QUARANTINE BLOG # 352

March 17, 2021

Quarantine Blog begins today with a public service announcement, actually an internet security update which may require your attention, if Google Chrome is your web browser.  Chrome has a security flaw which is easily installed with a couple of mouse clicks.

If you need more information that I’m about to tell you, I can yield this space to an internet security student of my acquaintance, and he can fill in the blanks.  Suffice it to say that the part of Chrome which lets webpages appear has a defect which means it has trouble clearing memory.  In Chrome, simply click on the menu (three-dot) button (on the far, upper right side of the browser) and select Settings —> About Chrome. 

If your version of the browser is 89.0.4389.90 or newer, you’re already using a patched version.  

If your version is older, then the browser will prompt you to let the browser update itself, requiring a relaunch.  In that case, when it reopens, Chrome will automatically restore any tabs you had open.  Don’t hesitate to do this because crooks are already exploiting the vulnerability.

👉  As you know, I’ve been writing a Lenten devotion at the close of each day’s QB and because of that there has been no story of the creating of any hymn lately.  Amy asks for the story behind “Victory in Jesus” (United Methodist Hymnal #370).

Eugene Monroe Bartlett was a very well-known gospel hymnist in the early 20th century.  In 1939, Bartlett’s health suffered a major stroke.  He spent much of the last two years of his life bedridden, so it’s surprising that he wrote his most well-known song, “Victory in Jesus,” at that time.  Or is it?  It’s said that Bartlett missed traveling and teaching, but he could still study the Bible, a study from which he gave us this song, his last. 

While much of the earth sat on the brink of World War II, Bartlett looked beyond that to a victory none of us can know on earth.  Though he could see an end to his life approaching, he also noticed something else about ends.  If you live for the competition, to play the game, then the end is bittersweet, even if it culminates in triumph and a trophy.  Though an earthly victory comes at the finish line, Bartlett – like all believers – had already experienced his eternal victory well before his earthly end approached.  And, thank God that is the one that endures!

Listen to “Victory in Jesus” performed by Prestonwood Choir & Orchestra (we never sang it like that at Macedonia – I like this way!).

👉  How would you like to be working in your garden and uncover the ruins of a medieval palace?  That happened to Charles Pole, a retired bank official in England.  He had hired a crew for a construction project, and they stumbled onto wall foundations and the remains of floors suspected to be part of Bishops Palace, a 13th century building long thought to be lost.

Despite the significance of the discovery, the find hasn’t been good news for Pole.  When the builders found the ruins, they had to stop their work.  The landowner has to pay for the investigation (almost $21,000) and has delayed construction on a new bungalow into which Pole hopes to move.

👉  You knew this was coming, but hoped you were wrong: more than $200 billion in unemployment aid may have gone to fraudsters in the pandemic.  The weakness which allowed the thefts is with the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program.  PUA provides benefits to self-employed and contractors, and because eligibility rules can change quickly, and because it is difficult identified a self-employed worker, plus the fact that benefits have been escalating, professional criminals were quick to attack it. 

Blake Hall, CEO of ID.me, a computer security service, says, “Organized crime rings in Russia, China, Nigeria, and Ghana, as well as prisoners [with access to the internet] and petty thieves have made it their job to exploit the pandemic and creatively work to steal funds from state agencies, including PUA funds from federal government.  

👉  Well, let’s lighten things up a bit by looking in on a married couple in one of my favorite comic strips, 9 Chickweed Lane.  Married couple, Juliette Burber and Elliott Greene are featured:

👉  And for anyone struggling with mathematics in any of its insidious forms (times tables, commutative property of addition, set theory, Pythagorean theorem, algebra, differential calculus, etc., etc., etc.) and has ever asked “Where am I ever going to use this?” I offer the following:

👉  Prisoner Set Free.

Yesterday we began a look at Psalm 107 and four unforgettable pictures of the changing circumstances of life.  There is the human predicament, and then the transformation that comes when faith lays hold on God.  And that leads to a thrilling call to praise: “Oh that men would praise the Lord for their goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men!”

Yesterday, the pilgrim who can have God as a guide.  Today, the prisoner God can set free.  Look at the prisoner: “Those who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, bound in affliction and irons” (Psalm 107:10).

The Hebrew worshiper singing that song knew his nation’s history.  She would know the stories of the bondage in Egypt.  While those are stories we today only know by reading them, there are times when life seems to hold us in bondage as tightly as any Jew was ever sold into slavery, and we reach a point where we say, “I can’t go on like this!  I must be free!”  So often it leads only to a deeper restlessness and frustration.  

The psalmist was describing a great multitude when he spoke of men and women feeling crushed and cramped and miserable: “bound in affliction and iron.”  But here he breaks in again with a word of transformation: “Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses” (107:13).  Notice that last word is plural!  Distresses!  That is the glorious liberty of children of God!

A prisoner?  Yes, but far more – the prisoner whom God can set at liberty.  How wonderful to accept that freedom in Jesus Christ today, tomorrow, all the days of our lives!  “Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men! For he has broken the gates of bronze, and cut the bars of iron in two” (107:15-16).

-30-