QUARANTINE BLOG # 696

April 4, 2022

The sermon today from the Crawfordville Pulpit is “God's Presence.”  The text is Exodus 33:7-23.

👉  Way back in the before time, when the QB was just in double digits, I shared a couple of passages from my favorite detective series, Commissario Guido Brunetti (in Venice – and written by Donna Leon).  Here we are 4 away from 700, so it is time and past time to look in on the Commissario, thinking about his family. Paola, his wife, is finishing cooking lunch, and they waiting for their children Raffi and Chiara to come to the table.  From Drawing Conclusions:

“How life plays tricks with us, he thought, as he folded the napkins and set them beside the plates.  When Raffi was just starting to sit at the table and eat with them, dropping as much on the table or the floor as he got into his mouth, sipping and spilling and never quite sure what to do with his fork, Brunetti had viewed his behavior not as charming, but as a continual distraction from his own meal.  Yet here he was, years later, hoping that boy – no fully competent in the use of his fork – would find the time to eat with them and not take himself off to a friend’s house ... It simply filled Brunetti’s heart to have them there and to be able to see and hear them, knowing they were safe and warm and well fed” [emphasis mine].

As the father of 4, I say, “Amen!”

👉  Here is Monday’s pun.  Blame Matt.  He sent it to me.

👉  With family members on their way to Disney World for spring break, let’s begin today’s look at forbidden places with one that is inside several Disney properties – Disney Club 33, a private dining club located in various theme parks.

The first one, Club 33, opened in 1967 inside California’s Disneyland Park. Today, Club 33 has locations in Tokyo Disneyland, Shanghai Disneyland, and Walt Disney World.  Once open only to by-invite members, now anyone can join – if you pay the $33,000 initiation fee plus $15,000 a year.  That’s a lot of money for a meal with the Mouse.

This next place is one that has been forbidden but is now accessible to visitors if you have a tour guide, but even if Vladimir Putin wasn’t perpetrating war crimes in Ukraine, I’d pass on it anyway.

The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the site of the nuclear reactor disaster of 1986, is possibly one of the most famous forbidden places in the world.  But with radiation levels declining, some parts of the area are now open to visitors.  “You just don’t know how much radiation is still there and whether you are in danger.  I physically felt the radioactivity,” detailed German photographer Rüdiger Lubricht after visiting the site.  “There was this peculiar iron taste in my mouth, and my tongue felt numb.  I would never have thought tasting radioactivity were possible.”

👉  In recent days Brian has sent me two new collections of “goodies” for the Blog.  One is an accumulation of funny newspaper headlines.  The other is as assemblage of unusual names British entrepreneurs have given their stores.

First up, newspaper headlines:

And some places to shop:

👉  Speaking of conglomeration, I subscribe to two comic strip services, and when one tickles my funny bone, it goes into a folder.  Here are two from yesterday.  Bonnie told me that the first one was written for me.  I told her that the second one was written for her.  And then a few that are just for laughs.

👉  Jennifer sent me this one.  Amen!

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

You and I don’t live by instinct. We are value-oriented, goal-oriented, purpose- oriented, and importance-oriented human beings. We are constantly rating everything in our lives. We all have things that are important to us and things that are not, things that mean a lot to us and things that mean very little. We willingly make sacrifices for one thing and refuse to sacrifice for another. We grieve the loss of one thing and celebrate the loss of another. We love what another person hates and we see as a treasure something that another person thinks is trash. We look at something and see beauty while the person next to us sees no beauty in it at all. Some things are so important to us that they shape the decisions that we make and the actions that we take. Some things command the allegiance of our hearts, while other things barely get our attention.

In the center of this value system is our definition of success. No rational human being wants to be a failure. No one wants to think that he has wasted his life. No one wants to think that in the end she will look back and realize that she invested in things that just didn’t matter. Everyone wants to think that his or her life is or will be successful. But what is success? Is it judged by the size of your house, the prominence of your friends, the success of your career, the power of your position, the size of the pile of your possessions, the perfection of your physical beauty, the breadth of your knowledge, or the list of your achievements? The problem with all of these things is that they quickly pass away, and because they do, if you have lived for these things, you will eventually come up empty.

Contrast that view of success with the success of God’s work in and through you. God offers you things of supreme value (his forgiveness, his presence, welcome into his kingdom, a clean conscience, and a pure heart). These things will never pass away. They are the eternally valuable gifts of divine grace. This leaves you with this question: “What do I really want in life: the success of God’s agenda of grace or the fulfillment of my catalog of desires?” At the end of the day, what do you long for: for God’s grace to do its work or for more of the stuff that this physical created world has to offer? Be honest. What kind of success are you hooking your heart to and how is it shaping the decisions you make and the actions you take?

You’re going to hunger for some success in life. May you hunger for the complete success of the gospel in your heart.

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