HOLY HOOPS! -- Just A Minute Radio for Friday 100409

            Howdy again for a Friday – it’s a beautiful day in Chicago!

 

            And many other parts of the land too.  I seem to always be surprised by Spring.  This year we had volunteer Irises that just appeared by surprise under the BIG tulip poplar in the front yard… And  the sole little undernourished flame azalea bush that’s hiding behind the tree trunk – not seen from the street put on a show that makes a shabby gardener feel good!  I just wish I had a tenth of the talent my Dad demonstrated to me as a kid…when I’m afraid I wasn’t paying attention.  I learned a lot from Mom too… but as I grow older I see what a great example my Dad demonstrated to me – when I hardly knew it was going on.  In adulthood… I can hardly stop counting the blessings… and I’m sorry I didn’t make my gratitude plainer when he was here.

 

            Well,, enough for a beautiful day like today… this IS the day the Lord hath made and we will rejoice and be glad in it.  We have had visits recently from our kids and some of the grandkids who’ve been living out in the S. Pacific more than in the States during their ‘growing up years’ – my how quickly they fly by,  You only have to look at a tea kettle to get a picture of what the Bible says about life being like a vapor that appears for a moment and then vanishes away.

 

            Last week I ran across a lovely article about plants that eat insects… The Venus Fly Trap – the Pitcher Plant – and others.  It was very good and informative except for one thing.  This botanist scholar who wrote the piece – also beautifully illustrated by a *very* talented photography,  apparently never saw the hand of God in the development and beauty of these plants.  Amazingly these carnivorous plants grow in places (bogs and swamps and such) in which the nitrogen content of the soil or surroundings is very low.  That’s why they are there… and why they love the insect meals that come along and drop into their traps…

 

            Then the plants that have been so attractive to the insects then entrap their prey and their sticky syrup becomes enzymes that turn them into goo which the plant digests.  The insides become lethal … and they trip the trigger or whatever, and become a meal for the plant.  The Venus Fly Trap isn’t troubled by rainwater falling on it’s wide open maw… but just let the tiniest insect touch the hair trigger twice in a short space and the vegetable leaves snap shut in less than a tenth of a second… and that without discernable muscles.

 

            How “scientists” switch over in an instant to magicians, believing what their observations show to be false, they ignore  these magnificent floral structures which are far too complicated and specialized to have ‘evolved’ – and how would a mere plant without even a primitive brain, ever had a sense of where it was or what it was supposed to do or how to do it.  Not to be able to see the Lord God of Creation in such an obvious example boggles my mind.  I guess I’m just as much a mystery to him as he is to me.  In any case we live in a wonderful world the Lord has created… and one of these days it will be even more perfect and enjoyed by those who have placed their trust in the Lord.

 

            Got to get to other things now… Hope you have a perfect rest of the day and this bountiful week we’ve been celebrating as Jesus’ resurrection from the tomb… more miraculous than the Venus Fly Trap by far!

 

            Cordially, IN HIM

 

            Jack Buttram

 

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Delayed audio Link…

 

Thought for today – Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.

 

 

“JUST A MINUTE”

HOLY HOOPS

            Just a Minute: -- Duke beat Butler for  the NCAA championship by one point … Both teams were commendable.   

            Chuck Colson and the Wall St. Journal ,  detailed a story of Basketball’s founding by John Murray.

            Over a hundred years ago James Naismith, a Christian, took a PE instructor’s job at the YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts. He determined to develop an indoor game for students in winter.  Working as a PE instructor for the training school he settled on a game, where the ball could be handled easily,  goals at each end of the floor, and with running and passing, but no tackling. He insisted “The game must be kept clean.”–anyone not holding to that standard was out for the rest of the year.

            Colson suggests If there’s a basketball player in your family, tell him or her, how the game came about – and show the game has been used as a witnessing tool now for over 100 years. -- Thanks to Colson and the Wall St. Journal for highlighting the history of this game designed to “win men for the Master, through the gym.”

            <>I’m Jack Buttram. (END)

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