QUARANTINE BLOG # 644

January 3, 2022

Today’s sermon, “Back to Normal?” was preached yesterday morning at Crawfordville UMC.  The text is John 1-3, 14.

👉  A Sunday school teacher said to her children, “We have been learning how powerful kings and queens were in Bible times. But, there is a Higher Power. Can anybody tell me what it is?”  One child blurted out, “Aces!”  I love that kid!

👉  Speaking of aces, one of my favorite songs is “The Gambler,” by Kenny Rogers.  Don Schlitz wrote this song in August 1976, and several artists recorded it, including Johnny Cash, but it never took off until Rogers made the song a mainstream success.  His version was a No. 1 country hit and made its way to the pop charts.  It was released in November 1978 as the title track from his album “The Gambler” which won him the Grammy award for best male country vocal performance in 1980.

👉  A couple of my favorite comic strips, “Garfield,” and “Pearls Before Swine,” offer some thoughts on Monday.  

Pearls is particularly good on this Monday when Steeler fans will watch Monday Night Football and see Ben Roethlisberger’s last home game for the Pittsburgh Steelers.  The Steelers cannot win their division, and their hope for a wild card is slim and none, with Slim packing his suitcase.  But it sure would be nice to see # 7 get Super Bowl win # 7!

👉  Speaking of football, according to the Vikings’ website, Bert Rose, Minnesota’s general manager when it joined the NFL in 1961, recommended the nickname to the team’s Board of Directors because “it represented both an aggressive person with the will to win and the Nordic tradition in the northern Midwest.”  The expansion franchise also became the first pro sports team to feature its home state, rather than a city, in the team name.

👉  Several blogs ago I featured a comic which warned people not to get close to the zoo animals because they might fall in, the animals would eat them, and that would make the animals sick.  Well, a worker at the Naples Zoo in Florida should have read that.  He reached into the animal’s enclosure, it seems to pet the tiger, and the tiger bit the man’s arm.  Because of that idiotic move, the tiger was shot and killed.

👉  A couple of Book Toons:

👉  With the Omicron variant kicking butts and taking names, and with only 51% of Americans fully vaccinated, a study out of South Africa says that two shots of Johnson & Johnson vaccine reduced the risk of hospitalization from Omicron by about 85 percent.

👉  As the new year begins its third day, and you are reading QB 644, it may interest you to know that since QB 1 – on March 31, 2020 – these daily ramblings have totaled more than  771,000 words, or more than 30% larger than Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace.  

On September 20, 1998, Cal Ripken, Jr., walked into the office of Baltimore Orioles manager Ray Miller, and said, “The time is right.”  Since telling you in QB 640 about Norbert Pearlroth, Robert Ripley’s research man who spent 52 years of his life in the New York Public Library, working ten hours a day and six days a week in order to find unusual facts for Ripley, I’ve decided Cal was right.  I have been considering a change in QB for about 2 months now, and effective today, the blog will be coming to you Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.  

🛐  Today’s close is from New Morning Mercies, by Paul David Tripp.

Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand (Psalm 95:6–7).

You might not know it, you might not be aware as you’re doing it, but you are always measuring your potential. The toddler who is just beginning to walk stands with wobbling legs and holds on to his mommy’s knee as he measures his potential to walk across the room to daddy without falling on his face. The teenager walks up to his first job with clammy hands and a rapidly beating heart as he measures his potential to get through the day. The bride has a nauseous stomach two hours before her wedding as she measures her potential to live successfully in the most important human relationship she will ever have. The senior citizen sits nervously in her doctor’s office as she measures her potential to deal with the physical hardships of old age. The widower stands at the edge of his wife’s grave with tears in his eyes as he measures his potential to live without her. We are all constantly measuring our potential to do what is before us.

Now, the typical way to measure your potential is to compare the size of the problem to your natural gifts and your track record so far. No, it’s not irrational to measure your potential this way, but for the believer in Christ Jesus, it simply isn’t enough. By grace, God doesn’t leave you on your own. He doesn’t leave you with the tool box of your own strength, righteousness, and wisdom. No, he invades you with his presence, power, wisdom, and grace. Paul captures this reality with these life-altering words: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). He’s obviously not saying that he’s dead. He’s reminding you and me of a very significant spiritual reality: if you are God’s child, the life force that energizes your thoughts, desires, words, and actions is no longer you; it’s Christ! God didn’t just forgive you. No, he has come to live inside of you so you will have the power to desire and do what he calls you to do. And not only does he live inside of you, he rules all the situations, locations, and relationships that are out of your control. He is not only your indwelling Savior, he is your reigning King. He does in you what you could not do for yourself and he does outside of you what you have no power or authority to do. And he does all of this with your redemptive good in mind. Since this is true, why would you give way to fear?

Today you’ll face things bigger than you, but you needn’t be afraid because none is bigger than the One who rules them all for your sake.

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