QUARANTINE BLOG # 623

December 13, 2021

I preached “All is Calm? All is Bright??” at St. Mark UMC on the first Sunday of Advent.  The text is Luke 1:46-53.

👉  If you are going to Europe to watch the Tour de France, do not hold up a sign to say “Hello” to the folks back home.  On Friday, a French court convicted and fined a Tour de France spectator whose cardboard sign caused a pileup of dozens of cyclists during the world-famous competition.  The spectator, a 31-year-old woman who has not been publicly identified, was found guilty of reckless endangerment and involuntarily causing injuries.  The woman, who stepped onto the road during the race and had her back to the cyclists, was fined 1,200 euros, or about $1,350 –  far less than the maximum penalties she was facing.

The woman was facing television cameras and holding a piece of cardboard bearing an affectionate message for her grandparents –  longtime fans of the Tour who were watching from Paris – when a German rider, Tony Martin, hit the sign.  Mr. Martin fell to the ground, setting off a cascade of collisions in the middle of the main cluster of cyclists zooming by. Several injured riders were forced to drop out of the competition.

👉  A few Clever sayings:

No matter how hard you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.

You know that tingly little feeling you get when you really like someone?  That’s common sense leaving your body.

I didn’t make it to the gym today.  That makes five years in a row.

I decided to change calling the bathroom the John and renamed it the Jim.  I feel so much better saying I went to the Jim this morning.

**  Here’s Lockhorns for the handy man:

👉  And it looks like it’s a bad day at school for Peppermint Patty:

👉  And a bad day for Frosty the Snowman:

👉  On Saturday, New Shepard launched into space for its 19th mission, and among the 6 crew was Laura Shepard Churchley, who duplicated her father, Alan Shepard’s original Mercury “Freedom 7” launch, 60 years earlier.  And how far we’ve come!

New Shepard 19 and the "Original 6"

Freedom 7 – May 5, 1961

There was barely room in Freedom 7 for Alan Shepard, while six new astronauts flew on NS-19.

In a bit of a downer, Laura Shepard Churchley and those who flew with her, will be the last people who fly a suborbital flight to be officially called an astronaut and receive NASA’s astronaut pin.  To qualify as commercial astronauts, space-goers must travel 50 miles above the Earth’s surface, which both Jeff Bezos’ New Shepard and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic launches have accomplished.  But altitude aside, the agency says would-be astronauts now must have “demonstrate activities during flight that are essential to public safety, or contribute to human space flight safety.”  Just being strapped in and riding up and down no longer qualifies.  But if Jeff wants to give me a free seat, I’m in!

👉  If you are a member of AARP, you’ve already seen this selection of “Witty & Wise.”  Another name for them is “puns.”  “Outrageous puns.”  Enjoy.

Fran: Sarcasm will get you nowhere.

Stan: Well, it got me to the Sarcasm Championships last year.

Fran: Really?

Stan: No.

Frosty: I can’t believe it’s January already.

Holly: Time waits for snowman.

Mary: What’s the deal with your uncle?  He’s running around shouting, “Deep hole full of water!”

Jerry: He’s odd, but he means well.

👉  On Thursday the QB turntable was playing some rain songs.  Amy mentioned another one, “I Love a Rainy Night,” by Eddie Rabbitt.  ILARN was 12 years in the making.  Rabbitt had a collection of old tapes he kept in the basement of his home.  While rummaging through the tapes one day in 1980, he heard a fragment of a song he had recorded one rainy night in the late 1960s.  “It brought back the memory of sitting in a small apartment, staring out the window at one o’clock in the morning, watching the rain come down,” he said, and sang into his tape recorder, “I love a rainy night, I love a rainy night.”  Upon rediscovery of the old lyrics, Rabbitt completed the song, recorded it, and it went to Number One on February 28, 1980.

👉  John Montgomery had a burden for world evangelism. He was the only Moravian pastor in Scotland, but he and his wife felt God’s call to be missionaries to the island of Barbados. Tearfully placing their six-year-old son, James, in a Moravian settlement in Bracehill near Ballymena, County Antrim, Ireland, they sailed away. James never saw them again, for they each died in Barbados.

Left with nothing, James was enrolled in a school in England. When he didn’t do well, he was apprenticed by school authorities to a baker. Baking wasn’t for James. He ran away and spent his teenage years drifting from pillar to post. He eventually settled down in Sheffield, England.

In his early twenties, James began working for the local newspaper, the Sheffield Register, and there he found his niche. He loved writing. It was a politically active newspaper, and when its owner had to suddenly flee the country to avoid persecution and imprisonment, James purchased the paper and renamed it the Sheffield Iris. His editorials, too, proved unpopular with local officials. On two separate occasions he was thrown into jail. But he emerged from prison a celebrity, and he used his newly acquired fame to promote his favorite issues.

Chief among them was the gospel. Despite the loss of his parents, James Montgomery remained devoted to Christ and to the Scriptures. As the years passed, he became the most respected leader in Sheffield, and his writings were eagerly read by its citizens. Early on Christmas Eve, 1816, James, forty- five, opened his Bible to Luke 2, and was deeply impressed by verse 13. Pondering the story of the heralding angels, he took his pen and started writing. By the end of the day, his new Christmas poem was being read in the pages of his newspaper. It was later set to music and was first sung on Christmas Day, 1821, in a Moravian Church in England: “Angels, from the Realms of Glory.”

His parents would have been proud.

Here is Boyce Worship Collective singing “Angels, from the Realms of Glory,” and worshipping Christ, the newborn King.

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