QUARANTINE BLOG # 11

April 10, 2020


For 11.5 years I wrote a weekly column for the Augusta Chronicle.  After a new editor told me she would no longer need my services I continued to write for my web page http://davidsisler.com/mainpage.htm for another four years. 

While I was writing the column I was a news junkie.  “Not For Sunday Only” was based on every day happenings – sports, movies, TV shows, songs, news – with a Gospel application.  The idea came from the Teacher Himself.  Jesus would walk down the dusty Judean roads and say, “Look at the lilies,” or, “Do you see those birds swooping through the sky,” and then give a Kingdom illustration. 

For my inspiration, I read 12-15 newspapers a day, and 10-12 magazines a month. 

Then something happened.  Probably it was going on all the time and I just noticed, or perhaps it got worse and I finally noticed it.  On the old TV show “Dragnet,” Sgt. Joe Friday used to say, “Just the facts ma’am.  Just the facts.”  News reporting stopped being news reporting and became the opinion of the talking head on the TV screen and of the reporter on the street.

And it got worse.  Particularly with Presidents 44 and 45.  From one side of the political aisle to the other it was slam the other guy back and forth.  Reporting was slanted.  Vital information was left out to prove the point of the Left or of the Right.  Somewhere along in there, I got sick of news and stopped watching and reading.

Coronavirus has forced me to watch and read again.  And reporting has not improved.  Let me give you just one “for instance.”

Wednesday night NBC Nightly News reported on a Walmart worker who has contracted coronavirus and his family is suing the megamarketer for negligence.  The report was moving – we all feel sorry, and, for pity sakes, rightly so – for those serving us who have become infected. 

But what the Now Be Careful network didn’t tell us was the fact that the worker had a pre-existing health condition that made him more susceptible to the virus. Health professionals across the nation are telling us that those folks make up a large number of the infected cases – their immune systems are already weakened and this insidious virus attacks with very little opposition.

Continuing the pattern, the Next Big Chicanery network didn’t tell us that Walmart has told every associate, if you stay home because of COVID-19, you will not lose your job.  Nor did they tell us that Walmart is giving all associates masks and gloves to wear while on the job.

The Never Broadcast Clarity network also neglected to tell us that Walmart https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2020/03/19/walmart-announces-special-cash-bonus-and-early-payment-of-q1-bonuses-totaling-nearly-550-million-for-hourly-associates is giving a special cash bonus ($300 for full-time employees and $150 for part-time), and early quarterly bonuses to hourly associates in the amount of nearly $550 million.  That gift was announced on March 19. 

And oh yeah, they didn’t mention that Walmart is hiring 150,000 new associates through the end of May, some temporary at first, but many will become full-time jobs.

Aren’t things bad enough without profiteering from this pernicious disease?  Aren’t things bad enough without dissimilating unlearned and unreasoning stories? 

There are already too many casualties from the coronavirus.  Truth and fairness and responsibility do not need to be added to the list of fatalities. 

👉 Sixty-one years ago yesterday, NASA introduced its first group of astronauts to the American public. These seven test pilots – known as the “Mercury 7” – would fly as part of the Project Mercury program. 

All of the Mercury Seven eventually flew in space. They piloted the six spaceflights of the Mercury program from May 1961 to May 1963, and members of the group flew on all of the NASA human spaceflight programs of the 20th century – Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle.

Shepard became the first American to enter space in 1961, and later walked on the Moon on Apollo 14 in 1971. Grissom flew Mercury and Gemini missions, but died in 1967 in the Apollo 1 fire; the others all survived past retirement from service. Schirra flew Apollo 7, the first Apollo mission, in Grissom’s place. Slayton, grounded with an atrial fibrillation, ultimately flew on the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project in 1975. Glenn became the first American in orbit in 1962, and flew on the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1998 to become, at age 77, the oldest person to fly in space. He was the last living member of the Mercury Seven when he died in 2016 at the age of 95.

Back row, from left: Alan B. Shepard Jr., Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, and L. Gordon Cooper.

Front row, from left: Walter M. “Wally” Schirra Jr., Donald K. “Deke” Slayton, John H. Glenn Jr., and M. Scott Carpenter. Jr.  

Slayton and Glenn are wearing over the counter boots sprayed silver.  NASA did not have enough space boots for all 7 when the picture was taken.

👉 The Apostle Paul said, “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and said, ‘This is my body, which is broken  for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after supper he also took the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant established by my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:23-26 Holman Christian Standard Bible).

Across the many ranks of Christianity, Jesus’ words, “This is my body” is interpreted in many different ways, and I will not discuss those theological points.  Let me simply say this: for people of faith, those people who have declared that Jesus is their Lord and Savior, the bread that they take into their hands and upon their lips is not only a memory of him, it is a living contact with Jesus Christ.

Almost every translation of Paul’s words from Greek into English says, in effect, “this cup is the new covenant in my blood.”  Holman says the same thing with the words “established by my blood.” 

William Barclay in his New Daily Study Bible, translates that verse in a radically different fashion.  He explains that the Greek preposition en  most commonly means in, but it can, and regularly does, mean at the cost of, or the price of.  Barclay translates, “This cup is the new covenant and it cost my blood.”

Under the old covenant we are forever in default.  Under the new covenant we come to God as children to our father.  It cost the life of Jesus to make this new relationship possible.  Barclay says, “The scarlet wine of the sacrament stands for the very lifeblood of Christ without which the new covenant, the new relationship of men and women to God, could never have been possible.”

On this Good Friday, the memorial day of Jesus dying on the cross to take away our sins, may we by faith, raise the bread and the cup and declare with all of our hearts, “Thanks be to God!”

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