QUARANTINE BLOG # 99

July 7, 2020

The morning that our daughter Amy Elizabeth announced – 46 years ago today – that she was moving from the warm accommodations in her mother’s womb to the world of Windber, PA, I was preaching.  According to the doctor’s calculation it would be a week or so before Amy would be born, but what do doctor’s know?  Bonnie was sitting in the steps that led to the basement of the church, counting her contractions.  While I was shaking hands with the departing flock, one of the teens came up and said, “Your wife is in labor, and she says you need to come now!”  I did.  And a little over an hour later our family had increased from three Sislers to four.  Happy Birthday, Amy!

👉  Yesterday was International Kissing Day.  Today is Tell the Truth Day.  The cynic in me thinks it’s interesting that they follow each other, because kissing should be the truth, but it is not always so.  There are different types of liars – some tell little white lies; some are sociopaths who use charm and charisma to get something, without regard for the feelings of others; and some are compulsive or chronic liars, who lie about anything, and for which lying is second nature.  Today is for focusing on telling the truth, even if it’s difficult (I am resisting pointing fingers.  You make your own list).

👉   Wearing a face mask to stop the spread of the coronavirus is so easy, even a statue can do it.  So why is it humans find it so hard?  During the pandemic, art work around the country has been photographed with face coverings.  Face masks help protect against the virus, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as nationwide confirmed cases reach 3,040,833.  Now, many states, including Pennsylvania, California, Oregon and Texas, mandate the coverings while certain cities and counties carry fines for those who don’t observe the rules.  Georgia does neither.

Patience and Fortitude, 109 year-old marble lions that guard the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, were photographed wearing face masks measuring three feet wide and two feet tall.

In Maryland’s National Harbor district, the “Forever Marilyn” statue by Seward Johnson depicting the glamorous Marilyn Monroe wearing a mask.  An Instagram photo added, “Give a girl the right mask and she can conquer the world.”

👉  While I was looking for the Paul Havey clip which I shared on Independence Day, I came across his commentary from the evening of November 22, 1963.  That, of course, was the day President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated.  Closing his remarks Mr. Harvey said, “If the world is one day destroyed, it will come just like this, you know.  It will not be the H-bomb that did it.  It will be the greed, or the fear, or the hate that set it off.”

Yesterday Georgia governor Brian Kemp signed an executive order declaring a state of emergency and authorizing the call up of up to 1,000 National Guard troops in Georgia.  Thirty-one people were shot in 11 incidents in Atlanta between Friday and Sunday.  Five people, including an 8-year-old girl, died.

From FOX News: In an impassioned press conference Sunday night, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms issued a full-throated call for citizens to stop “shooting each other up on our streets,” after 8-year-old Secoriea Turner was shot and killed ...  “Enough is enough,” Bottoms said ... “You shot and killed a baby. And there wasn’t just one shooter; there were at least two shooters.  An 8-year-old baby.” ... Bottoms added, “You can’t blame this on police officers.  It’s about people who shot a baby in a car.”

👉  Dick Tracy is a tough and intelligent police detective created by Chester Gould. Basing the character on U.S. federal agent Eliot Ness, Gould drafted an idea for a detective named “Plainclothes Tracy.”  The editor suggested changing the hero’s name to Dick Tracy.  Gould agreed and Dick Tracy was first published on October 4, 1931.

Tracy uses forensic science, advanced gadgetry, and wits in an early example of the police procedural mystery story – although stories often end in gunfights just the same.  Big Boy, a fictionalized version of Al Capone and the strip’s first villain.

In January 1946 the two-Way Wrist Radio became one of the strip’s most immediately recognizable icons, worn as a wristwatch by Tracy and members of the police force.  The two-Way Wrist Radio was upgraded to a two-Way Wrist TV in 1964, and a 2-Way Wrist Computer in 1987.

Fearless Fosdick is a long-running parody of Dick Tracy.  It appeared as a strip-within-a-strip, in Al Capp’s satirical hillbilly comic strip, Li’l Abner.

In addition to being fearless, Fosdick is “pure, underpaid and purposeful,” according to his creator.  Perpetually ventilated by flying bullets, an iconic Fosdick trademark was the “Swiss cheese look” – with smoking bullet holes in Fosdick.

The impervious detective considers the gaping holes “minor scratches” or “mere flesh wounds.”  When the Chief once said, “Fosdick! We thought you were dead!”  Fosdick replied, “I was – but it didn’t prove fatal. Only a mild case.”

👉  “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

That’s crazy, isn’t it?  It flatly contradicts the accepted views of our day!  But Jesus  does not mean that every mourner is necessarily blessed.  Tears are not good in and of themselves.  There is no comfort for the deliberate pessimist, or the one who mourns over selfish loss or thwarted ambition, or even for the one who expresses remorse but does not turn away sin.

In the broadest sense, every mourning that leads to Jesus Christ is blessed.   Whatever your sorrow, whatever your burden, whatever your heartache, if it turns you toward Him, He promises blessedness.

But the mourning that Jesus has especially in mind is mourning over sin.  Do you remember the first beatitude?  “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”  Blessed is the person who is conscious that she is not what she should be.  Blessed is the person with a sense of need, who realizes that he can do nothing by himself.  And this second beatitude goes further.  Blessed is the one who is so grieved over their moral and spiritual lack that they turns their face toward Him who is able to supply all their need.

The New English Bible says, “They shall find consolation,” but the King James Version is just as true, “they shall be comforted.”  It is true especially because “comforted” originally meant “fortified.”  We need both versions: they shall be consoled and fortified.

Eugene Peterson says, “You’re blessed when you’ve lost what you feel is most dear to you.  Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.”

-30-