The Covid vaccine came just in time for Thanksgiving. Now the end of Covid is coming just in time for Easter. Hallelujah!
As I have aged, I have gotten better at finding mystical patterns to life that bolster my faith.
In Mississippi, Covid is on its last legs. Cases are a tenth of the January peak. Same with deaths, most of which happened in mid winter but are still trickling into the Department of Health’s statistics office.
It’s a similar picture nationwide,although the decline is not quite as dramatic as Mississippi.
Mississippi is leading the nation in vaccine implementation. The Mississippi National Guard has done a phenomenal job, along with all the hospitals and clinics. Good work team! Kudos all around.
Let’s hope this isn’t a sucker punch like last July when Covid seemed to have peaked but came roaring back. This virus is unpredictable.
But this time we have the vaccines. I believe this is the end of the epidemic.
We can’t give the vaccine credit for the decline since most of the drop came well before the vaccine was administered. Herd immunity kicked in. The vaccine is the perfect backup.
Over 300,000 Mississippians have had confirmed infections. The CDC says there are five unreported infections for every reported infection. That’s half the population in the state. Herd immunity kicked in far sooner than the experts predicted.
So far, it hasn’t been nearly as bad as the Spanish Flu, which killed one out of 152 Americans. Covid has killed one out of 588. Most of the Spanish Flu deaths were young people in their twenties. Covid has killed the elderly. If you consider life years lost, the Spanish Flu was 73 times worse. We should be thankful for that.
We should be thankful for the amazingly rapid development of new vaccines. This will be a blessing to mankind far beyond Covid. Mankind has made a huge advance in our epoch battle against viruses.
I’m getting my shot this week, Pfizer at the Medical Mall. I had Covid in November, a very mild case, but I’m not taking any chances. I think you’re nuts not to get the vaccine. Plus the tiny vaccine microchip the government inserts in your brain can pick up free music! (Just kidding.)
I love my Easter column. I get to play preacher. My apologies to the hundreds of awesome pastors in Jackson for poaching on your professional turf. I’ll do my best to get it right.
It is ironic that Americans can believe all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories but when it comes to believing Christ rose from the dead, too many Americans turn rational.
Human rationalism can be useful. No point in sticking your hand in an open flame. But rationalism has its limits. For instance, our eyes only see .0035 percent of the electromagnetic spectrum. Not seeing should not be not believing.
Remember the popular movie The Matrix? The idea was that human reality was an artificial simulation created by super intelligent robots. The movie caught the imagination of the nation and made a half billion at the box office.
Here’s a tip: We are indeed in a simulation. It’s called “Reality.” And it is designed by God. Since it’s his simulation, he can make reality do anything he wants. He can stop the sun. He can part the Red Sea. He can cause ten plagues in Egypt start and stop on a dime.
He can even raise people from the dead. God is sovereign and can do whatever he wants to. Fortunately, he loves us and loves goodness. Scratch that, God is goodness, light, justice. Every good notion harbored by man comes from the spirit of God.
Many scientists hate this fact. It threatens them. It takes away their power. It hurts their egos. Just like Adam and Eve wanted to know what God knows. They ate the apple and created sin and death. Bad choice.
Deuteronomy 29:29 “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”
Who doesn’t want to know the secret? Who doesn’t want to be God? That’s why we’re all miserable sinners. Happiness comes from properly understanding your place in the universal schemes of things. We are higher than the animals, lower than the angels and most definitely not God.
I’m not anti science at all. In fact, I love keeping up with the cutting edge of theoretical physics. Science merely reveals to humans how God works. It can never disprove God. That is impossible. And God will only reveal what he wants to reveal.
That’s why I love quantum physics. It so perfectly illustrates the limits of man and the sovereignty of God. If this statement puzzles you, go to You Tube and search for “quantum eraser delayed choice experiment.” It will blow you mind and give you all the scientific proof of God’s existence you’ll ever need.
My faith made the past year much easier for me. Every hair on my head is numbered. All my worrying won’t add one second to my life. Death is the start of something far, far better than life.
My faith is the most precious thing in my life. How did I get it? I asked God for it. One day, long ago, walking along the beach, I asked God why he made my life so rich and easy. Then I said, you can take all these things away and give me the only thing I really care about — rock solid faith. The next day I crashed my half-million-dollar airplane.
Since that moment, my life has been full of struggle, Struggle creates endurance, endurance creates character. Character creates faith. God answered my prayer and for that I am eternally grateful.
According to a poll, the number one reason people don’t believe in Christianity is it doesn’t work. God doesn’t answer prayers, non-believers claim. I’m reminded of the line in the Janis Joplin song, “Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz. My friends all have Porsches, I must make amends.
No, God only answers the prayers that are in his will. God has much higher goals for you than a fancy car. But I will guarantee you this: If you pray for faith — and I mean really pray for faith — day in, day out. And really mean it. And go to church and read the Bible, God will give you faith. And this faith will give you infinitely greater joy than any material item on Earth could ever give you.
There are four main forces of the universe: the nuclear force, electromagnetism, radioactivity and gravity. If any of these four forces was altered by 10 to the 50th or so, the universe could not exist. The required precision of all four forces is something like one out of 10 followed by a thousand zeros. Who could possibly think this was a random accident?
And that’s just this universe. The best mathematical solution to reconcile all four forces is the multiverse theory. There are an infinite number of universes.
So if it ever feels that the universe revolves around you, maybe it does! God’s majesty is infinitely greater than we can comprehend!
Jesus Christ rising from the dead? It seems unbelievable to us humans. So unbelievable, we’re still talking about it 2,000 years later. But for God, it was a piece of cake.
He is risen! Believe. Read the Bible. Go to church. Pray non-stop for faith. Accept your wonderful role as a child of God. Do this, and you will have riches far beyond all the riches on the planet.
