Monday Morning Minute: December 26, 2011

It is with mixed feelings that I must bring to a close the Monday Morning Minutes that I have been sending out for the past almost 14 years. I began the devotions in 1997 and have sent one out every Monday since. Thanks to ATT and spam guards, it has become almost impossible to send large emails groups so I am choosing to cease sending the devotions. This will be the last one. I hope they have been a source of encouragement, humor and self reflection, and if they have been any source of inspiration, give Jesus the credit and not this author. It is with a prayer that I close this ministry asking that God's blessings be on each of you and thanking you for the encouragement you have given me over the years. Sincerely, Chaplain Terry Barnes, LPD.

No. 667

MONDAY MORNING MINUTE © FROM CHAPLAIN BARNES On-the-Job Inspiration, Humor Challenge and Encouragement. You are invited to copy and share these notes with others so long as it is not for profit.

December 26, 2011

“Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith….” 1 Peter 5:8-9

I hated that scene. The prisoner was seated in a chair, feet taped to the chair legs and hands bound behind his back. Unable to defend himself, his captor beat him with a rubber hose inflecting blow after blow on his head and chest until he lapsed into a bloody unconscious state. When the enemy of your soul wants to make you miserable, he waits until your most vulnerable time. If he wants to frighten you, then he will wait until you are ready to sleep or totally exhausted and Zowie! enter the “what if” game. If he wants to anger you, then he waits until you’re tired and stressed, and then ka-pow! Enter the event that really ticks you off more than anything else. If he wants you to laps into total uselessness with the self pity ploy, BAM! Here it comes right after you have suffered a major disappointment. Or one of his favorite ones, just after you have failed God and in sorrow asked for forgiveness, Pow! Enter the jack-hammer of guilt to attack your mind and instill questions of God’s love! Satan plays dirty. He invades children as well as adults. He torments the pagan as well as the saint. He only exists to cause all the pain and havoc he can because he hates God and by causing God’s creation, especially his children who he loves, pain, then he is at his best. Please remember; Forewarned is Forearmed. Be aware of these tricks of your spiritual enemy. Know that he will use them on you and pray the most when you are in one of these spiritual vulnerable times. Please remember, we all go through struggles like these and pray for others also. Remember, though we suffer now, it is as for a moment. Satan will get it for all eternity. Jesus has already made sure of that. Now, that ought to be something to get you started praising Him for even now.

Thought for the week: "In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on." - Robert Frost

Funny for the week: Santa and Science

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer, which only Santa has ever seen.

2) There are 2 billion children in the world (persons under 18). But since Santa doesn't (appear to) handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist children, that reduces the workload by 85% of the total-- leaving 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there is at least one good child per house.

3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second.
This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house.

4) Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about
0.78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc. That means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second. A conventional reindeer can run, at tops
25-30 miles per hour.

5) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming each child gets nothing more then a medium sized LEGO set (2 lbs.), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting the "flying reindeer" can pull TEN TIMES that normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine--we need 214,200 reindeer. This increased the payload--not even counting the weight of the sleigh--to 353,430 tons. Again for comparison, this is four times the weight of the HMS Queen Elizabeth.

6) Three hundred and fifty-three thousand tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere.
The lead pair will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per second, each. In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and creating a deafening sonic boom in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa meanwhile, will be subject to centrifugal forces of 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 lb. Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by a 4,315,015 pound force.

In conclusion, if Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas eve, he's now dead.

And Merry Christmas to you too………Chaplain Barnes

Last week’s answer: What are God’s first recorded words in the Bible? (Let there be light. Gen. 1:3)

This weeks question: Complete the following verse: “The harvest truly is plenteous, but …..”

The Monday Morning Minute features material that Chaplain Barnes thinks is funny but would probably generate emotionally fuelled feedback if sent to his other than more general and family safe lists. He knows the jokes are theologically, politically, and/or socially incorrect and he’s ok with that. And yes, he tells these jokes to his mother, his children and even his church in certain public speaking situations where he is called Minister for reasons other than the jokes he tells.

STATEMENT OF PRIVACY: I value my privacy as much as you do. I will never sell or distribute your address or any information about you!

Terry Barnes

Just because you have the right to does not mean it is right to.