It All Adds Up
Let’s play a little game. What do the following have in common?
Great Pyramid of Giza
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Statue of Zeus at Olympia
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
Colossus of Rhodes: The Shortest Lived Wonder
Lighthouse of Alexandria
Temple of Artemis at Ephesus: The Most Beautiful of the Ancient Wonders
If you guessed the 7 wonders of the ancient world, you would be correct.
What about the next group of places, what do they have in common?
Golden Gate Bridge - California, USA
Empire State Building - New York City, USA
CN Tower - Toronto, Canada
Channel Tunnel - France/UK
Itaipu Dam - Paraguay/Brazil
Delta Works/ Zuiderzee Works - The Netherlands
Panama Canal - Panama
If you guessed the 7 Wonders of The Modern World, you would be correct.
According to worldatlas.com, in 1994, the American Society of Civil Engineers compiled a list of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. This was done to pay tribute to the 20th century's greatest civil engineering achievements.
Here is another list for you. What do they have in common?
The Colosseum, Rome, Italy
The Great Wall of China
The Taj Mahal, India
Christ the Redeemer, Brazil
Machu Picchu, Peru
Chichén Itzá, Mexico
Petra, Jordan
If you guessed the “new” 7 wonders of the world, you would be correct.
In 2001, Swiss-born, Canadian filmmaker Bernard Weber set up the New7Wonders Foundation to find a new seven wonders of the world for the modern era, asking members of the public to cast their votes. After months of deliberating, debating and shortlists, these are the impressive feats that made the final cut. (Source: thecollector.com)
Ok. What about these locations. What do they have in common?
Ikaria, Greece
Sardinia, Italy
Okinawa, Japan
Nicoya, Costa Rica
Loma Linda, California
Any guesses?
Travel to the tiny Aegean Island of Ikaria, Greece to discover the secrets of residents who live eight years longer than Americans, have half the rate of heart disease and almost no dementia.
Visit Sardinia, Italy in the Mediterranean and find it home to the greatest concentration of male centenarians in the world. You will also discover healthy lifestyles that have not changed much since the time of Christ.
Visit Okinawa, Japan and meet residents, including the world’s longest-lived women.
Grab a bike and pedal along a path on this Pacific coast peninsula and you will find colorful houses, exotic fruits and residents twice as likely as Americans to reach a healthy age of 90. That would be Nicoya, Costa Rica
But a little closer to home perhaps, “pull off the San Bernardino freeway east of Los Angeles and you will encounter a community of Adventists teaching us new lessons about the power of faith, friendship and fruit.” That’s a quote from the bluzones.com website.
Blue Zones. Only 5 in the entire world.
Blue Zones are areas of the world where people live the longest lives, consistently reaching age 100. In contrast, the average life expectancy in the U.S. is currently 77 years, according to the CDC.
Caitlin McAfee, a wellness dietitian at Houston Methodist, said, "…it's not just about longer lives, it's about healthier ones, too. People living in Blue Zones are also much less likely to suffer from chronic illnesses."
My friend Susie sent a video clip my way yesterday that in turn promoted today’s writing. It appears the man speaking is a pastor because he talks about sermon-prep. He goes on to say that sociologists were studying the happiest people on earth and one of the groups of people they found were the happiest on earth are a group of people called 7th day Adventists.
He went on to describe them as a little sect of Christians that are religious about Sabbath keeping. Here is what the study found:
#1 they are among the happiest people on earth
#2 Seventh-day Adventists live, on average, 11 years longer than the average American.
The man on the video asked the audience to pay particular attention to that number: Eleven years.
Now, the average life span is 77 years. He quoted that on the video, but I found the stats at cdc.gov to back it up: “Data are for the U.S. Life expectancy: 77.0 years Source: Mortality in the United States, 2020”
Next, we are going to find out how many days does the average person live. For that answer you simply take 77 years times 365 days. That comes out to 28,105 days, for the average person.
The pastor then said, for the purpose of his sermon, he wanted to know if a person always kept the Sabbath during that same amount of time, how many Sabbaths would they obey.
To figure that out, because there is a Sabbath every 7 days, you would divide 28,105 days by 7.
The answer is, over the course of a person’s lifetime, they would keep 4,015 Sabbaths.
The pastor then turned it up a notch. Instead of days, how many years’ worth of Sabbaths did they keep.
To find the answer you take the 4,015 Sabbaths divided by 365 days.
Are you ready for this?
That comes out to exactly 11 years and this pastor was excited!
He said, “do you see what happened? These people observed 11 years’ worth of Sabbaths over their lifetime and God added on average exactly 11 years to their lifespan!”
He went on to say, “That is amazing! That is mind blowing! Essentially what happened in their lives is God said, ‘Every time you give me a day, I’ll give you one back.”
Indeed.
“Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” NKJV
The Sabbath was built into the very fabric of creation. Those that try to take away the Sabbath do not have a clear understanding of what it means to have a most Holy God, our Creator, ‘bless’ and ‘sanctify’ a certain day.
This day, the 7th day of the week, contains a blessing that most cannot comprehend. I don’t like to use the word magical when talking about our God, but there really is something magical about the day.
If you do an online search the words “The 7th Day Beavers” you will find an amazing documentary that last over 10 years, following the lives a beaver family that never worked on the 7th day.
There are bees in South America that do not come out of their hives on Sabbath. Obviously these are isolated incidents but I think it happens more than we realize.
Genesis 2:1-3 gives us clear understanding of when the Sabbath was put into existence: Week 1; Day 7.
“People [in Blue Zones] aren't waking up in the morning rudderless. They're driven by life meaning and purpose,” Buettner says. “They’re investing in family, keeping their minds engaged and there’s no existential stress of being worthless in life like so many Americans. The option to be lonely shaves eight years off life expectancy here [in the U.S] but that does not exist in Blue Zones. You can't walk outside your front door in these regions without bumping into somebody you know, and this is all so much more powerful than we think.” (source: nbcnews.com)
by Jeanette Stark – Thursday, February 9, 2023