The original purpose of the Satur-deja Vu, when it started back in 2019, was a week-in-review of posts and updates of discussions on The Master’s Table. This week there were actually enough posts to review them and one discussion update. I missed the 30 year anniversary of announcing the call to preach back in January. In 2018 Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday were both on February 14th. That was the first time since 1945 but it will happen again in 2024 and 2029. In 2096 Ash Wednesday will fall on Leap Day, February 29th, for the first time in the history. I finally got around to putting some thoughts in writing about the Asbury Revival, focusing more on the responses than the event itself. Here are some other news stories, fun facts and random bits that you may or may not have seen this week:

If the devil hasn’t bothered you in a while then you’re probably not doing anything that bothers him. Encountering resistance from the forces of evil is a sure sign you are doing something right. Think about when you became a new believer. The devil probably whispered in your ear for the first time “You aren’t really saved from anything. You are the same person you’ve always been, nothing has changed.” That never happened once before you were saved, evidence that a real change had taken place and you were on his list of people that need to be discouraged.

Pastor friend this week is promoting “Pancakes with the Pastor” on Sunday morning from 9:45 to 10:45. I told him that eating pancakes for an hour and calling it ministry had never occurred to me. He said that your message had better really be something or everyone will fall asleep on you. If I were to really eat pancakes with syrup for a solid hour I might fall asleep too! BTW, the Spurgeon quote above is real. All of his sermons and lectures are well documented and archived. He also had a great sense of humor and a good attitude about using humor in ministry.

And now it’s time for wacky news headlines.

Americans really will use anything but the metric system. Apparently 7:4 is the ratio to convert full kegs of beer to baby elephants, at least for units of weight measure. Also, a meteor hit Texas.

If you’re a dog, you stick your head out the window. It’s just what you do. Maybe not much longer though if you’re a dog in Florida. Proposed legislation would make it illegal for a dog to stick it’s head out the window. The law would require dogs to wear a seatbelt, ride in a crate or be held by a person. A dog in the back of a pickup truck (see above right) would have to be in a crate that is properly secured to the vehicle. The same bill if passed would outlaw the sale of rabbits and ban declawing an indoor cat. Only the dog thing is overreach by the nanny state, imho. We’ll see what Van Til has to say.

Catalytic converter theft is a real concern. We mentioned a story last week involving a woman running over a man in the process of stealing the part from her car. When an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile had it’s cat stolen recently, PETA made them an offer; to cover the cost of replacement and provide one year of maintenance if Oscar Mayer would turn the vehicle into a NotHotDog-mobile, or something similar. Kraft announced last year they would considering marketing Oscar Mayer vegan hot dogs. The offer from PETA was declined and the Wienermobile is already back on the road.

Employers everywhere face similar problems when it comes to filling open positions. You schedule 10 interviews and only five people show up. You hire three of those and only two show up to start work. A week later and one of those has quit. Then you start scheduling interviews again. The good folks at Santino’s Pizzeria were having trouble finding people willing to take the job seriously. Their “now hiring non-stupid people” signage went viral but there has been some pushback. That might be an idea I suggested but knew that we couldn’t really do. I am glad to see that somebody did. It could be worse. At least they didn’t ban children under the age of 10 from eating at their restaurant.

And now sports.

MLB will have new rules in place this season designed to shorten the amount of time required to play a complete game. College football is working on it and may try to put changes in place before the next season starts in the fall. Two of the rule changes are considered non-controversial; prohibiting consecutive timeouts (in order to ice the kicker, for instance) and no longer allowing an untimed down at the end of the first or third quarter after a defensive penalty. Those changes would make little or no difference in the length of a typical game. A third change has been gaining popularity and that’s to keep the clock running after making first down. There would still be an exception during the final two minutes of each half. The final change, which is the most controversial and may not happen this year, is to keep the clock running after an incomplete pass. Technically the clock would stop but immediately continue running after the ball is spotted for play. Most of the changes would bring college football rules more in line with NFL play.

Here are some random bits.

It has nothing to do with the scrubbie. That iron skillet is freaking out because someone is about to wash it with dishwashing liquid. All the comments when I saw this meme were along the same lines. Most of the time, if your cast iron is seasoned well, all you need is a rinse of hot water and a wipe down. If something does stick you can clean your cast iron skillet, griddle or Dutch oven without destroying the season layer. If you don’t know how to clean dried, burnt and/or stuck on food without soap please ask me.

Zero points. In others words, I have done every single thing on this list. We still have checks because every now and then it’s still the best option. I know some of, especially at work, still send or receive a fax. Records never really went away but there are plenty of people just younger than me that have never listened to one. Every item on this list is outmoded even if you still have one. I posted this to a FB group a few days ago and discovered that regardless of age 1) lots of people never used AOL email even if AOL was their internet service provider and 2) not everyone had MySpace, some just didn’t want it. Those were the two big standouts, how many points did you score?

Let’s call that history since we didn’t have any other history lesson this week.

And finally: here’s my family with the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile in January of 2020, before the bottom fell out. They were handing out weenie whistles as well. Enjoy your weekend, be salt, be light. Come back for Happy Monday, Van Til will fix you right up.