QUARANTINE BLOG # 612

December 2, 2021

Christmas is a great time to invite someone to church, according to a recent study by Nashville-based Lifeway Research. In a recent poll of 1,000 Americans, Lifeway Research found six out of 10 Americans typically attend church at Christmastime. But among those who don’t attend church at Christmastime, a majority (57 percent) say they would likely attend if someone they knew invited them.

👉  The headline of this story was “Thanksgiving Surprise,” but it is too good a story to pass over just because Thanksgiving was last Thursday (and the online report was Monday, so they were late anyway).

More than 20 years ago, Mike Moffitt started getting a lot of calls from a Florida phone number. The older woman on the other end of the line was trying to reach her daughter, who lives in Maryland. But she kept dialing area code 401, instead of 410 –  and getting Moffitt instead. Finally, Mike said, “Hey, what’s your name?” and they started talking. And we started hitting it off.”

As time went on, Gladys became a steady fixture in Moffitt’s life. But the two had never met – until last Wednesday when he showed up to surprise her with flowers.

Gladys started calling him to ask how his family was doing, or what the weather in Rhode Island was like. “I started doing the same,” he said. Their conversations never got too deep, and usually only lasted a few minutes. But every so often, either “Mike from Rhode Island” or “Gladys from Florida” would call to check in with the other.

When Gladys’ husband died, her son called Moffitt to let him know. “She told him, ‘Call Mike from Rhode Island,’” Moffitt said. He sent flowers, and realized that their friendship had gotten serious.

This year, the family decided to spend Thanksgiving in Florida. While driving around on Wednesday, he realized that he was only 2.3 miles from Gladys’ house.

“I just literally knocked on the door,” he said. “I just said, ‘Hey, I’m Mike from Rhode Island,’” Moffitt said. “Her eyes lit up.” The first words out of her mouth were, “I’m blessed.” Now that they’ve met in person, Moffitt hopes to continue to get to know Gladys better, and play an even bigger role in her life. “She’s just a great person,” he said.

👉  It’s generally viewed that optimism is a positive trait, but as this photo clearly shows, some people take it a little too far. 

That set of box springs is not going to fit into that car. Not even in a million years. The woman must suffer from terrible spatial awareness to have even entertained the idea. You’ve got to love her optimism though.

👉  This distorted railroad line is the result of the Canterbury New Zealand Earthquake. 

The 7.1-magnitude earthquake twisted the railroad tracks. It now looks like a roller-coaster track at an amusement park, except it’s still on the ground. The twisting was caused by concentrated stress.

👉  Yesterday we looked at the reason most old barns are painted red, and as promised, here is some more old barn stuff, specifically “barn advertising.”

Advertisers take advantage of the barns’ prominence in rural landscapes, paying their owners for the right to paint and maintain logos and slogans on them. Once a common form of billboard advertising during the early-to mid-20th century, barn advertisements have faded into obscurity, as many of these rural ghost signs fall into disrepair, along with the structures that bear them.

The Bloch Brothers Tobacco Company is credited with popularizing the medium. The company began advertising their products on the sides of buildings in 1890. By 1925, they had moved to advertising on Mail Pouch Barns. At the program’s height in the early 1960s, some 20,000 barns in 22 states displayed Mail Pouch advertising. 

In the early 1940s, Clark Byers painted barns and their roofs for Rock City near Chattanooga, Tennessee, often with messages promising travelers the chance to see seven states from atop Lookout Mountain. During the Civil War Battle of Lookout Mountain, both a Union soldier and a Confederate soldier claimed that seven states could be seen from the summit of the mountain. 

Opened in May 1932, the attraction gained prominence after owners Garnet and Frieda Carter hired Byers to paint “See Rock City” barn advertisements.

View of The High Falls on Lookout Mountain

The Grand Corridor

Mushroom Rock

In 1965, Congress passed the Highway Beautification Act, which regulated and in some cases removed billboards from the sides of federally funded highways. Barn advertisements were affected by this legislation, leading owners to paint over them, until public outcry led to a 1974 amendment that specifically exempted them as “folk heritage barns.” 

If you’ve never driven through an area where there was barn art, but you’ve driven on Interstate 95, you’ve seen another type of highway art:

Or maybe you’ve driven along Route 16 or Interstate 90 in South Dakota:

👉  Yesterday I told you I was going to share Advent meditations from author Asheritah Ciuciu.  Then, looking for something else (isn’t that always the way) I found a book I bought last year, and misplaced – isn’t that always the way – to use this year at Advent.  So if you will allow me – and since I am writing the blog, you have to 😁 – from now through Christmas Eve we will be reading from Celebrating Abundance, by Walter Brueggemann.

“And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish” (Mark 6:42-43).

In Mark 6, Jesus does a transformative miracle to exhibit the saving power of God that is present in and through his life. It is the narrative of feeding the 5,000. Mark tells us that huge crowds followed Jesus and when he saw the crowds he reacted in kindness to them. He saw their need, and he was moved by compassion for them. First he taught them the good news of God’s generous love. And then he fed them – all 5,000 of them.

The disciples didn’t understand, and thought he couldn’t feed such a big crowd. So Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish – one person’s lunch. He took what was there.  He turned ordinary food into a sacramental sign of God’s massive goodness and generosity. Mark reports:

“Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people” (Mark 6:41).

His prayer consists in the four big verbs of Holy Communion: “He took, he blessed, he broke, he gave.” Jesus takes the ordinary stuff of life in all its scarcity – two fish and five loaves – and transforms them into God’s self-giving generosity. The outcome was that “all ate and were filled” (v. 42). But that is not all: there were twelve baskets left over, one for each of the doubting disciples.

The news that is proclaimed in Christ’s coming, about which we are reminded at every Communion service is, Jesus has turned the world into abundance. God is the gift who keeps on giving, and the people around Jesus are empowered to receive abundance and therefore to act generously.

Every day, all day: it’s still true! “He takes, he blesses, he breaks, he gives.” And we are astonished about the surplus. It is all there for those with eyes to see, with ears to hear, and with hearts to remember. We are recipients of enough and enough and more than enough, enough and enough and more than enough to share. And to be glad in this Giver who keeps on giving . . . endlessly.

God whose giving knows no end, make us glad recipients of your generosity. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to remember your abundance, that we might share it with the world. Amen.

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