QUARANTINE BLOG # 488

July 31, 2021

On August 21, 1945, Captain Robert Posey accompanied The Ghent Altarpiece on its journey back home. During the flight back to Brussels, a sudden violent storm struck. The plane and its precious cargo were rocked by turbulence, high winds, and rain. The pilot told Posey that he couldn’t land safely in Brussels, and then located a small military airfield about an hour outside of Brussels. It was 2 a.m. when they landed, and there was no one on hand at the airfield to welcome them, least of all to help with their most precious cargo.

Posey shanghaied a couple of trucks, went to some bars and rounded up some American enlisted men. His convoy reached the Royal Palace in Brussels at 3:30 a.m. After a moment of confusion, the night staff let them into the palace, realizing that this group of GIs had the van Eyck that had been expected hours ago. They laid out the panels of The Ghent Altarpiece on a long table in the dining room of the palace.

Posey told the authorities he wasn’t going to leave his charge until he got a written receipt. The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb had slipped through too many fingers too often. A Belgian official on night duty provided it. A suite was offered to Captain Posey, one normally reserved for visiting royalty, and he collapsed into bed. Posey returned the next day to join his Third Army, stationed in Paris.

Captain Robert K. Posey was later awarded the highest honor of the Belgian government, the Order of Leopold – an equivalent to being knighted.

Days after its dramatic flight to Brussels, the U.S. ambassador officially presented the rescued Lamb to the Prince Regent of Belgium, on behalf of General Eisenhower. There was rejoicing throughout the country. This painting symbolized much more than a merely marvelous work of art. It represented the defeat of Hitler’s plan to steal the worlds art – it signified the defeat of Hitler himself.

The Belgians remembered the last time The Lamb came home from exile, after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Like as then, speeches were made, and parades were held. Belgium welcomed home its greatest treasure, like a kidnaped and rescued prince. Jan van Eyck’s Adoration of the Mystic Lamb was displayed for one month at the Royal Museum in Brussels, as it had been in 1919. In November 1945, The Lamb was returned to Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent.

The repository at Alt Aussee was the largest store of rescued art, but it was not the only one. In Germany alone, Allied soldiers uncovered approximately 1,500 caches of stolen art. It is likely that countless others remain still buried and hidden throughout Germany and Europe.

With the help of Hermann Bunjes and with support from Office of Strategic Services intelligence, other salt mines were identified and secured by Allied armies. 

The mine that attained the greatest notoriety was at Merkers, and it was Posey and Kirstein who oversaw inventory. Room Eight contained thousands of what looked like brown paper bag lunches, laid out in neat rows. In actuality, these were filled with gold: approximately 8,198 gold bars, 1,300 bags of mixed gold coins, 711 bags of American twenty-dollar gold pieces, printing plates used by the Reich to stamp its currency, and $2.76 billion reichsmarks – the rest of the reserve of Germany’s national treasury. 

It also contained art and antiquities, including Albrecht Durer’s Apocalypse woodcuts, Byzantine mosaics, Islamic carpets, and between one and two million books. The final MFAA inventory listed 393 uncrated paintings, 1,214 cases of art, 140 textiles, and 2,091 boxes of prints.

With its combination of stolen art and buried gold, Merkers was the first stolen art story to attract international media attention, although the gold was of greater popular interest than the artworks. General Eisenhower, General Patton, and an assortment of other generals paid an official visit to the mine, further elevating the profile of the discovery. George Patton cracked a joke as the generals slowly descended in the service elevator into the earth: “If that clothesline should part, promotions in the United States Army would be greatly stimulated.” Eisenhower didn’t find it funny.

Hermann Goring’s personal hoard of stolen art had been evacuated from his private estate, Carinhall, on April 20,  1945 and moved to a series of other residences, in a continued attempt to keep them out of the hands of the Russian army, whose art looting rivaled that of the Germans. When Goring left, he ordered Carinhall blown up. He escaped with only a few small paintings. One was Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, which Goring was convinced had been painted by Vermeer. It was proven to be a forgery.

At the Nuremberg Trials, the prosecuting counsel  presented slides of a selection of the confiscated material that had been rescued from Alt Aussee. As the slide show ended and statistics on the stolen objects were read, the counsel said, “Never in the history of the world was so great a collection assembled with so little scruple.”

Through six centuries and countless crimes, Jan van Eyck’s first masterpiece, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, one of the world’s most important paintings, has survived. In the end, the most desired artwork in history has outlasted its hunters and protectors alike, and remains a treasure cherished by humankind.

👉  Today’s close is by Tony Evans.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3).

Today when we hear that someone is “blessed,” we often think of a comfortable lifestyle, good health and a successful job.  But Jesus said that those who are “poor in spirit” are blessed.  The New Testament word for poor means a beggar who is totally dependent upon another for survival.  Therefore, to be “poor in spirit” is to be totally dependent upon another for spiritual well-being.

If we turn this around, we realize that the cursed are those who are rich in self-sufficiency.  When we can take care of ourselves and control our situations, we are living in a different kingdom.

When God puts you in a situation that you have no power to fix, He’s doing you a favor because He’s making a way for His Kingdom to come in.  If you find yourself in this place, you'’l know you’re poor in spirit as thanksgiving replaces your complaining.

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 487

July 30, 2021

Enjoy our monthly look back at this day in history feature.

The Sony Walkman went on sale for the very first time on July 1, 1979.  The Walkman didn’t represent a breakthrough in technology so much as it did a breakthrough in imagination.  Sony’s chairman, Masaru Ibuka, was a music lover who traveled frequently and had no convenient way to listen to his music on long distance flights.  After pitching the idea to his R&D department, the first Walkman was available four months later, and the first run sold out in two months.

On July 2, 1977, Hollywood composer Bill Conti scored a #1 pop hit with the single “Gonna Fly Now.”  Conti was a relative unknown in Hollywood when he began work on the theme from Rocky, but so was Sylvester Stallone.  In the years since the release of Rocky, Sylvester Stallone has continued to churn out action flicks, and Bill Conti has built a hugely successful career as a composer for film and television – a career that eventually included an Academy Award for Best Original Score for the 1983 film The Right Stuff.

On the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s last attempt at breaking the Union line ended in disastrous failure, bringing the most decisive battle of the American Civil War to an end.  Both armies, exhausted, held their positions until the night of July 4, when Lee withdrew.  The Army of the Potomac was too weak to pursue the Confederates, and Lee led his army out of the North, never to invade it again.  The Battle of Gettysburg was the turning point in the Civil War, costing the Union 23,000 killed, wounded, or missing in action. The Confederates suffered some 25,000 casualties.

In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed the independence of the United States of America from Great Britain and its king.  The declaration came 442 days after the first volleys of the American Revolution were fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts and marked an ideological expansion of the conflict that would eventually encourage France’s intervention on behalf of the Patriots.

On July 5, 1946, French designer Louis Réard unveiled a daring two-piece swimsuit at the Piscine Molitor, a popular swimming pool in Paris. Parisian showgirl Micheline Bernardini modeled the new fashion, which Réard dubbed “bikini,” inspired by a news-making U.S. atomic test that took place off the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean earlier that week.

On July 6, 1933, Major League Baseball’s first All-Star Game took place at Chicago’s Comiskey Park.  The event was designed to bolster the sport and improve its reputation during the darkest years of the Great Depression.  Originally billed as a one-time “Game of the Century,” it has now become a permanent fixture of the baseball season.

Amy Elizabeth Sisler, now Amy Herrington was born on July 7, 1974, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.  Her mom and dad were pastoring the Windber Church of God at the time, and Jennifer Darlyn Sisler gave up the title of “only child” that day.

On July 9, 1877, the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club began its first lawn tennis tournament at Wimbledon, then an outer-suburb of London.  Twenty-one amateurs showed up to compete in the Gentlemen’s Singles tournament, the only event at the first Wimbledon. The winner was to take home a trophy which cost 25-guinea ($34.22 today).  The club was originally founded to promote croquet, another lawn sport, but the growing popularity of tennis led it to incorporate tennis lawns into its facilities.

In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial began on July 10, 1925,  with John Thomas Scopes, a young high school science teacher, accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law.  Hearing of this attack on Christian fundamentalism, William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate and a fundamentalist hero, volunteered to assist the prosecution.  Soon after, the great attorney Clarence Darrow agreed to join the ACLU in the defense, and the stage was set for one of the most famous trials in U.S. history.  Scopes was found guilty.

On July 11, 1804, in one of the most famous duels in American history, Vice President Aaron Burr fatally shot his long-time political antagonist Alexander Hamilton.  Hamilton died the following day.  According to Hamilton’s “second” – his assistant and witness in the duel – Hamilton decided the duel was morally wrong and deliberately fired into the air.  Burr fired, shot Hamilton in the stomach, and the bullet lodged next to his spine.  Hamilton was taken back to New York, and he died the next afternoon.  Burr, serving as Thomas Jefferson’s vice president, returned to Washington, D.C., where he finished his term immune from prosecution.

Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops stormed and dismantled the Bastille, a royal fortress and prison that had come to symbolize the tyranny of the Bourbon monarchs on July 14, 1789.  This dramatic action signaled the beginning of the French Revolution, a decade of political turmoil and terror in which King Louis XVI was overthrown and tens of thousands of people, including the king and his wife Marie Antoinette, were executed.

On July 16, 1945, at 5:29:45 a.m., the Manhattan Project yielded explosive results as the first atom bomb was successfully tested in Alamogordo, New Mexico.  The scientists and a few dignitaries had removed themselves 10,000 yards away to observe as the first mushroom cloud of searing light stretched 40,000 feet into the air and generated the destructive power of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT.  The tower on which the bomb sat when detonated was vaporized.  The question now became on whom was the bomb to be dropped?  Germany was the original target, but the Germans had already surrendered.  The only belligerent remaining was Japan.

Disneyland, Walt Disney’s metropolis of nostalgia, fantasy and futurism, opened on July 17, 1955.  The $17 million theme park was built on 160 acres of former orange groves in Anaheim, California, and soon brought in staggering profits.  Today, Disneyland hosts more than 18 million visitors a year, who spend close to $3 billion.

On July 19, 1799, during Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign, a French soldier discovered a black basalt slab inscribed with ancient writing near the town of Rosetta, about 35 miles east of Alexandria.  The irregularly shaped stone contained fragments of passages written in three different scripts: Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Egyptian demotic.  The ancient Greek on the Rosetta Stone announced that the three scripts were all of identical meaning.  The artifact thus held the key to solving the riddle of hieroglyphics, a written language that had been “dead” for nearly 2,000 years.

At 10:56 p.m. EDT, American astronaut Neil Armstrong, 240,000 miles from Earth, spoke these words to more than a billion people listening at home: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”  Stepping off the lunar landing module Eagle, Armstrong became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon.

On July 21, 2011, NASA’s space shuttle program completed its final, and 135th, mission, when the shuttle Atlantis landed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  During the program’s 30-year history, its five orbiters – Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour – carried more than 350 people into space and flew more than 500 million miles, and shuttle crews conducted important research, serviced the Hubble Space Telescope and helped in the construction of the International Space Station.

On July 24, 1911, American archeologist Hiram Bingham got his first look at the ruins of Machu Picchu, an ancient Inca settlement in Peru that is now one of the world’s top tourist destinations.  Tucked away in the rocky countryside northwest of Cuzco, Machu Picchu is believed to have been a summer retreat for Inca leaders, whose civilization was virtually wiped out by Spanish invaders in the 16th century.

Jack London departed for the Klondike on July 25, 1897, to join the gold rush, where he would write the first of his stories of adventure in harsh Alaska.  He dropped out of the University of California at Berkeley the 1897 gold rush.  While in the Klondike, London began submitting stories to magazines.  His story The Call of the Wild made him famous.  During his 17-year career, he wrote 50 fiction and nonfiction books. 

On July 26, 1775, the U.S. postal system was established by the Second Continental Congress, with Benjamin Franklin as its first postmaster general.  During early colonial times in the 1600s, there were no post offices in the colonies, so mail was typically left at inns and taverns.  Benjamin made numerous improvements to the mail system, including setting up new, more efficient colonial routes and cutting delivery time in half between Philadelphia and New York by having the weekly mail wagon travel both day and night via relay teams. 

On July 27, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee recommended that America’s 37th president, Richard M. Nixon, be impeached as a result of the Watergate scandals.  On August 8, Nixon announced his resignation, becoming the first president in U.S. history to voluntarily leave office.  After departing the White House on August 9, Nixon was succeeded by Vice President Gerald Ford, who, in a controversial move, pardoned Nixon on September 8, 1974, making it impossible for the former president to be prosecuted for any crimes he might have committed while in office. 

A United States B-25 bomber crashed into the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945, killing 14 people.  The freak accident was caused by heavy fog.  The bomber was flying from New Bedford, Massachusetts, to LaGuardia Airport in New York City.  Air-traffic controllers instructed the plane to fly to Newark Airport instead.  This new flight plan took the plane over Manhattan; the crew was specifically warned that the Empire State Building, the tallest building in the city at the time, was not visible.  The bomber was seeking better visibility, when it came upon the Chrysler Building in midtown.  It swerved to avoid the building but the move sent it straight into the north side of the Empire State Building, near the 79th floor.

On July 30, 1956, two years after pushing to have the phrase “under God” inserted into the pledge of allegiance, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a law officially declaring “In God We Trust” to be the nation’s official motto.  At a Flag Day speech, he elaborated on his feelings about the place of religion in public life when he discussed why he had wanted to include “under God” in the pledge of allegiance: “In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource in peace and war.”

Eleven treasure-laden ships that made up the 1715 Fleet were heading to Spain from Havana on July 31, 1715, when they encountered a hurricane off Florida’s central coast.  The winds and waves smashed the ships onto reefs, claiming as many as 1,000 lives in one of colonial Spain’s biggest maritime disasters off Florida.  300 years later, treasure hunter William Bartlett found 350 coins worth $4.5 million, the most valuable find from the 1715 shipwreck site in recent decades.

👉  Today’s close is by Adrian Rogers

“Therefore, we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight” (Hebrews 12:1).

If you’re going to run a race, how do you prepare?  First, you lay the weights aside.  Notice athletes.  They run in very light clothing.  The less weight, the better.  One thing you’ll never see is someone in the Olympics running in an overcoat.  It’s not going to happen.  They get as light as they possibly can.  You have to lay aside every weight.

The Greek word weight doesn’t mean something sinful.  It just means something that burdens you, that holds you down.  There are some things that are not bad in themselves.  There’s nothing wrong with an overcoat.  You just don’t wear an overcoat when you’re running a race.  Paul said: “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

Is there something in your life that’s hindering your walk with Christ?  Something holding you back from being all you can be for the Lord Jesus Christ?  Good things become bad things when they keep you from the best things.  Whatever it is, if you want to win the race, lay it aside.

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 486

July 29, 2021

Today is National Lipstick Day, and has been around since at least 2012.  The first traces of lipstick started with the painting of lips in ancient times.  This started near the Sumerian city of Ur in Mesopotamia, where Schub-ad, a queen, colored her lips by crushing red rocks and putting them in a paste of white lead.   Soon afterward, the coloring of lips red spread to the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.  Egyptians didn’t limit their lip coloring to reds, and also came up with shades of black and purple.  Lipstick was an indicator of social rank in the Roman Empire, and both men and women wore it.

Lipstick hasn’t always been acceptable.  In Spain in the sixth century it was associated with prostitutes.  Lipstick and other makeup was condemned by the church.  Red lips were even associated with the worship of Satan, and women wearing makeup were sometimes suspected of being witches or sorcerers.  The British Parliament even tried to ban lipstick in 1650, but the bill failed to pass.

Lipstick was brought to the American continent by settlers from Western Europe, and George Washington was even known to wear it on occasion.  By the late 1890s, lipstick was being sold in the Sears Roebuck catalog.  At the time, lipstick wasn’t packaged in the same type of tubes it is today.  In 1923, James Bruce Mason Jr. of Nashville patented the first swivel-up tube, which is what is considered the modern lipstick tube.

Celebrate the day by wearing lipstick!  Wear your favorite kind or a kind you’ve never worn before.  Men, before you put some on, declaring, “Well, George Washington wore lipstick,” remember he was President of the United States.  Since you aren’t, maybe you’ll want to celebrate by kissing your favorite lipstick wearer.  Second-hand lipstick is great.

👉  I was asked to share some of the origin stories of some popular candy, so here goes.

Tootsie Roll is a chocolate-flavored taffy-like candy that has been manufactured in the United States since 1907.  The candy has qualities similar to both caramels and taffy without being exactly either confection.  It was the first penny candy to be individually wrapped in America.  According to the official company history,  founder Leo Hirchfield was an Austrian Jewish immigrant to the United States of America, son of an Austrian candy maker.  He started his own career in the candy business at a small shop or factory located in New York City during 1896.  He completed the invention of Tootsie Rolls in 1907, after patenting a technique to give them their unique texture.  He named the candy after his daughter Clara, whose nickname was “Tootsie.”  

M&M’s are multi-colored button-shaped chocolates, each of which has the letter “m” printed in lower case in white on one side, consisting of a candy shell surrounding a filling which varies depending upon the variety of M&M’s.  Forrest Mars, copied the idea for the candy in the 1930s during the Spanish Civil War when he saw soldiers eating British-made Smarties, chocolate pellets with a colored shell surrounding the outside, preventing the candies from melting.  When the company was founded it was M&M Limited.  The two “M”s Mars and Bruce Murrie, son of Hershey Chocolate’s president William F. R. Murrie, who had a 20 percent share in the product.  The arrangement allowed the candies to be made with Hershey chocolate, as Hershey had control of the rationed chocolate at the time.

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups consist of a chocolate cup filled with peanut butter, marketed by The Hershey Company.  They were created on November 15, 1928, by H. B. Reese, a former dairy farmer and shipping foreman for Milton S. Hershey.  Reese left his job with Hershey to start his own candy business.  Reese’s generates more than $2 billion in annual sales for The Hershey Company, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are number one on the list of top-selling candy brands, 62% larger than the next brand.

👉  Today is the 29th, so here are so interesting facts about # 29.

29 is the sum of three consecutive squares, 2² + 3² + 4².  Saturn requires over 29 years to orbit the Sun.  According to USA Today, 29% of married couples share a toothbrush.  The Human skull is made up of 29 bones.  January 29th is National Puzzle Day.  The odds of being born on February 29th are 1 in 1,461.  On March 29, 2004, The Republic of Ireland became the first country in the world to ban smoking in all workplaces, including bars and restaurants.  April 29 is International Dance Day.  May 29 is National Put A Pillow On Your Fridge Day.  September 29 is National Coffee Day.  October 29 is National Cat Day.

👉  Some smiles for today:

👉  Before we close today, Quarantine Blog offers some helpful household tips.  We are not “Ask Heloise,” but we know some stuff (and we can look stuff up).

Sometimes hungry critters assume that your garden or flower bed is their personal feeding ground.  Soap provides a solution to this problem.  Shred some soap in your food processor and scatter it among your plants.  The smell of the soap will keep hungry animals away, but the soap itself won’t damage your plants. Replenish your shreddings when they wash away.

Too much water can be just as damaging as too little water for the plants in your garden.  If water settles at the bottom of your pot, it can rot your roots, causing your precious plants to die.  To maintain a healthy balance of water for your plants, put old sponges at the bottom of your pot. The sponges will soak up the excess liquid that could damage your plants, while simultaneously maintaining enough moisture to keep your plants healthy.

While your toilet bowl is one obvious area of the bathroom that needs a good clean fairly regularly, your toilet tank is often forgotten about.  Over time, dirt, grime, and water stains build-up, which can impact the overall function of your toilet if not addressed.  To keep your toilet tank clean and running smoothly, you simply have to add vinegar to the water.  Vinegar helps to clear out mineral deposits and won’t damage any of the components.

💝  Today’s close is very different, and completely personal.  Two Sislers were born on July 29.  

In 1951, Kyle William Sisler, a.k.a. The Bro, was born to Melvin and Elizabeth Sisler.  People sometimes don’t believe us when we tell them that we never fought, but we never fought.  I did – occasionally – get him into trouble.  Like the time we came home late after curfew, and Dad said, “I knew I couldn’t depend on David, but Kyle, I thought I could count on you.”  Kyle looked at Dad and said, “But I can’t even drive!”  Not my fault!  He has been, and always shall be, my best friend. 

In 2014, Thomas David Sisler, was born to Michael and Ivy Sisler.  Thomas was ours for 9 days.   He was born on July 29, and died on August 7, held in the arms of his family, and received into the loving arms of his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  We grieve, but not as those who have no hope.  Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we will see Thomas again, and we will know him, and he will know us.

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 485

July 28, 2021

Yesterday was National Hamburger Day and I mentioned that the origin of the hamburger has a number of claimants.  No conclusive argument has ever ended the dispute over the invention.  An article from ABC News sums up: “One problem is that there is little written history.  Another issue is that the spread of the burger happened largely at the World’s Fair, from tiny vendors who came and went in an instant.  And it is entirely possible that more than one person came up with the idea at the same time in different parts of the country.”  Here are some of their stories.

Louis Lassen:  According to this account, the hamburger, a ground meat patty between two slices of bread, was first created in America in 1900 by Louis Lassen, a Danish immigrant, owner of Louis’ Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut.  Louis’ Lunch, a small lunch wagon in New Haven, is said to have sold the first hamburger and steak sandwich in the U.S. in 1900.  A customer ordered a quick hot meal at a time Louis was out of steaks. Taking ground beef trimmings, Louis made a patty and grilled it, putting it between two slices of toast.

From Louis’ Lunch

Charlie Nagreen:  Nagreen in 1885 sold a meatball between two slices of bread at the Seymour Fair.  The Seymour Community Historical Society of Seymour, Wisconsin, credits Nagreen, now known as “Hamburger Charlie,” with the invention.  Nagreen was fifteen when he was reportedly selling pork sandwiches at the 1885 Seymour Fair, made so customers could eat while walking.  The Historical Society explains that Nagreen named the hamburger after the Hamburg steak with which local German immigrants were familiar.

The “Hamburger Rundstück” was popular already in 1869, and is believed to be a precursor to the modern Hamburger.

Otto Kuase:  According to White Castle, Otto Kuase was the inventor of the hamburger.  In 1891, he created a beef patty cooked in butter and topped with a fried egg. German sailors would later omit the fried egg.

Oscar Weber Bilby:  The family of Oscar Weber Bilby claims the first-known hamburger on a bun was served on July 4, 1891 on Grandpa Oscar’s farm. The bun was a yeast bun.  In 1995, Governor Frank Keating proclaimed that the first true hamburger on a bun was created and consumed there in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1891, calling Tulsa, “The Real Birthplace of the Hamburger.”

Hamburg steak has been known as “Frikadelle” in Germany since the 17th century.

Frank and Charles Menches: The brothers claim to have sold a ground beef sandwich at the Erie County Fair in 1885 in Hamburg, New York.  During the fair, they ran out of pork sausage for their sandwiches and substituted beef.  This story notes that the name of the hamburger comes from Hamburg, New York not Hamburg, Germany.

A steak burger with cheese and onion rings

By the time you’re done reading this sentence, McDonald’s has probably sold about 2,250 burgers.  Worldwide, McDonald’s sells about $50 million worth of burgers a day, which is about 750 burgers sold a second.

The Big Mac

No matter who made it first, Americans eat an estimated 50 billion burgers (and 20 billion dogs per year).  That’s about 156 burgers and 70 dogs per person (I ate 2 dogs at the ballyard last night, and will again tonight – that’s the beauty of it).  156 burgers equals about one every other day.  Someone is eating a lot of hamburgers!

👉  Some comic strips from Pickles:

👉  Today’s close is by Neil Anderson.

“My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19 ).

Adam and Eve were created spiritually alive. The attributes they experienced before the Fall became glaring needs after the Fall.

Acceptance was replaced by rejection, therefore we have a need to belong. Ever since Adam and Eve’s sin alienated them from God and disrupted human relationships, we have experienced a deep need to belong. You will never understand the power of peer pressure in our culture until you understand the legitimate need to belong and the fear of rejection we all share.

Innocence was replaced by guilt and shame, therefore we have a need for a sense of worth. Many psychologists agree that people today generally suffer from a poor sense of worth. Your worth as a person is not an issue of giftedness, talent, intelligence or beauty. Your sense of personal worth comes from knowing who you are: a child of God.

Authority to rule over creation was replaced by weakness and helplessness, therefore we have a need for strength and self-control. There is no one more insecure than a controller. The fruit of the Spirit is self-control, not spouse- or child-control.

Only Christ can meet the most basic needs of humanity such as life, identity, acceptance, security and significance. These needs are eternal, unlike our physical needs. If we present Christ as meeting only our physical needs, we will have stiff competition from every humanistic organization.

Prayer: Father God, I reject any counterfeit fulfillment Satan offers me. I will live by every word that proceeds from Your mouth. Amen.

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