Bugs!

November 18th, 2017| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

You always suspected it, but now it’s been proven to be true.

In a recent issue of the Journal for Food Research was an article by scientists from Clemson University with the ominous title: “Bacterial Transfer Associated with Blowing Out Candles on a Birthday Cake.”

I suspect your relationship with birthday cakes will now be altered forever.

If you were already paranoid about these things, you were avoiding birthday cakes with candles like the plague. Or maybe you scraped off the top couple of microns worth of frosting in order to avoid the bugs.

If weren’t, you may have been living in—as one journalist put it— “ignorant, saliva-splattered bliss.”

Paul Dawson, lead author on the article, confessed that his zeal came from his teenage daughter who is, apparently, a bit of a germophobe. (The good man has also studied other issues vital to humanity, like whether the five-second rule is real, whether sharing popcorn will decimate mankind, whether double dipping multiplies the little beasts in food, and so on.)

Dawson and his coworkers, mostly undergrad Clemson students not watching football, frosted a cake-like structure made of Styrofoam, affixed and lit candles, and huffed and puffed. They then diluted the spat-upon frosting and cultured it for bacterial growth.

There was, like, a lot! On average blowing out the candles caused a 1400% increase in the colonies of frosting bacteria.

But, encourages Dawson:

Birthday parties should not be ruined. It’s not a big health concern in my perspective.”

There is, by the way, a patent for a “sanitary birthday cake cover and candle system”—US Patent 20090181335 A1.

Life, I tell you, is full of dangers.

But God is sufficient for all of them, even those posed by inimical beings around us—those “rules and authorities and powers and dominions” Paul talks about in Ephesians 1. He then prays for us, who are scared by these risks, that that we might know …

… what is the surpassing greatness of His power towards us who believe—
according to the working of His mighty strength—
which [power] He worked in Christ, raising Him from the dead
and seating [Him] at His right hand in the heavenlies,
far above every rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named,
not only in this age but also in the one to come;
and He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all things in all ways.
Ephesians 1:19–23

Notice the balance: four hostile entities counterpoised by four terms of divine power: “power,” “working,” “mighty,” and “strength.” The power of God is sufficient, the decisive proof of which was the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus Christ.

And all of those vile creatures are below the feet of Christ. And we, the church, are his body. Therefore, demonic elements are below our feet! So every antagonistic power is subject not only to Christ but also to his body, the church—another facet of the saints’ marvelously privileged position! The church—believers, you and I—is more powerful than every other anti-God power.

And guess what? This power is working on our behalf—“towards us who believe.”

The spiritual beings antagonistic to God and his people need have no sway over the Christian whose faith is in a powerful God who resurrected and exalted a powerful Christ as the powerful Head over the church.

Forget bugs and stuff. We can rest easy!