Words of Truth

For years I have shopped at grocery stores and have carried home the groceries in plastic bags. I know it’s not good for the environment, and we have tried to recycle or reuse these as much as we can. Some have suggested using paper bags, but those are so hard to find now, and they require killing a tree anyway, so they’re not much better.

Last week I saw a video that literally changed my mind about my shopping. This guy said we don’t need shopping bags. And yesterday I tried out his system. It worked great.

I went to Wal Mart. I got the groceries that I wanted and put them in my cart. I went to the checkout, and instead of putting stuff in bags, I got a second cart, scanned something, then put it in the new cart. The cashier came over when she saw me throwing stuff into the cart without bags, and said, “Do you need help bagging your groceries?” I said, “No thank you,” and went about my business. She backed away, confused. I scanned everything, and then paid, leaving an empty cart behind me, and a full one in front.

When I was done the cashier said she would take care of the empty cart (she was probably being nice to the crazy person, in her mind), and I pushed my cart to the exit. The lady at the door who was checking people’s receipts burst out laughing when she saw my cart. As she told me, she is supposed to check receipts for everything people buy but don’t put in a bag. She just laughed and waved me on. I explained about the system, and she said that sounded great.

So I pushed my cart full of groceries out to my car. And then I opened the trunk, and put all the groceries into the two laundry baskets in the trunk. Well, I left the water bottles, milk, and cat food out, but everything else went in the baskets. Then I drove home, and instead of grabbing six bags for each hand, I just picked up a laundry basket and carried it in. Total plastic bags used: ZERO. The guy in the video suggested using these collapsible crates from Amazon.com but they cost $64 for three crates and the laundry baskets cost $3 each at Wal Mart.

Oh, and by the way, my cousin who works at WM told me: when they stop you at the door and ask to see your receipt, you aren’t obligated to show them. Just say “no thank you” and keep going. They won’t stop you.

I don’t understand why companies operate the way they do today.  When I was in school we learned about supply and demand.  If the seller has 10 units of product at $1 each, and 20 people want the product, he increases the price, while at the same time (if possible) increasing production so that everybody gets what they need even if they have to pay more.  I have never heard of the business model where the seller has 10 units of product, and 100 people want the product, so the seller says, “You know what?  I’m going to lower production.”

My favorite thing to drink is something I discovered several years ago.  It’s called Peach Mango Green Tea, and it’s made by Crystal Light, a subsidiary of Kraft Foods.  In the past I have usually bought the “pitcher packs” where each container comes with five envelopes, each with enough drink mix to make 2 quarts of tea.  So one pitcher pack can make 2.5 gallons of tea.  Anytime I went to the store, there was my tea, and I would buy one or two.  It was never out of stock. 

And then the pandemic happened.  All of a sudden the Crystal Light shelf at ALL of my area grocery stores resembled the toilet paper aisles from those early days.  You all remember what that looked like.  It was like the bread aisle or the milk case right before a big blizzard:  empty and barren.   I don’t know why Kraft couldn’t keep this particular item stocked, but I just figured it was related to the pandemic.  I thought, “When things calm down, and people go back to work this will be fixed.” 

Well here we are.  It’s a year now, people are back to work, and the Crystal Light shelves are still bare.  The stores have plenty of the little version that has envelopes to put in 20 oz bottles, but for some reason they can’t figure out that people want the big ones.   I bought a flat of 12 back in November for $30 from Amazon, which was the same price as in my local store, but now that same flat is going for $80. 

I was just emailed by Wal Mart who said, “Great news! The product you’re interested in is now back in stock!”  So I logged into Wal Mart’s website and there was only one “two pack” left (enough to make 5 gallons) and I tried to buy it.  But by the time I got to the end of the purchase, it said, “Sorry this item is no longer available.”  I don’t want a PS5, I just want my tea!   Get it together, Kraft! Start cranking out the tea!!! I don’t know how much money you are losing by refusing to increase production, but it has to be substantial.

Every day I wake up I know that I am one day closer to heaven.  I was thinking the other day about how much time I have left on earth.  Obviously none of us knows how much time we really have, because we could die five minutes from now.  A coworker of mine for the past two years clocked out about six weeks ago and went home.  They found her the next morning. She had had a stroke, and nothing they did to help her worked. She died on February 21st.  She was my age.

But if I live a “normal lifespan” I have about 20-30 years left at the most.  And as I think about how brief that is, I examine my life and can only feel sadness at the enormity of the sin that I have committed in my life. I have served God, but not enough.  Not nearly enough. I feel like Oskar Schindler at the end of Schindler’s List and I know that I will always feel that way. 

Because I am a sinner. 

I choose to do what is wrong.  Every day I sin.  Every day I confess my sins to God, knowing that the next day I will be in the same position, confessing more sins to God, because I have a sin nature. 

Every person sins.  Every. Single. Person.  And it’s not just one sin that we do over and over, it’s a multitude of sins: gluttony, lust, greed, pride, hatred, anger, homosexuality, ignoring God, selfishness, laziness, dishonesty, etc…etc…etc…

My only consolation is that I am born again.  My sin weighs down on me like a thing that is very heavy, but I know with every fiber of my being that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to earth 2000 years ago and died on the cross to pay the penalty for ALL my sin and the sins of the whole world. 

Are you an angry person? Jesus died for you.  Are you a thief?  Jesus died for you.  Some people think that certain sinners (or should I just say humans) are lost forever and cannot be saved, but there is only one sin that you can commit that God cannot forgive:  rejecting Christ.  If you reject God and the forgiveness that He offers for ALL of your sins, then you cannot be saved from God’s wrath, and you will suffer for eternity in the lake of fire. 

I Corinthians 6:9-10 says, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.” 

That’s a pretty hefty list.  And some people look at that list and say, “See?  There’s certain people who can’t be saved! They are lost forever! There’s no hope for them!”  But these people stopped reading too soon.  Because verse 11 says “Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” 

See, Paul knew that there were people in the Corinthian church who were former drunks, former homosexuals, former adulterers, former idolaters, former thieves, etc.  But they were washed, they were sanctified. They repented of their sin and turned to God, and they were FORGIVEN! 

As long as you are breathing, it is never too late to repent of your rebellion against God and trust in Christ, no matter what sins you have committed. And once you trust in His sacrifice for you, then everything you say and do should start to come into alignment with what He wants for you. I have said it over and over:  Christians are not sinless, but we should sin less.

And now I start another day, praying to God that I will sin less today, and that He will use me to lead souls to Christ and to glorify Him.  What about you?  Do you know Christ? If so, are you living for Him or for your own selfish desires?  Trust in Christ for salvation, and then trust Him that He knows what is best for you, which includes reading the Bible and examining your life to see what doesn’t match up with what He wants for you. 

Vaccination is a very important tool in our arsenal of weapons to fight disease caused by viruses and bacteria. If it were not for widespread vaccination, millions would be sick, damaged, or dead from measles, polio, tetanus, diphtheria, etc…

And so I applaud the effort to produce a vaccine for COVID-19. But I have two glaring questions that I would like to have answered. If anybody out there knows the answers to these questions, I would really like to hear them.

1. Do people who already had COVID need to be vaccinated?

2. How long is the vaccine effective?

When someone already has had a certain disease, they don’t need to be vaccinated. They have what’s called “active immunity.” When I became a nurse they asked me if I had received the chicken pox vaccine. I said no, but I had chicken pox and got over it. And that was good enough. I contracted and subsequently recovered from COVID-19 in September. So I have antibodies for it, just like my body would produce if I got vaccinated. And if this is true, I’d really rather not get the vaccine, because every vaccine carries risks. The benefit of the vaccine usually outweighs the risk, but if you don’t need it, why risk it at all?

And I have been told that my naturally acquired active immunity may only last for 2-3 months. Well that’s a new one, because I’ve never heard of a virus that you defeat naturally that can attack you again successfully within a few months without some other disease process interfering with your immune system (like AIDS). I mean, yeah, over time your immunity can wane with certain diseases, requiring a booster shot, but that’s years. Tetanus is a good example of this.

So if all of that is true, then I would really like to know how long they expect the vaccine to be effective? If (as they say) the antibodies only last for 2-3 months, will we need to get this vaccine quarterly?

Also, there’s studies being done that show much longer immunity. There was a Portuguese study published last month showing that “90% of SARS-CoV-2–positive individuals had detectable antibodies from 40 days up to 7 months post-infection, with higher levels in patients with more severe disease.” Considering the fact that we only had large numbers of people who had recovered from COVID infection for about 7 months when the study was done, I’d say that the immunity probably lasts much longer.

This study concludes by saying, “Most people infected with SARS-CoV-2 will have protective immunity against circulating viruses for many months after initial infection, the authors conclude.” And that’s good news.