going to be looking at a Father's Pain. Let's begin reading at verse 1, reading verses 1 and 2, and we'll get into our study today. 2 Samuel chapter 18, beginning at verse 1. We read, And David numbered the people who were with him and set captains of thousands and captains of hundreds over them. Then David sent out one-third of the people under the hand of Joab, one-third under the hand of Abishai, the son of Zeruia, Joab's brother, and one-third under the hand of Itai, the Gittai. And the king said to the people, I also will surely go out with you myself. So as we begin, as we've been continuing our study through 2 Samuel and have arrived at chapter 18, we once again see King David in a time where he needs to enter into battle. He needs to enter into war. Now, his son Solomon later would write Ecclesiastes, the book of Ecclesiastes, and in chapter 3 in verse 1, Solomon writes to everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven. And then continuing in Ecclesiastes 3, he says in verse 8, a time of war and a time of peace. What we find David in is a time of war, and a time of war was all too common in the life of this great king. This is something that he was constantly involved in. But this time it's not a war against Philistines. It's not a war against Ammonites or Moabites or Syrians. This time he's engaged in battle against Israelites, against fellow Jews. And not only that, he's not going against a foreign king. This time he's going against his own son, a young man by the name of Absalom. Now David is a battle-tried king, and he's a warrior. And because he is a warrior and a battle-proven king, he begins to organize his troops. And that's what we see in verses 1 and 2. Here in 2 Samuel chapter 18 verses 1 and 2, he begins to organize his troops, and he breaks them down into divisions. And so he's going to actually develop them or bring them into companies and divisions, because his son Absalom is busy gathering troops from the north to the south. So that gives David some time. He uses this time to organize his men. He prepares them now for the battle that is before them. Notice with me in verse 2 how it says he sent out a third of the people under the hand of Joab, a third under the hand of Abishai, and then the remaining third under the hand of Etai, the Getai. What's interesting about this is that normally they would develop their military, they would divide the military into thirds. That was a common practice at that time. But here there's a reason for it because Etai, the Getai, is actually a Philistine. So what you have with Abishai and Joab is you have them as nephews of David and brothers. You have them leading the Jewish troops, but you have Etai, a Philistine, who's going to be leading the Philistine soldiers that he brought with him. We saw in the past, as we've been reading through this, that he brought with him at least 600 soldiers. And so he's going to be leading as a commander over Philistines. The reason is very simple. It's because a Jewish soldier may not follow the lead of a Philistine commander, and a Philistine soldier may not follow the lead of an Israelite commander. It's kind of like what you have today in the United States, when the United States is placed under the authority of the United Nations. There are American soldiers who have a real difficult time following orders from a foreign commander. Well, during the time of David, it's the same thing. So a Philistine may not want to follow the orders of an Israelite, and the Israelite certainly doesn't want to follow the orders of a Philistine. So they're broken into three divisions. The two Jewish divisions are naturally going to combat for the life of Israel, but they're also going to be the kinds of, they're going to be producing the kind of incentive to make a Philistine say, I want to show you that I can fight just as well as you. And so there's actually an incentive being involved here too, because the Philistines are going to attempt to fight against the Israelites with the same fervor that Abishai and Abu Dhabi are going to show. And so what happens here is David divides his troops into these divisions and under commanders. Now, as he does so, notice verse two, it says, the king said to the people, I also will surely go out with you myself. And so David feels as their leader that he has the responsibility of risking his life along with his men. You see, he'd made the mistake of remaining behind in a time of war before. He doesn't want to do that again. So he says to them, I'll follow, I'll go along with you and I'll battle my enemies alongside of you. I also will surely go out with you myself. Well, verse three, the people answered, you shall not go out. For if we flee away, they will not care about us. Nor have half of us die, will they care about us. But you are worth 10,000 of us now. For you are now more help to us in the city. The king said to them, whatever seems best to you, I'll do. So the king stood beside the gate and all the people went out by hundreds and by thousands. They said, of course not. You're not going to go with us because you have greater value to us alive than dead. Remember with us in chapter 17 verses two and three, I hit the fel, had given strategy to Absalom and had said, all we need to do is isolate David, we'll kill him and the rest of the troops will flee.  And so David's men are aware of that. They say, look it, if we're in a battle, they're not going to be caring about us. What they're going to be looking for is you David. You are greater help to us by remaining behind. Now if for some reason we need support, if we need help, then you can lead some troops to be our reinforcements, but you're more, it's better for you to remain here because you're worth more alive than dead. So please remain behind. Well David hears that and decides to remain. So he stands by the gate and as the troops begin to file out, David is there giving them blessings and giving them greetings. It is believed commonly that David at this time concerning this wrote Psalm 20. And in Psalm 20 verses 1 and 2 it says, may the Lord answer you in the day of trouble. May the name of the God of Jacob set you on high. May he send you help from the sanctuary, support you from Zion. In verse 7 it says, some boast in chariots and some in horses, but we will boast in the name of the Lord our God. So as David is there and he's giving blessings and greetings to the people as they're passing by, notice verse 5, it says, the king had commanded Yohab, Abishai and Etaib saying, deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom. And all the people heard when the king gave all the captain's orders concerning Absalom. So as each division is passing by, David is speaking and he loudly is commanding his captains to deal gently with his son. In spite of all that Absalom has done, I want you to notice this, David still has a deep love for this rebellious, rebellious son. And so he's saying, I want you to deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom. Now as he is saying that loudly, the people are hearing what the king is saying and those who didn't hear him directly are going to be hearing it through word of mouth. So this word passes through all the divisions. So verse 6, the people went out into the field of battle against Israel and the battle was in the woods of Ephraim. Ephraim, this is located, we'll say, just east of the Jordan River in that general area there. And the people of Israel were overthrown there before the servants of David. A great slaughter of 20,000 took place there that day. For the battle there was scattered over the face of the whole countryside. The woods devoured more people that day than the sword devoured. And so there was a, it's a rocky place filled with cliffs and tree stumps and gorges. The panicked soldiers are running, some are falling over the cliffs, others are getting caught up or entangled in some of the shrubs and all and they're ending up dying. And so a great victory is won in the case of David. Well, in verse 9, Absalom met the servants of David. Absalom rode on a mule. The mule went under the thick boughs of a great terebinth tree. His head caught in the terebinth. He was left hanging between heaven and earth. And the mule, which was under him, went on. Now a certain man saw it and told Joab and said, I just saw Absalom hanging in a terebinth tree. So as Absalom is there, he's the king. He's mounted on a mule. He sees that it's not going well with his troops and decides to get out. As he's riding on this mule, he goes underneath the branches of a tree and apparently there's a fork in the tree branches. His head slides in between and actually lodges there. The mule keeps moving and leaves him hanging. Now he had hair, as we've read earlier, that would grow at such a great rate that he had to cut it off yearly and it weighed five pounds. So his hair is caught in the branches. His neck is stuck between the forks of these two branches. He's unable to get off. And as this is happening and he's trying to struggle to get free, here's a soldier who sees him. Now instead of doing anything, he goes off to the commander and he tells him, I just saw Absalom hanging in a tree. Now notice what happens here. Verse 11, Joab says to the man who told him, you just saw him. Why did you not strike him there to the ground? I would have given you ten shekels of silver and a belt. I would have given you a financial reward as well as honor because this belt symbolizes honor. But the man said to Joab, though I to receive a thousand shekels of silver in my hand, I would not raise my hand against the king's son. For in my hearing, the king commanded you and Abishai and Itai saying, beware lest anyone touch the young man Absalom. Otherwise, I would have dealt falsely against my own life. For there's nothing hidden from the king and yourself would have set yourself against me. Are you kidding me? You think I'm going to raise my hand against the king's son? There's no way. I heard the command that was given. There's no way that I'm going to raise my hand and do that. David said he wanted us to deal gently with this son. You're telling me that I should have slain him. Now if I'd have killed him, David would have heard about it. If David would have heard about it, he would have had me put to death. That's what he did to the Amalekite who came and gave him the message concerning the death of Saul and claimed that he killed Saul. When David heard that the Amalekite said he killed King Saul, David had that man slain.  No, there's no way.  So there's no way. I just came to let you know what I saw. Well in verse 14, Joab says, I cannot linger with you. And he took three spears in his hand and thrust them through Absalom's heart while he was still alive in the midst of the Terabinth tree. And ten young men who bore Joab's armor surrounded Absalom and struck and killed him. So Joab blew the trumpet and the people returned from pursuing Israel for Joab held back the people. So what he does is he takes some sharpened sticks and he goes to the location of where Absalom is. He takes those sticks and he plunges them through the center of his body. When it says here that he thrust them through Absalom's heart, that's really a geographic kind of picture. He thrust them through his belly area and as he put these sticks through him like that, Absalom doesn't die. Joab has his armor bearers with him, ten men. And so they end up killing Absalom as he's there hanging in that tree. Well they took Absalom and they cast him into a large pit in the woods and laid a very large heap of stones over him then all Israel fled everyone to his tent. Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and set up a pillar for himself which is in the Kings Valley. For he said, I have no son to keep my name in remembrance. He called the pillar after his own name and to this day it is called Absalom's monument. I want to develop something with you. It's going to take just a moment to do. I want you to notice that after he died he was buried under a very large heap of stones. That's a symbolic reminder of how an unrepentant rebellious son is to die. You might find this interesting, most of you already know this, but in ancient Israel if I had a rebellious son, that rebellious son is to be put to death. Now I'm glad we live under the time of grace and mercy because I wouldn't be speaking to anybody here because I one wouldn't be here. My dad would have had me put to death at the age of 15 and I'm supposing that most of you guys wouldn't be here either. In Deuteronomy in chapter 21 it says in verses 18 through 21, if a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother and who when they have chastened him will not heed them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city, to the gate of his city. They shall say to the elders of his city, this son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey our voice. He is a glutton and a drunkard. Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death with stones, so you shall put away the evil from among you and all Israel shall hear and fear. And so what Joab does, and I'm going to develop this with you when I get to a conclusion, but what Joab does is he basically performs the letter of the law, not the complete letter because the father was to be involved in this, but what David had was a rebellious son and that's why the stones are poured over him because that's a warning, that's a symbol, that's a picture. This was a rebellious son and he has died and these stones are here to remind you that Absalom was of this manner. Now Absalom, and I want you to see this in verse 18, in his lifetime had taken up instead a pillar for himself which is in the Kings Valley for he said, I have no son to keep my name in remembrance. We saw earlier in chapter 14 at verse 27 that he actually had three sons which tells us that his sons did not grow into adulthood and so because he has no surviving sons what he has chosen to do was to build a monument in his own memory not realizing that he ultimately was going to die in the way that he did. Now what's interesting is every time you go to Israel when you're on the outside of the walls of the city of Jerusalem when you're driving along those walls going towards what is called the Kidron Valley there is a monument there that is called Absalom's monument. Now our guides will make it clear that that is not the actual monument that is spoken of here in the bible because it's dated in the first century and this occurs obviously long before that but it is a place that the rabbis would actually take rebellious children they would have parents take rebellious children to this particular monument there and and and I took this a quotation rebellious children were taught in Judaism to throw stones at the shrine of Absalom to learn what rebellion leads to and the rabbis would say if anyone in Jerusalem has a disobedient child he shall take him out to Absalom's monument and force him by words or stripes to hurl stones at it and to curse Absalom meanwhile telling him the life and fate of that rebellious son and so this is a reminder and even to this day they still have something that's referred to as Absalom's tomb so that the people can remember that Absalom rose in opposition as a rebel against his own father and to this day you can go to Jerusalem and go buy a monument that's erected established a reminder of what Absalom did well in verse 19 then Ahimaz the son of Zedach said let me run now and take the news to the king how the Lord has avenged him of his enemies now Ahimaz was a messenger who would bring news to David he actually had come bringing a message from Hushai to David and he remained there so now he wants to bring a message of victory to David he thinks that this is a great thing the David's soldiers have gained the victory I want to go and tell him about it now it's obvious that his youthfulness has not equipped him with more mature understanding he's not aware of how David will take the news and so in verse 20 Joab says to him you shall not take the news this day for you shall take the news another day but today you shall take no news because the king's son is dead you do not want to bring that kind of news to David and so he says some other time you can carry news but not now this is not the kind of news David will rejoice over well Joab said to the Kushite go tell the king what you have seen so the Kushite bowed himself to Joab and ran so he goes to somebody else and he says you go and you take the news you you bring the news because this message is being sent by a man from Kush that tells us that he's a lower ranking individual than that priest and a man of lower rank would normally be the bearer of bad news and so he sends somebody of a lower rank and he says you go and tell David of this news well in verse 22 ayama as the son of the doc said again to Joab but whatever happens please let me also run after the Kushite Joab said why will you run my son since you have no news ready but whatever happens he said let me run so he said to him run forest run no no he didn't he said run run then ayama's ran by way of the plane and outran the Kushite so he took a shorter route the Kushite had already taken off but he knew a quicker way to get there and he took a shorter route so that he could arrive before the Kushite arrives now David verse 24 was sitting between the two gates and the watchman went up to the roof over the gate to the wall lifted his eyes and looked and there was a man running alone then the watchman cried out and told the king and the king said if he's alone there is news in his mouth and he came rapidly and drew near if he's alone that's good a good sign because if our troops have been defeated there'd be numerous people running but seeing that he's alone he undoubtedly is going to be bringing us some good news well in verse 26 the watchman saw another man running the watchman called to the gatekeeper and said there's another man running alone the king said he also brings news so the watchman said i think the running of the first is like the running of ayama as the son of zedah the king said he's a good man and comes with good news and so the second running alone is being interpreted as a runner bring in additional news but seeing that ayama was a priest and was a messenger to david well nationally david thinks he's going to be bringing me some great news well as he arrives verse 28 ayama is called out and said to the king all as well now that phrase all as well is really the single word shalom it really speaks of peace here it's translated all as well then he bowed down with his face to the earth before the king and said blessed be the lord your god who has delivered up the man who raised their hand against my lord the king all as well he approaches him with respect and he simply says your enemies have been overcome and defeated now notice verse 29 notice david's response the king said is the young man absalom safe ayama's answered when job sent the king servant and me your servant i saw a great tumult but i did not know what it was about david says he have greeted me with shalom does that peace extend to my son is he safe is he well is he alive i want you to see this because we're going to develop this in a moment david's concern for his son is greater than his concern for victory by his army is my son safe well he dodges the question he knows that absalom is dead so he doesn't want to give that information so verse 30 the king said turn aside and stand here so he turned aside and stood still there's a second messenger coming david knows and therefore i'll just wait to hear from him what he has to say you wait there for a moment well just then the kushite came the kushite said there's good news my lord the king for the lord has avenged you this day of all those who rose against you now notice and the king said to the kushite is the young man absalom safe so the kushite answered may the enemies of my lord the king and all who rise against you to do harm be like that young man once again he couches the answer diplomatically you know that's a good lesson for some of us to learn the truth may make a person free but how you speak that truth matters an awful lot when you speak truth it's important to speak truth in love and there's a wisdom in speaking forth the truth in this particular case there's some very sad news that has to be given very sad news and so you don't just blurt out oh yeah he's dead you don't do that many years ago my my brother frank and his girlfriend who is now his wife were taking a ride on their motorcycle on my brother's motorcycle and as he was driving on the freeway there the five freeway as he was driving on the five the san ana he didn't notice that the van in front of him had slowed down and then stopped abruptly on the freeway my brother was going 55 miles an hour on his motorcycle apparently he was looking over his shoulders saying something to to rose when he turned around all he saw was the red lights the tail lights the brake lights he didn't have more than a moment just to try and stop and he he hit his brakes but he slammed into the back of the van and he told me later on he says this is weird he says it was like slow motion i hit the bumper he said and i went flying up into the back door of the van he said there are the windows that they have in the back doors he says i just remember seeing somebody looking at me as my face was planted on that glass he said and his girlfriend rose in the impact slammed on his back so her weight compressed his lungs tore him up and so there they are hitting at close to 50 miles an hour the back of a van on the side of the road someone called me and said to me your brother's been in an accident you need to tell your mom and your dad and so marie and i went to my parents house and i still remember going into the backyard there and my dad wasn't expecting to see me and my dad's walking into the back in the backyard and he sees me and my mom comes walking with them and as they approached me marina are standing there and i said you know i need to share something with you and i said something like you know frank and rose are are fine they're okay you need to know that first but frankie had an accident in his motorcycle he is okay he's in this hospital and i just thought i needed to let you know now see what i tried to do is i tried to couch some bad news in the soft language that's what's taking place here when this kushai tells david that absalom is dead notice how diplomatically he approaches it he doesn't say oh that punk yeah he's dead he didn't say that now people thought that what he was was a rebellious son who needed to be dealt with and there was a common belief that absalom deserved death but i want you to see something in the heart of david david has been asking how is my son how is my son that's the first thing he's concerned for as the troops by by by their divisions were marching out of the gate there david was giving orders greetings and blessings and he said to his captains deal kindly to my with my son absalom be gentle with my son this is so common that that individual speaking to job said do you think that i was about to put david's son to death i heard what he said and then whenever news had come to david concerning the battle and it was taking place the first question he's asking in is my son safe is my son safe there is something in the heart of a parent in this context there is something in the heart of a father that no matter what it is that that son does that father loves that son and there are things about that the son in this particular case this son was was angry at his father was bitter towards his father he was resentful in every way towards david but that didn't change david's affection towards his son that is my son and that's how many fathers are not all fathers but many the number one love they have in their life outside of their god and their wife will be their children and in the case of david he was a man who feared god he was a man who loved his son and his concern was for his son his son absalom and so naturally he would say even though he's rebellious even though he's trying to steal my kingdom from me even though he stole the hearts of the people of israel i as a father want to know one thing and one thing only is he safe is he all right a father's pain no secret i'm a sinner no secret i've raised sinners they have their mother's nature what can i say i'm a sinner and i've raised sinners i joined good company the greatest father in the world is god any raised cane cane rather adam raised cane sinfulness in the line of humanity is from the beginning when adam fell when adam fell adam had cane sinfulness is in our nature you can be the most loving parent and still have a child who lives their own way but that does not mean that your heart doesn't break for them you might have people who say you know what just give it up just leave it alone who cares they're getting what they deserve but there was a longing love in the heart of david that you can't deny is my son safe is my son well you have given me words of peace for me but is there peace for my son absalom so on the one hand you have the longing of love you have david whose love for absalom was so great that it moved him in many ways on the other hand you have the demand for justice because joab knowing that what absalom was was a rebellious son deserved death and so what you have here is you have a father's love and you have a demand for justice how did david respond to the news well notice what he says in verse 33 the king was deeply moved and went up into the chamber over the gate and he wept and as he went he said thus my son absalom my son my son absalom if only i had died in your place oh absalom my son my son if only if only i had died in your place a father's pain a longing love and a call for justice joab said the letter of the law it matters not that david wants his son to live he's a rebellious son who's stealing the kingdom he needs to be dealt with david's broken heart and you have to picture this in your mind's eye for just a moment and some of us can't relate to this others can't if you've never had a child you can't relate to this you can't the first time i ever taught this passage my children were all very small it was in the early 80s and the first time i ever taught this passage my oldest son david was probably about six or seven years old at the time probably even younger and my joseph was three or four and the first time i read those words out loud i wept even as i just broke for a moment here as i shared it with you and i said i've got small sons babies really but can you imagine the heartbreak of a father who has lost his son when it died for you if you had my boys next to me and you walked in with a gun and you said to me it's you or one of your sons what's it going to be i wouldn't even think i'd say shoot me shoot me i wouldn't even think about it kill me let them go father's love are you kidding me you're asking me to save my life and take my son take my life take my life it matters not to me i go to be with the lord leave my son alone let him live take mine that's what david's doing when he says my son my son is he safe may all your enemies be even as that young man is you can almost see this great king breaking crumble in front of you can almost see his shoulder slump in his head bow he didn't even make it back to his home he couldn't even go home he had to go to this place this chamber above the gate there and as he was walking and his feet are shuffling and his head is moving side to side and his hands are in his face he's saying my son my son david had a little boy born to him by boutsheba the woman that he had had that adulterous affair with and that baby had died david's firstborn son was a man by the name of amnon amnon was killed and now his rebellious son a man i think to be honest with you who is probably pretty much like his father because as i've looked at the life of absalom i see this man as a man with similar traits as david he was a warrior he's man's man people loved him decisive in many ways and in the life of david and absalom i think that absalom was that one little guy who weaseled into david's heart the thought that he was dead well the grief it's like the psalmist in psalm 38 4 and 5 says my iniquities have gone over my head like a heavy burden they are too heavy for me my wounds are foul infestering because of my foolishness look at what i've brought on my family look what i've brought on myself when david failed with bassheba and nathan the prophet came and spoke to him they he said to him a sword will not depart from your house david the consequences are are now before him and david has grief because it went so far as to cost his son his life also now his son was an adult his son could have made choices that would have been different he chose not to he chose to pursue his father's kingdom he chose to sleep with his father's concubines he chose to do these things but it still broke david's heart what we have here is we have a longing of love and a call for justice in the case of god and us you have god's longing of love adam takes of the forbidden fruit there in the garden and it's a voice of the lord god calling in that garden adam where are you the longing of love but adam fell and god in his justice has said in the day that he eat there of you shall surely die so on the one hand you have god's word that says you shall surely die and on the other hand you have god crying in a garden broken hearted as a father was lost the son saying where are you now how do you reconcile that how do you reconcile the longing of god's love for us and his call for justice the soul that sins shall surely die god says i'll have sin fall short of the glory of god the wages of sin is death how do you reconcile that how do you reconcile a holy god who says if you transgress you will be dealt with justly with a god who cares well the bible says god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son and whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life god sent not ascending to the world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved how do you reconcile that the call for justice and the expression of love is answered at the cross of christ david said i would have died for you jesus said i did die for you david had a rebellious son god has rebellious children what david could not do god did on our behalf and that's why jesus christ died on the cross for us now not that we could become good people but that we could become righteous people because no matter what our efforts may be no matter how we try so hard to be good the bible very clearly in roman 3 says there's none good no not one none of us is as good as jesus christ not one of us is as good as as he ever was we need help help so justice meets love at the cross of christ in psalm 85 verse 10 it says mercy and truth have met together righteousness and peace have kissed god loves us why i don't know he just does i can understand a degree of that because being a father of four children like any other parent in this room i can tell you there have been times that my heart has been absolutely broken by their behavior absolutely shattered in pieces it's been more than one night that marie and i have wept ourselves to sleep for our children's sake more than one more than one disappointment more than one hurt more than one pain people think well you're a pastor your kids are supposed to be perfect no my kids are sinners like their dad they have my nature they fail but i have told my kids especially when they have done wrong especially when they've hurt us i have said there's absolutely nothing you can never do that will make me not love you i love you it's all in my heart it's broken but i love you i would exchange myself for you that's what the lord did for us that's what the lord did for us when we didn't even realize that we were sinners when we were so caught in sin doing what we wanted he still loved us when marie was carrying our very first baby karini when she was carrying my daughter and i've shared this with you i used to rubber tummy marie's tummy and and i'd put my face next to her stomach and i'd yell out hey baby this is daddy speaking i love you i love you i would grab marie's tummy and i would shake it so that she the baby would kick and i'd put my hand there and i'd feel her kicking and i'd say all right you know and i would yell that to her and the day that ugly little baby was born and they handed me this pile of fea pile of ugly and i looked at those crossed little eyes and that flat little nose and that deformed little head and i said i hope you outgrow this no when i when i looked at her and i put her like this and i rocked her and i kissed her and i handed her to her mama we had that kodak moment where we just shared this is ours it's my baby my karini we did that with all four of our babies then the day came when you hear those words you don't love me i don't love you when you were in your mother's womb i loved you for the months that you were there i could love you and when you were born and they handed you to me i loved you now i don't like you very much but i sure love you that's one of the things you can never say to me with honesty you can never question me on whether i love you because i love you and no matter what you do and no matter what you have said father's love is forever and i will always love you i have told that to my children i will always love you i have a heavenly father who loves me deeper than i have ever loved my babies and when i was running and i was evil and i was doing all that i was doing he had a longing of love but he had a mandate of justice he brought those together on a cross and jesus died for me so that i might be brought back to him so that i would understand his words when he says you love me because i first loved you and i demonstrated my love towards you when you were yet a sinner by sending my son jesus to die for you david did not have to die for absalom he would have jesus died for us because while we were rebellious he came and laid his life down and that's the love of god a father's pain i have a heavenly father who has pain over the sinfulness of sons and daughters i caused him pain but now i want to bring pleasure to him through my life and that comes when you yield yourself to jesus christ


Hey, your skin looks a little red. Oh, I didn't notice. Here's a hat you can use while you're here. Thanks, but what's it for? To protect your skin. Your skin is red because of the sun. Our skin can easily burn if we're in the sun too long. Oh, but how will I get tan? Try self-tanning lotion. But when you're out in the sun, be sure to protect your skin with SPF 30 sunscreen. That helps us lower our chance of getting skin cancer when we're older too. Oh boy, I'll go grab my sunscreen. This is Maddie. And Aiden, reminding you to be sun safe. Brought to you by NDSU Extension and the North Dakota Department of Health.


Welcome to Spotlight. I'm Adam Navas. And I'm Liz Wade. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand no matter where in the world they live. A group of people wait in a room. They have gathered in a famous restaurant in Basel, Switzerland. They are waiting to eat dinner. Soon a waiter arrives to guide them to their table. This is all a normal experience at a restaurant. But then something unusual happens. The waiter asks everyone in the group to remove their watches and telephones. He puts these things in a box. Then these guests form a line. Each person holds the shoulder of the person in front of them. The waiter stands at the front. He walks through one dark cloth curtain and then another. He leads the group into a room that is completely dark. No one can see anything. It is like they are all blind. In fact, some people in the room are blind. This special restaurant is called Blinda Koo. It is designed to share the experience of blindness with people who can see. The waiters and many other workers here are blind. Today's spotlight is on Blinda Koo and the experience of eating in the dark. The World Health Organization says that around the world, about 39 million people are blind. Some people are born blind. Others lose their ability to see in accidents. Some diseases also cause blindness. This is particularly true in places where people cannot get treatment from doctors. Being blind can be very difficult. In many places, blind people are not given their full human rights. It is difficult for blind people to work. Many blind people have to depend on their families to survive. Sometimes they must even ask other people for food and money. But what if there was work that only blind people could do? What if there were jobs that used the particular skills of blind people? Jorge Spiegelman is a Christian leader who lives in Zurich, Switzerland. He is blind. In the late 1990s, he opened the restaurant Blinda Koo. It won many awards for his interesting business idea. But Spiegelman did not start the restaurant to win awards. He did not plan to make a lot of money. Spiegelman had two simple goals. He wanted to create jobs for blind people. And he wanted to show people what it is like to be blind. Spiegelman often invited friends into his home to share a meal. They would ask what it was like to be blind. So, he would cover their eyes with dark cloth when they ate. His guests found that the meal was very different. They said that they had to concentrate on their food. They listened carefully to the people around them. They found it very interesting. Without their eyes, people use different senses. They concentrate more on hearing, smell, or touch. Food even has a different taste. Today, there are many restaurants like Blinda Koo where people eat in the dark. There are many differences between them. But all of them work in a similar way to Blinda Koo. Guests enter into a lighted space. Here, they order their food or buy drinks. In some of these restaurants, guests can choose a mystery meal. They will not know what they are eating. They have to use their other senses to recognize the food. They talk with their friends and other guests. Some look around the room. They seem worried. This will be the last time they see anything for the next few hours. Then, a waiter enters. A restaurant waiter usually takes orders and serves food. At the dark dining restaurants, the waiter does more. It is unusual for a blind person to be a guide. But in these restaurants, the waiter is the guide for the guests. To enter the restaurant, one guest holds the waiter's shoulders. Then, the next guest holds the shoulder of the first guest. Soon, the guests form a line behind the waiter. Then, the waiter begins to walk. He leads the guests into the dining room. Here, it is very dark. The guests cannot see anything. But the waiter never gets lost. He has done this many times. He does not need to see. At many dark dining restaurants, guests do not eat alone. The tables are very large. Everyone sits together. So, people may sit next to someone they have never met. Many people find it difficult to eat and talk with strangers. But, sitting in the dark, they feel differently. People feel that they can speak without being judged. No one can see at all. So, people sometimes do things that they would not normally do. They find a kind of freedom in the dark room. There are many difficulties. Guests may spill food or drink. They may drop their forks or knives. Some people cannot easily find their own mouth. Sometimes, people even feel afraid of the new, strange situation. The guests depend on their blind waiter for everything. But for most people, these difficulties are also a chance to learn. After eating, guests often talk with their waiters. In some restaurants, waiters even tell stories to the whole group of guests. They talk about their experiences at the restaurant. And they tell stories about the rest of their lives.  They may learn to feel that their experiences are not as important. But the darkness of the restaurant changes this. While dining in the dark, everyone is blind. Here, blind people are the experts. They know more about living without sight than anyone. These restaurants give blind people jobs. They give people who can see a new way of thinking. But most of all, they give blind people something they do not get enough of. Respect. People who can see learn more about the experience of being blind. Jorge Spielmann talked to writer Jacqueline Harmon Butler about this goal. He said, We would not want anyone to be blind. We just want people to have the chance to experience the world the way we experience it. The writer of this program was Dan Christman. The producer was Stephen Hoffman. The voices you heard were from the United States and the United Kingdom. All quotes were adapted for this program and voiced by Spotlight. You can listen to this program again and read it on the internet at www.radioenglish.net. This program is called Eating in the Dark. Tell us what you think about today's program. You can leave a comment on our website or email us at radio at radioenglish.net. And find us on Facebook. Just search for Spotlight Radio. We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye.