July 19, 2020 (Sunday)
In 1984, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed July as National Ice Cream Month. He also established National Ice Cream Day as the third Sunday in the month.
I was watching a show on TV about life in the 1800s and there was a scene where people were eating icecream. I wondered how they could have ice cream before the days of refrigerators and freezers.
So, I looked up the subject in the good old internet and found that Ice was made by nature in ponds, lakes, and rivers. This ice was harvested by being sawn into blocks and was preserved by storing it in a cooler place, often below ground. The ice would also be insulated with straw, sawdust, or buried in dirt to make it last longer.
I’m glad that I was not born before ice cream became available. Some of my fondest memories include ice cream, like the days when my cousin, Clinton Roy Attaway, and I rode the city bus to the end of the line, then took a shuttle to Herman Park where we rented bicycles. We went directly to a drug store and bought a pint of ice cream each. Then we rode to the woods nearby (now occupied by the Texas Medical Center), ate our ice cream by a pond and threw rocks into the water.
When I started going to the seminary in Fort Worth I got a job in a creamery where we made ice cream. Instead of water hoses we had steam hoses that kept everything in the plant clean as a whistle. Wanda and I married about that time and in a few months moved to Lampasas to pastor a mission church, thus shortening the time I spent at the creamery.
The only flavors I recall as a child were vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. But that was enough to keep kids happy. Treats were rare but greatly enjoyed.
Back to ice cream in the 1800s. Time-consuming and costly, the old-fashioned way was to place the ingredients into a thin drum, which was then sunk into a larger container which held a mixture of ice and salt. The salty water gets so cold it freezes the ice cream. A substitute for ice is mixture of sal ammoniac, nitre and water, said to reduce the temperature from 50F to 10F; nitrate of ammonia and water (50F down to 4F); and sulphate of soda with dilute sulphuric acid (50F down to 3F). Makes me think of a TV ad that had the logo, “Better things for better living through chemistry.”
Since today is Sunday, there ought to be a connection between ice cream and church, don’t you think? In every church I was a part of, we had ice cream socials and everyone brought their favorite homemade ice cream. The ice cream then became the catalyst for Christian fellowship, which is a major component of church life.
We are familiar with the fellowship of joy, but there are other types of fellowship within the body of Christ. There is the fellowship of suffering, in which we seek to comfort each other and help each other find healing. Any shared experience is a fellowship. We have a fellowship of love and a fellowship of service. We enjoy Christian fellowship as we share with each other our experiences with Christ our Lord. Ours is a fellowship of faith, a fellowship of stewardship as we give to the Lord, a fellowship of prayer, as we pray for one another and as we pray for others, a fellowship of worship as we sing together and give our attention to Bible lessons and sermons. Online services during the pandemic substitute for face to face gatherings at church, but reaching out to touch one another is the essence of fellowship and we long to return to good old handshakes and hugs.
Reach Out And Touch (Somebody’s Hand)
Songwriters: Nickolas Ashford / Valerie Simpson
Reach out and touch
Somebody’s hand
Make this world a better place
If you can
Reach out and touch
Somebody’s hand
Make this world a better place
If you can
Take a little time out your busy day
To give encouragement
To someone who’s lost the way
(Just try)
Or would I be talking to a stone
If I asked you
To share a problem that’s not your own
(Oh no)
We can change things if we start giving
Why don’t you
Reach out and touch
Somebody’s hand
Make this world a better place
If you can
Reach out and touch
Somebody’s hand
Make this world a better place
If you can
If you see an old friend on the street
And he’s down
Remember his shoes could fit your feet
(Just try)
Try a little kindness and you’ll see
It’s something that comes
Very naturally
(Oh yeah)
We can change things if we start giving
Why don’t you
(Why don’t you)
Reach out and touch
Somebody’s hand
Reach out and touch (reach out)
Somebody’s hand
Make this world a better place
If you can
Reach out and touch
Somebody’s hand (touch somebody’s hand)
Make this world a better place
If you can (why don’t you)
Reach out and touch
Somebody’s hand (somebody’s hand)
Make this world a better place
If you can
Today I supplied the pulpit of FBC Rockport: