QUARANTINE BLOG # 170

September 16, 2020

Sometime ago I mentioned that I was reading Tom Brokaw’s excellent book The Greatest Generation.  Quoting from the fly leaf: “In this superb book, Tom Brokaw goes out into America, to tell through the stories of individual men and women the story of a generation, America’s citizen heroes and heroines who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America.”  This book needs to be a part of history course in high school and college (along with Bill O’Rilley’s “Killing” series, and Brett Baier’s “Three Days” series).

For the next several blogs I am going to share quotations from the book that I found particularly moving.

In the section “Women In Uniform and Out:”

Marion Rivers worked at General Plate Division of Metals and Controls Corporation producing technical instruments for the military.  “She remembers the pride of all the employees when the company was awarded a large E for excellence and the Army and Navy organized a ceremony to present a banner to be flow outside the plant.  ‘I can still see that flag,’ Marion says, ‘snapping on the flag pole whenever I entered and left the building.’  She believes it was the last time ‘in the history of our country when a full-blown spirit of true patriotism was in every heart.’”

👉  You’ve heard about the events in Lancaster, PA.  Ricardo Munoz was shot and killed when he attacked a police officer.  Munoz charged at the officer, wielding a knife, as was seen when the police released the body camera footage.  Now Munoz’s sister, Deborah Munoz, says, “This police officer needs to pay for his crime.  There’s a million different scenarios where they could have shot him and not killed him – to take the knife away.”

Let me see if I have this right – and the loss of any life is tragic and to be avoided if possible, but he was threatening his mother with a knife, trying to break into the house, then he springs from the house with the knife held high over his head, and the officer who was called to the house because of Munoz’s out of control behavior  should think of the million ways to take the knife away from a man who is obviously intent on doing him bodily harm or worse.

A policeman defends himself from a knife wielding attacker – who was awaiting trial on previous charges for stabbing four people, including a 16-year-old boy, in another incident last year – and protesters respond with arson, institutional vandalism, riot, failure to disperse and obstructing highways and other public passages.  In the minds of some, it is totally acceptable to destroy other people’s property to protest something with which you disagree.

👉  This one is from our “In Case You Have Nothing Else to Worry About Department.”  The National Hurricane Center is about to run out of names for this year’s Atlantic storms.  21 names were pre-approved to the World Meteorological Organization.  Only Wilfred is left.  In addition to the four named systems now being watched – Paulette, Teddy, Vicky and Sally – the center is watching three potential systems. Those systems include one in the eastern Atlantic with a 70% chance of becoming a tropical cyclone over the next five days.  When Wilfred forms, the hurricane center will move into the Greek alphabet.  The last time that happened was in 2005’s season that used six Greek names.

👉  Well, I didn’t get an invitation, and I’m beside myself with disappointment!  The reason for my angst is Amazon.  I’ve been a loyal shopper since 1998 – their home page tells me so.  And they keep a record of my purchases: 76 so far this year, 102 last year, 134 in 2018.  I didn’t look at the more distant past, but you get my point.  So why did I not get an invitation to shop in their Luxury Stores, where only selected Amazon Prime members can shop for high-end brands?  That’s right.  They left me off of the select list of folks who can shop from their computers for Oscar de la Renta’s Pre-Fall and Fall/Winter 2020 collections.  I can request an invitation by visiting amazon.com/LuxuryStores, but since they snubbed me, I’m not going to stoop to their level and ask.  Amazon’s loss.  Besides, I don’t think Oscar sells books, K-cup coffee, or Star Wars Legos.

👉  As promised, another first from an America’s female astronauts.  NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson became the first woman to command the International Space Station when she took the helm of the outpost in April 2008 during Expedition 16.  Whitson grew up as an Iowa chicken farmer and later earned a PhD in biochemistry from Rice University in 1985.  She officially joined NASA’s Johnson Space Center as a biochemist in 1989, and in 1996, Whitson was selected to become a NASA astronaut.

Her first flight to the International Space Station was on Expedition 5 in 2002 where she was named NASA’s first official Science Officer.  She spent 185 days in space on that flight.  Then came Expedition 16, when Whitson took her historic command of the space station.  After that 192-day flight, she became the first woman to command the space station twice when she took command, in 2016, of Expedition 51.  She has logged 665 days, 22 hours and 22 minutes in orbit over the span of three trips to the International Space Station – more hours in space than any U.S. astronaut, male or female.

Tomorrow, the first female shuttle commander.

👉  Today’s closing is from John UpChurch.

“I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.  I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want” (Philippians 4:12).

I’d rather live a Philippians 4:13 type life.  But that verse before it always gets me.  I’d rather jump right into the “doing all things through him who gives me strength” without slogging through the “content in any and every situation” part.  The second verse makes for such great posters, but now, when I read it, all I can think is “whether living in plenty or in want.”

Talk about a buzzkill, but God’s plans come in a larger size than my earthly satisfaction.  He wants my sanctification, my being-made-more-like-Jesus-ness.

Paul told Timothy that “godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6), and he’s driving at the same thing here in Philippians.  “Strength,” according to the world, boils down to laying claim to the most stuff – power, model spouses, houses, and influence.  But those who think that way can never be content no matter the situation.  When their “strength” disappears, they wilt.

Jesus does want us to get to Philippians 4:13, but to do that, He has to demolish our strongholds by taking us through Philippians 4:12.  We can do all things through Him who strengthens us.  But to get to that point, we have to learn satisfaction in His “all things,” the plans He has for us.  That’s because it’s His strength, not ours.

God’s plans for us don’t always send us down the paths we might choose.  Okay, they rarely do.  That’s why true contentment becomes so vital for the Christ follower.  And the only way we can get there is to die to the things that supposedly make us strong in this world.

You are strong – right where your contentment in Christ begins.

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