Lacking Gas
“For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. Herein thou hast done foolishly: therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars.” II Chronicles 16:9 KJV
“Oh no, here we go again,” were the first thoughts that entered my mind. It made me have flash backs to when I was younger and first learning to drive. “Surely this can’t be happening again,” I mumbled under my breath.
It doesn’t take much intelligence to see how messed up our country, and even the world, is today. Just look at some of the headlines: Israel is on the brink of war; China is testing the resolve of Taiwan, the Philippines, the United States, and even Australia; India’s coronavirus cases are soaring and more deadly variants of the virus are coming about every week or so; and a ship getting caught in the Suez Canal blocked a quarter of the world’s trade for what seemed like forever.
Then let’s turn our attention to our own country. Racial tensions are almost as bad as they were during the 1960s. The Civil War ended over 150 years ago. Older Chinese people are getting knocked down because of a citizen’s anger with China, who they believe started the coronavirus. Really? Most of the older people, like myself, have a hard enough time finding a file on our computers, much less, the ability to manipulate a “submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cell organism (Wikipedia’s definition of a virus).”
We haven’t even gotten to the battles between Republicans and Democrats. Both sides have basically accused the other side of being traitors and not really caring about the long-term effects they are having on our country. As if that weren’t bad enough, interparty squabbles are even threatening to split up both of those parties.
But let’s narrow our focus to today’s crisis. Sure, it might be limited to us in the East and South, but it could happen anywhere, at any time. And with trust in the government at an all-time low, I’m not real sure they can really fix anything right now. Even if it does return to normal quickly, it is just a wound covering a band-aid. Rip off that band-aid and it will just start bleeding once again.
I was heading home after I got my haircut. Yes, both of them. The talk on the radio and TV was all about the cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline that supplies most of the gasoline for the East Coast up through the Mid-Atlantic and the South. This cyberattack shutdown the pipeline.
Of course, most people around here didn’t panic. What kind of dream world do you live in? Everyone started rushing to the gas stations to fill up for what might have been the last time in their entire life.
Me? I would like to claim that I was one of those individuals who remained calm and didn’t even look at the gas gauge in my car. That was not possible, though. Looking at my gas gauge I realized that my car ONLY had a little over a half tank of gas. How was I ever going to survive on only a half tank of gasoline?
So, I started a frantic search for a gas station. A couple of them had cones blocking the aisles to tell everyone that didn’t have any gas left. Then I found one that had some long lines. “I’m not waiting in those long lines,” I thought. When I went to a few more stations, none of which had any gas, the thought entered my mind that there might just not be any gas to get.
Finally, as I got close to home, I found a gas station that looked like it might have gas. The lines were not too long, so I pulled in. To my surprise, there was a lane with no one in it. I pulled right up.
As I got up to the pump, the lady driving a school bus at the pump next to me told me that they only had premium left. She said, “And it is almost four dollars a gallon!” Sensing there might not be any more gas in the entire world, I said to her, “It’s only money,” and I filled up my tank.
John Flammang Schrank was an immigrant from Erding. Erding is a little town in Bavaria, Germany. Today. if you travel, by car, it is about a 30-minute southwest drive from Munich. During the Thirty Years’ War, Erding was taken, plundered, and set on fire twice by Swedish troops.
John Flammang Schrank’s parents immigrated to America when he was about nine-years-old. Shortly after they arrived, both his parents died. Schrank went to live and work with his aunt and uncle. They were tavern owners and landlords. Not too long after that both of them died, too. However, they did leave him some valuable property in the hope that he could live quiet and peaceful life.
Schrank was later listed as a saloonkeeper from New York. Having lost two sets of parents in such a short time must have been quite traumatic for him. Things got worse. His first, and only girlfriend, Emily Ziegler was killed in the General Slocum disaster on New York’s East River.
Distraught, Schrank sold all his properties and became a drifter. He would travel up and down the East Coast for years. He became quite religious, wrote poetry, and developed into a fine debater. He had no record of his causing any trouble.
One night, he claimed, the ghost of William McKinley came to him in a dream. Of course, McKinley was one of our assassinated Presidents. Schrank believed McKinley sat up in his coffin and told him that he needed to avenge his senseless death. McKinley, in the dream, even pointed to a picture of the guilty party that was sitting on a stand nearby.
Schrank took McKinley’s command in his dream very seriously. He started stalking the man he said McKinley stated was responsible. His goal was to render a final, fatal justice to this man. For several weeks he looked for the perfect chance to fulfill his duty. At least six times he was close enough to take his shot, but for some reason he didn’t. This trek would take him through eight states where he was constantly monitoring the eventual victim’s every move.
Then, there it was, the perfect chance to fulfill his duty. It happened outside the Gilpatrick Hotel in Milwaukee. The victim had just finished his meal that the hotel owners had made especially for him. There was a crowd outside cheering the victim as he headed to his open-air car. He was scheduled to deliver a speech at the Milwaukee Auditorium.
Shots rang out. The crowd had no idea what had just happened. Elbert Martin, one of the victim’s secretaries, was one of the first to pound on top of Schrank. The victim shouted, “He doesn’t know what he is doing!” Not satisfied, the crowd shouted, “Lynch him! Kill him!”
Waving his arms, the victim calmed the crowd a little. He would say, “He pinked me, Henry.” The victim called over officers of the Milwaukee police force and told them, “Take charge of this man, and see that no violence is done to him.”
God had put the almost perfect country together. Israel’s first king seemed determined to use his own judgment over first seeking God’s wisdom. Finally, God had enough and sent Saul, Israel’s first king, into a mental tailspin. Saul developed an obsession that could only be described as a madness.
Saul chased away one of his most loyal subjects, David. Eventually Saul was driven, by his madness, to spend many useless days trying to track David down to kill him. God didn’t ordain David’s death so Saul was never able to fulfill his wish.
In addition, Saul would have his kingdom stripped from him when he, and his sons, were killed in a battle with the Philistines. God would hand Saul’s kingdom to David. Now God would have the kingdom He was looking for and it would be led by the man after His own heart.
Although David was a man of war, God handed him many victories. David would be able to hand off a great kingdom to his son Solomon. Things were going pretty good under Solomon until, toward the end of his life, Solomon became a little less loyal to God.
God would not forget his promise to David about leaving a great kingdom for his son Solomon. Despite his late life failings, God let Israel survive as a great country. That all changed when Solomon died and his son Rehoboam became king.
When Rehoboam became king, God split Israel into two separate nations: Israel and Judah. Ten of the tribes of Israel kept the Israel name. The other two tribes took the name of the biggest of those two tribes: Judah.
Oddly, God’s namesake blessed nation named Israel was the one that usually strayed the furthest from him. When you look in some of the early Old Testament Books, you are more often going to hear, “he (whatever the king’s name is) did what was right in God’s eyes,” when it was a Judah king than you are to hear that with an Israelite king.
Several generations down from Rehoboam, Judah had a king named Abijah. I’m not sure how many wives Abijah had, but one was named Maacah. Queen Maacah would bear a son named Asa. When Abijah died, Asa would become king of Judah.
John Flammang Schrank gave further evidence to justify his shooting of Theodore Roosevelt. He stated that George Washington had set a precedence that a person should not serve more than two terms. Roosevelt had served all but six months of McKinley’s second term, and was elected to a separate term himself after he served out McKinley’s time.
Teddy Roosevelt decided he didn’t want to run again after that term. He cast his blessing on William Howard Taft who was easily elected. Off to the jungle Roosevelt went, completely confident Taft would just become a mini version of himself.
To Teddy’s horror, when he arrived back in America, he found that Taft had a mind of his own and it was not any kind of version of Roosevelt’s. So, in the next election Teddy Roosevelt decided he needed to take his job back. The problem was, Taft wasn’t ready to give it up. In fact, Taft outfoxed Roosevelt to win the Republican nomination.
Instead of giving up, Taft’s Republican nomination just seemed to upset Roosevelt even more. He formed his own party, the Progressive Party, which would later be referred to as the Bull Moose Party. It was during this campaign season that Schrank went into action. Roosevelt was leaving his hotel for a campaign speech he was to give at the Milwaukee Convention Center.
Thankfully for Roosevelt, his speech must have been a long one, for a 50-page, single-folded copy of it was stuffed inside his heavy winter jacket. In addition, the nearly blind Roosevelt, also had his glasses which were in a metal case, tucked inside the jacket, too.
When Schrank fired his Colt revolver, possibly a Police Positive or an M1892 Army & Navy, the .38 S&W shell ricocheted just a little bit because of the papers, heavy coat, and glass case. Instead of hitting Roosevelt in the heart or lungs, it landed instead in a chest muscle near his right lung. The bullet broke his fourth rib. It was never removed from Teddy.
Strangely, although still bleeding, the wounded Roosevelt went to the Milwaukee Convention Center and delivered the speech. Teddy, an avid hunter, figured, correctly, that if he was not spitting up blood, the bullet had not penetrated his lung. Before he started his speech, Roosevelt told the crowd, “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”
Both Taft and Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic nominee, suspended their campaigns. Wilson would go on to win the Presidency, but Roosevelt would get his revenge on Taft. He would collect more electoral and popular votes than Taft.
John Flammrang Schrank was declared insane in his trial. He was sent to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Waupun, Wisconsin. He would stay there for the next 29 years until he died on September 15, 1943. Coincidently, that was exactly forty-two years and one day after the death of William McKinley.
As a strange side note to this story, like we need one, when Schrank was ruled insane he asked the judge to make Roosevelt give him back his bullet, which was lodged inside Teddy. He said, “The bullet is my property. In after years, when I am regarded as a hero, it will be valuable, so I want it to go to the New York Historical Society.” Schrank didn’t get his wish. When Teddy Roosevelt eventually died, the bullet was still lodged inside him.
King Asa of Judah was one of those Biblical kings that did what was right in the Lord’s eyes for thirty-five years. He would even remove his Mom, Queen Maacah, from being queen. Then he would destroy the idols she had worshipped.
God blessed Asa with many peaceful years. Asa was very grateful to God for this peace, but he also realized the world was an evil place, so he used those years to build up Judah’s defenses. He would build an army of around 300,000 men.
Well, Zerah, of Ethiopia, had his eyes on Judah and thought they might be easy pickings. You see, Zerah had an army of over a million soldiers or more than three times that of Asa’s. From an earthly vantage point, things were not looking too good for Asa.
Most countries in Asa’s situation would look for a strong ally, strengthen their existing army, or build up their defenses under those circumstances. Not Asa, he only did something that most people would think is just crazy. He just prayed to God.
Asa’s prayer basically stated: “God, numbers and odd mean nothing to you. Men are just mortals to you, regardless of their numbers. Please help us! Do not let these evil men conquer Your kingdom.” That was all it took. God led Judah to a rout. The few Ethiopians that were left had no fight left in them.
Like I said, Asa followed God for thirty-five years. The problem was, Asa actually led Judah for forty-one years. The last six years weren’t so great for Asa and Judah. In the thirty-sixth year of his reign, Israel’s king Baasha attacked Judah.
This time, Asa took money out of God’s Temple and his royal palace and sent it to Ben-Hadad, the king of Aram. Ben-Hadad already had a treaty with Israel, but apparently, he could be bought because his soldiers sacked several Israelite towns.
God sent Hanani, the seer, to King Asa. God was very upset that Asa didn’t come to him first. The seer told him that for the rest of his life the peace God had sent him was over and his country would be at war with one country after another.
To make matters worse, two years before he died, Asa came down with a severe infection. Once again, he went to the doctors before he consulted God. God was not pleased. Asa would die of that infection.
I guess all the problems we face today aren’t new to God. Throughout history, conflict seems to always grab more headlines than peace. Our country and the Bible are no exception to this either.
Two overriding traits seem to show up in most of these cases: fear and failing to take it to God first. I guess we just think we are wiser than God or we are just in a rush to make something happen. We don’t like the odds, so we try to make them work more to our advantage.
Here I sit, a couple weeks after the “great gas crisis of 2021.” There seems to be plenty of gas and rarely do you see any lines. The prices have even started to drop a little. That full tank of gas has long since been gone and I have filled up two or three times since then.
Teddy Roosevelt pushed his own selfish desire and by doing that pushed the opposite party into the White House. Sure, Taft didn’t get his wish for reelection, but Teddy nor the Republican Party got elected either. What did Roosevelt have to show for it? A bullet lodged inside him for the rest of his life.
Asa had a pretty good thing going for him, too. Thirty-five years of peace and prosperity. Then arrogance took hold of him and he forgot where all those blessing came from. Instead of ending his life on a high note, Asa fell flat on his face at the very end. Memories of great performances often get lost by that sour note at the end.
We often forget that God is in control even when events around us seem to convince us otherwise. Faith is not faith when everything is going our way. Faith is faith when things aren’t going our way, but we know Someone with much more control than we have has everything under control.
Prayer: Dear Mighty God, It is so hard, at times, to remember to trust that You have everything under control. The world looks like a total wreck and it worries us. Please help us to come to You first and to rely on You more and our surroundings less. Amen.
