QUARANTINE BLOG # 616

December 6, 2021

Today’s sermon from the Crawfordville Pulpit is an Advent message, “Hope: True Light in a Time of Darkness”  The Bible reading is Matthew 24:36-44.

👉  Matt sent me this one: To all parents when they are asked, “Is Santa real?”

Son: “Dad, I think I’m old enough now. Is there a Santa Claus?”

Dad: “Ok, I agree that your old enough. But before I tell you, I have a question for you.  You see, the ‘truth’ is a dangerous gift.  Once you know something, you can’t unknow it.  Once you know the truth about Santa Claus, you will never again understand and relate to him as you do now.  So my question is: Are you sure you want to know?”

Brief pause ... Son: “Yes, I want to know” 

Dad: “Ok, I’ll tell you: Yes there is a Santa Claus” 

Son: “Really?” 

Dad: “Yes, really, but he’s not an old man with a beard in a red suit.  That’s just what we tell kids.  You see, kids are too young to understand the true nature of Santa Claus, so we explain it to them in a way that they can understand.  The truth about Santa Claus is that he’s not a person at all; he’s an idea.  Think of all those presents Santa gave you over the years.  I actually bought those myself.  I watched you open them.  And did it bother me that you didn’t thank me?  Of course not!  In fact it gave me great pleasure.  You see, Santa Claus is THE IDEA OF GIVING FOR THE SAKE OF GIVING, without thought of thanks or acknowledgment.  

“When I saw that woman collapse on the subway last week and called for help, I knew that she’d never know that it was me that summoned the ambulance.  I was being Santa Claus when I did that.” 

Son: “Oh.” 

Dad: “So now that you know, you’re part of it.  You have to be Santa Claus too now.  That means you can never tell a young kid the secret, and you have to help us select Santa presents for them, and most important, you have to look for opportunities to help people.  Got it?”

Help each other this Christmas.  And be kind!

👉  In QB 613 I told you about the migrating crabs in Australia.  The original piece was shared with me by Bonnie, and when she read the post, she reminded me of a great photograph which I left out.  The picture below shows a bridge which has been built over the highway so that the crabs can cross without being squashed, and so that they pose no threat to motorists.  Incredible.

👉   A request for Santa:

👉   Senior t-shirts:

👉  In honor of the Steelers’ win yesterday over Baltimore, here are two pieces from our Black and Gold departments.  They have nothing to do with football, but can you imagine you are the head coach, your team just scored a touchdown with 12 seconds left in the game to bring the score to 20-19.  You take the chip shot, kick the extra point, go into overtime and take your chances.  But because you have big head and you’d really like to stick your finger in the eye of your division rival, you go for 2 points and the win.  Your receiver drops the ball.  You lose.  Good guys win!

👉  Speaking of football, here are three more team nicknames revealed.

The Buffalo Bills nickname was suggested as part of a fan contest in 1947 to rename Buffalo’s All-America Football Conference team, which was originally known as the Bisons. The Bills nickname referenced frontiersman Buffalo Bill Cody and was selected over Bullets, Nickels, and Blue Devils.

The Carolina Panthers team president Mark Richardson, the son of team owner Jerry Richardson, chose the Panthers nickname because “it’s a name our family thought signifies what we thought a team should be – powerful, sleek and strong.”

In 1921, the Decatur Staleys, a charter member of the American Professional Football Association, moved to Chicago and kept their nickname, a nod to the team’s sponsor, the Staley Starch Company. When star player George Halas purchased the team the following year, he decided to change the nickname. Chicago played its home games at Wrigley Field, home of baseball’s Cubs, and Halas opted to stick with the ursine theme, hence the Chicago Bears.

👉  Until Isaac Watts came along, most of the singing in British churches was from the Psalms of David.  As a young man in Southampton, Isaac had become dissatisfied with the quality of singing, and he keenly felt the limitations of being able to only sing these psalms.  So he “invented” the English hymn.

He did not, however, neglect the Psalms.  In 1719, he published a unique hymnal – one in which he had translated, interpreted, and paraphrased the Old Testament Psalms through the eyes of New Testament faith.  He called it simply The Psalm of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament.  Taking various psalms, he studied them from the perspective of Jesus and the New Testament, and then formed them into verses for singing.

“I have rather expressed myself as I may suppose David would have done if he lived in the days of Christianity,” Watts explained.

“Joy to the World!” is Isaac Watts’s interpretation of Psalm 98, which says, “Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth.”  As he read Psalm 98, Isaac pondered the real reason for shouting joyfully to the Lord – the Messiah has come to redeem us.  The result was a timeless carol that has brightened our Christmases for nearly three hundred years.

Enjoy Celtic Woman singing “Joy to the World.”

-30-