How are we hanging in there, folks?

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

As I watched of the CV generated world financial meltdown with EU countries closing their borders and the refusal to take additional refugees, it came to me "God is knocking the legs out from under Globalism", tearing up the foundation of the tower of the modern Babel. Countries are looking inwards and seeing the mass immigration of alien cultures for what it is and that is national suicide. It remains to be seen if this change in perspective has any long term impact.

Graham used to say " ah...cheese" when he a little kid as his catch all phrase for anything that disturbed his little world, it was kinda cute. The events of the last several days have me going "ah...cheese". It started with stupid people acting on a rumor that the world was running out of toilet paper or some such, it made no sense and everyone got a good laugh. Then normal people went to the grocery store and found a few bare spots on the shelves and they joined in, buying whatever was left.
  Retailers operate on the low inventory, right on time system where items go from truck to shelf in short order. They have no reserve inventory. Inventory is held in regional distribution centers and is sent out on an as needed basis and those centers inventory on hand is based on past demand statistics.It's all neatly done by computer algorithms but, these lean systems are not set up to handle situations like the one we're having. Although, the supply chain is functioning normally and trucks are on the road 24/7, a continued run on goods will lead to shortages in the near term as demand outstrips supply. I went to Food Lion and Walmart today; both Corporations have some of the most sophisticated inventory control systems in existence and they still have not been able to satisfy demand and there are empty and half empty shelves all over. There is a definite air of distrust and apprehension going around. I was my usual cheerful self, trying to lighten the mood but, it wasn't working. Normally, the good cheer that I sow is spread out from the recipient to others but, today it was like a wall. 
 All this is happening and no one is sick yet. I've never seen anything like it, no one has that isn't over ninety. 
  I've been waiting for this for more than 40 years. When I was in High School, it was a post nuclear apocalypse where I would scavenge the wasteland with my tribe of mutants, a typical adolescent male fantasy. As I got older I began to think "what if [fill in your doomsday preference] happened?" I would work through the possibilities and plan a response. I call it "sensible precautions in case of a disaster, man made or natural." I had become lax with my preps over the last few years but, beginning a couple of months ago I noticed this CV thing and began bringing my stocks back up so that,  by the time people went nuts we were prepared with beans, bullets and  bandaids. 
Apart from the few empty shelves and the unease people are moving about normally. 
I should have decent weather tomorrow to ["RATS! I forgot to buy motorsickle oil"] finish my spring service. I need to get over to the license office and take my skills test for my motorcycle, the State of North Carolina changed the rules and you can't just endlessly renew your permit. 
 If this is, the end of the world as we know it, I feel fine.*

We live in interesting times...

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

Oklahoma is now officially in a panic state, in the sense that people are buying up all kinds of supplies without a clear idea why. Yesterday something clicked and the population of the state went nuts. All the school districts in the state were forced to cancel classes for today (Friday) because parents were pulling their kids anyway. Of course, next week is Spring Break, but it still puts a kink in official scheduling of things, along with budgets and movement of supplies, etc.

But with that kind of panic came the panic buying of whatever folks imagine will be hard to get sometime soon. Most of it is fuzzy thinking about a likely quarantine. The population as a whole has very little idea what kind of planning and decisions are part of government mandated quarantines. It made it tough shopping yesterday for stuff we buy regularly. We had to take into account the madness and how it affects our future shopping trips.

We could easily make this a prayer request for the nation, or even the world. Feel free to pursue that as you feel led, but my focus here is our covenant family. I'm going to post something on my Radix Fidem blog about this, but I also wanted to place it formally here on the forum. The disease will run its course according to the Lord's wisdom and will, but the wider human response is the real problem. This is part of the near-apocalypse the Spirit warned me about over the past few years. The shape of it comes as a surprise to me, but not the fact itself.

Be sure to pray for each other in this chaos. It may be useful to share our experiences here in this thread.

Hello everyone, in the midst of some slowly-moving international chaos.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

I embrace the concept of God's sovereignty. You can be sure my mental image of that is different from what's common among church folks and theologians, but the idea itself soothes my frazzled soul.

There is no doubt that the current Corona virus is from the hand of God. I've often wondered over the years how the final swan song of the West would begin, and now I believe this is it. Not because the virus itself is so dangerous, but the panic is the breaking point. How people react is what will bring destruction, regardless how much the actual virus does to people. It also doesn't matter if this thing was cooked up in a lab somewhere; what it actually does is still under God's control. He is using this viral panic.

And right smack dab in the middle of this, God calls me to ride my bike all over Oklahoma and go camping. What a non-sequitur that poses in my mind. I'm still trying to pray that one out. But that I'm called to do this, there is not a shred of doubt in my mind. Somehow God will use this "hobby" as the vehicle for a ministry I don't yet understand. I know what I'm supposed to do, but I don't yet know what effect I should be looking for.

I don't have to know in order for this to shine His glory. But I have no doubt He will eventually make it clear -- to me, at least.

Hey tech geeks,  as you should be aware my technical skills are limited to actual physical things and that I don't have a PC or laptop just this little old tablet. I watch YouTube through an Amazon fireTV stick on my TV.  Google, Facebook and YouTube censor the content available to me.  What are free speech alternatives that don't involve a ton of ads that, can be used on my tablet (android).
I've find a lot of apps " not optimized for this device " likely due to its age. No I'm not spending my prep $$$ on a laptop, I will go back to doing things the old fashioned way, spending my Saturday mornings at the library. They were slow but, procured every book that I asked for.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

I'm telling you folks first: I plan to make my first overnight ride to Red Rock Canyon, Hinton, OK on the 9th of this month. Whatever I don't have by then I'll just have to improvise or do without. Pray with me.