March 23, 2022
It is warming up for spring and vacation time is not so far away. While you are thinking of places to visit and selfies to make, QB presents a few places you don’t want to visit, and, in fact, where you will not be allowed to venture inside – maybe only a snapshot of the “Do Not Enter” or “No Trespassing” sign will feature in your holiday memories.
First up is Morgan Island, South Carolina, or, as some would say, Monkey Island. If this sounds like something out of a dream for animal lovers, then think again. The piece of land is part of South Carolina – and forbidden to visitors. Morgan Island is home to around 4,000 wild rhesus monkeys. 1,300 of the animals initially arrived from Puerto Rico for biomedical research, and their population has grown ever since. Only boat rides around the island are allowed in order to avoid the monkeys catching human diseases or curious tourists getting hurt by the wild animals.
Next is Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Norway. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway is prohibited to visitors and is located far away from civilization. “It is away from the places on earth where you have war and terror,” explained property manager Bente Naeverdal. “It is situated in a safe place.” And that’s no coincidence. Nicknamed the Doomsday Vault, this closed-off site holds more than 930,000 varieties of food crops in the form of seeds and is crucial for the future of humankind. The seeds are stored there to be used to bring back critical crops in case of disaster – natural or human induced.
On a remote island, 700 miles from the North Pole, a concrete wedge protrudes from the snow on the side of a mountain. Behind stainless steel doors, a reinforced-concrete tunnel extends 400 feet into the bedrock. And behind another set of doors and two airlocks are three vaults, each 90 feet long, 20 feet tall, and 30 feet wide. These vaults store mankind’s greatest treasure – two billion seeds.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, is the world’s largest and safest seed-storage facility, an insurance policy against possible climate change, or a longer-term threat.
If formerly rich agricultural land becomes too arid for farming and previously cold, damp areas become more suitable for agriculture, seeds with new characteristics will be needed.
A global calamity might make it necessary to rebuild human civilization, starting with its deepest foundation: agriculture. Some of the seeds being stored at Svalbard are capable of surviving for millennia, even if its refrigeration systems fail. Wheat seeds – a crop that started it all – can last 1,700 years.
Details of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault can be seen in this video I made for one of my cruise talks, “History: It’s What’s For Dinner.”
👉 A bit of philosophy from Pearls Before Swine and the “Wise Ass on the Hill.”
👉 QB 685 reported on Brooklyn-based creamery Van Leeuwen created Kraft Mac & Cheese Ice Cream. The initial 6,000 pints sold out in an hour, and the ice cream was lauded with praise as a genuinely enjoyable dessert. QB also reported that shipments M&C and seven other flavors were being delivered exclusively to Walmart.
Our favorite Walmart manager (front row, first from the left) sent pictures Monday of two of the flavors at the Grovetown Neighborhood Market and brought them to 233 Woodland Drive for sampling at Monday’s Family Night gathering.
The results are in (and it was really hard to get this snoopy crowd to taste the samples):
👍 Generally speaking we liked the Mac and Cheese. It was creamy and smooth, but none of us thought it really tasted like M&C.
👎 “Nothing extra,” as my Dad would have said. This tasted nothing like pizza, and if I’m going to eat pizza, consume extra points and blow up my Weight Watchers day, I’m going to eat real pizza.
Bottom line. I would not again pay $5 for a pint of strange flavor ice cream from Van Leeuwen creamery. If you want me to try it, it’s your turn to buy.
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🛐 Today’s close is from New Morning Mercies, by Paul David Tripp.
Admit it, we’re all still a bit of a mess; that’s why we need God’s grace today as much as we needed it the first day we believed. You and I need to say it to ourselves again and again. We need to look in the mirror and make the confession as part of our morning routine. Here’s what we all need to say: “I am not a grace graduate.”
It is so tempting to mount arguments for your own righteousness:
• “That really wasn’t lust. I’m just a man who enjoys beauty.”
• “That really wasn’t gossip. It was just a very detailed, very personal prayer request.”
• “I wasn’t angry at my kids. I was just acting as one of God’s prophets. ‘Thus says the Lord ...’”
• “I’m not on an ugly quest for personal power. I’m just exercising God-given leadership gifts.”
• “I’m not cold-hearted and stingy. I’m just trying to be a good steward of what God has given me.”
• “I wasn’t being proud. I just thought someone needed to take control of the conversation.”
• “It wasn’t really a lie. It was just a different way of recounting the facts.”
We all tend to want to think we are more righteous than we actually are. We don’t like to think of ourselves as still desperately in need of God’s rescuing grace. And we surely don’t want to face the fact that what we need to be rescued from is us! When you argue for your own righteousness, working hard to deny the empirical evidence of your sin, then you fail to seek the amazing grace that is your only hope. Grace is only ever attractive to sinners.
The riches of God’s goodness are only ever sought by the poor. The spiritual healing of the Great Physician is only ever esteemed by those who acknowledge that they still suffer from the spiritual disease of sin. It’s a tragedy when we praise God for his grace on Sunday and deny our need for that grace the rest of the week.
Face the fact today that you’ll never outgrow your need for grace, no matter how much you learn and how much you mature, until you are on the other side and your struggle is over because sin is no more. The way to begin to celebrate the grace that God so freely gives you every day is by admitting how much you need it.
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