Death toll continues to rise. On Monday morning I was heading to a weekly meeting of Baptist preachers and pastors. I was listening to the news on the radio about the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. At that time the number of confirmed dead was less than 2,000. By Tuesday at noon it had risen to 5,000. That number has now passed 23,000. Turkey has infrastructure and human resources in place to coordinate efforts and distribute aid as it comes from around the world. There is a US embassy there. After years of war there is none of that in Syria. There is practically no national government to speak of. Pray for victims, survivors, military forces and humanitarian relief workers. As of Friday afternoon there were still children being rescued alive. If you wish to donate, volunteer or assist in other ways be careful of scams and scammers. Use organizations you are familiar with such as Samaritan’s Purse or the global Red Cross organization.

Super Bowl 50 was played back in 2016. This weekend the Eagles and Chiefs will play Super Bowl LVII (which is 57). Every game since Super Bowl V has been identified by a Roman numeral. We are fortunate to use the Latin alphabet but Arabic numerals. We can thank the NFL for keeping us in practice with the Roman ones. The reason they skipped 50 was because “L” has other connotations in sports. I was hoping the break with tradition would be permanent.

You can do taxes. You were taught in middle school, maybe elementary school, how to add subtract, multiply and divide. You were taught to read and follow directions. If you can do basic math and follow directions you should be to do your taxes without a whole entire class on filing taxes. Now, having said that… if there were a class that taught filing taxes, following the kind of cooking directions that come on food packages, change a flat tire and maybe reset a tripped circuit breaker, that would be okay too.

That’s more than inflation. The cost of two coffees was less than $11. It was the $4,444.44 gratuity that wiped out Jesse and Deedee O’Dell’s debit card. The kicker is they didn’t notice right away. It was a few days later when Deedee was shopping with her kids that her card was denied. Then they discovered the total bill from Starbucks was $4,456.27. It gets worse. Starbucks acknowledged there was a glitch in the system and sent two checks that totalled the amount of the tip. When the O’Dells deposited those checks… they bounced. They have been promised replacement checks but as of yet they have not arrived. In the meantime they had to cancel an international trip and lost their non-refundable airline tickets.

How do you feel about that text? You may recognize it from Revelation. There are no chapter or verse numbers but that’s often the case with a paraphrase. Sometimes a paraphrase is helpful but one needs to know the difference between types of translation and what a paraphrase is to use one effectively. The sample above is from NIV’s The Story. It’s a pretty straightforward translation with not a lot of paraphrasing going on, at least not on this page. Here is the problem: In the middle of that page you get to the end of Revelation 5. The next words pick up at Revelation 19:4. Paraphrasing is one thing but Revelation has been heavily redacted with 13 chapters missing from a book that’s only 22 chapters long. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, the image above was posted online by a concerned reader. I have not held The Story in my hand, flipped through the pages or read anything about the publisher’s methodology. I may not have the full story but i know what happens in the middle of that page with seemingly no indication or explanation.

Yep. They got to Chick-fil-A. Burger King has an Impossible Whopper. KFC introduced then did away with Beyond Chicken. Now Chick-fil-A is test marketing cauliflower based meatless chicken sandwiches in a handful of cities, none of which are Atlanta. Go figure.

Toe the line. This is brilliant but it’s only practically application would be in parking structures. Still not a bad idea anywhere they could be put up.

They didn’t waste any money on focus groups. And $2.09 is not a bad price for a universal flexible shaft of metal. If it’s stupid, and it works, it ain’t stupid.

This week on The Master’s Table: Actual blog posts! Yeah, I know right. Deep Dive: God’s Judgement looks into what the scriptures say about the Day of Judgement, for believers and unbelievers. More Than Jabez is about a series of books written by Bruce Wilkinson. He has written more than 60 over the past 50 years but chances are most people only know about the one.

And finally…