May 4, 2020
Happy Star Wars Day! May the Fourth be with you!
Did you remember?
👉 Our grandson Tate is learning to write his name. A few days ago he was just drawing some straight lines, when he decided to press on.
Pretty good, I’d say.
You can't see Tate, you say, behind all of that advancing penmanship. Okay, I get it. Here he is in a bug costume (part of a school assignment) holding more papers, proud of his work.
👉 On April 30 there were 637 new cases of COVID-19 reported in Georgia. On May 1, our governor began to release us from sheltering in place – ahead of what many people, including President Trump, deem prudent. “High touch” businesses as gyms, tattoo parlors, hair and nail salons are permitted to receive customers again. Restaurants can reopen, but must keep to social distancing and reduce the number of employees. More than 120 Atlanta restaurants refuse to open despite Georgia Gov. Kemp lifting stay-at-home orders. On May 1, the day the shelter in place order was removed there were 1,232 new cases of COVID-19 reported in Georgia. Yesterday, there were only 339 new cases. Dear God, please! May we truly be on the downward side of this horror!
👉 In other news, 80 percent of Israeli towns and villages have reported no new COVID-19 cases for several days, with Tel Aviv among them, and only four cities nationwide have had more than five new cases in the past few days: Jerusalem, Hura, Bnei Brak and Beit Shemesh. Several hospitals have not had a single new coronavirus patient in recent days, and were repurposing virus wards back into general treatment centers, though they were ready to return them to COVID-19 centers if the need arose.
Reading that I thought of this: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+121%3A4-7&version=NKJV
Consuming as little as 30 grams of peanuts or peanut butter every week can help decrease the risk of total mortality and death from cardiovascular disease.
Consuming one ounce of nuts or one tablespoon at least five days a week can lower the risk of developing diabetes by over 20 percent.
Peanuts give you belly-slimming monounsaturated fats, tummy-filling fiber, and metabolism-boosting protein – and peanuts contain genistein, a compound that acts directly on the genes for obesity, helping to turn them down and reduce your body’s ability to store fat.
Unsalted peanut butter can help lower your blood pressure because of the potassium it contains.
You’ll sleep better if you have some peanut butter at bedtime. A two-tablespoon serving of peanut butter contains 74 milligrams of the amino acid tryptophan, which is the precursor to the sleep hormones serotonin and melatonin, making it the ideal nighttime snack to catch some zzzs.
👉 The first flight happened Tuesday in New York City, Philadelphia and Trenton, New Jersey. Then in Baltimore on Saturday, starting at Fort McHenry. Then on to Prince George’s County Hospital, southern Maryland and northern Virginia and ending its route at the National Mall. After that, a loop over Atlanta.
These were fly-over by the Navy’s Blue Angels and the Air Force’s Thunderbirds to salute health care workers at hospitals hardest hit by the coronavirus. Here is a short clip from NBC News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2R75RZA-zI You can search YouTube for longer versions.
👉 It is one of my favorite verses of Scripture: “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28 NKJV).
All things.
Well, what good could God bring out of the uncertainty and anxiety caused by the coronavirus?
We could come to rely more on Him and less on ourselves or the things of this world. That would be good.
We could learn that things we assume will always be there – our health, our job, our income, our lifestyle – can be gone in a flash so we don’t build our lives on such unreliable things but instead build them on Him. That would also be good.
We could begin to rethink our priorities, so we think more about what matters – our relationship with God, being there for our loved ones, helping the needy and the hurting. That would be good, too.
God can work good through these present hardships. That is His specialty. Through the worst suffering possible – His Son’s suffering at the cross for our sins, He achieved our greatest good – our eternal salvation. We need to pray, “Your will be done,” with the confidence that He will keep working good for us in these difficult times.
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Looooooooove peanut butter!
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