I Kings 9
Romans 4
Psalm 113; Psalm 114; Psalm 115
July 19
George Washington Carver begins experimental project with Henry Ford
The agricultural chemist George Washington Carver, head of Alabama’s famed Tuskegee Institute, arrives in Dearborn, Michigan at the invitation of Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company.
Born to slave parents in Missouri during the Civil War, Carver managed to get a high school education while working as a farmhand in Kansas in his late 20s. Turned away by a Kansas university because he was an African American, Carver later became the first black student at Iowa State Agricultural College in Ames, where he obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. In 1896, Carver left Iowa to head the department of agriculture at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, a school founded by the leading black educator Booker T. Washington. By convincing farmers in the South to plant peanuts as an alternative to cotton, Carver helped resuscitate the region’s agriculture; in the process, he became one of the most respected and influential scientists in the country.
Like Carver, Ford was deeply interested in the regenerative properties of soil and the potential of alternative crops such as peanuts and soybeans to produce plastics, paint, fuel and other products. Ford had long believed that the world would eventually need a substitute for gasoline, and supported the production of ethanol (or grain alcohol) as an alternative fuel. In 1942, he would showcase a car with a lightweight plastic body made from soybeans. Ford and Carver began corresponding via letter in 1934, and their mutual admiration deepened after Carver made a visit to Michigan in 1937. As Douglas Brinkley writes in “Wheels for the World,” his history of Ford, the automaker donated generously to the Tuskegee Institute, helping finance Carver’s experiments, and Carver in turn spent a period of time helping to oversee crops at the Ford plantation in Ways, Georgia.
By the time World War II began, Ford had made repeated journeys to Tuskegee to convince Carver to come to Dearborn and help him develop a synthetic rubber to help compensate for wartime rubber shortages. Carver arrived on July 19, 1942, and set up a laboratory in an old water works building in Dearborn. He and Ford experimented with different crops, including sweet potatoes and dandelions, eventually devising a way to make the rubber substitute from goldenrod, a plant weed. Carver died in January 1943, Ford in April 1947, but the relationship between their two institutions continued to flourish.
Psalms 113 - 118
Psalms 113–118 were called the Egyptian Hallel psalms, and they were used at the Feasts of Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles and Dedication. Apparently they were sung during the time the Passover was being celebrated. Some Bible scholars think three of them were sung at the beginning and three at the end. Others think they were sung intermittently during the Passover feast.
The psalm before us is a call to praise the wonderful God at whom we have been looking in Psalms 112 and 113. In Psalm 113, for instance, He is the Creator, He is the Redeemer, and He will be the Redeemer of creation. Because of this, we are to praise God. The Hallel psalms are for the purpose of praising God.
Notice that this psalm looks back to the time Israel was delivered from Egyptian bondage.
When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language [Psa 114:1].
When Abraham first went into the Land of Promise, he was a stranger. God told him that his people would go down to the land of Egypt where they would become a nation. Israel began as a nation in Egypt, and anti–Semitism was born in Egypt. The Bible tells of their sufferings, their hardships, their persecutions, and their troubles in Egypt. Then God remembered His covenant with them, heard their cry, looked upon the children of Israel, and had respect unto them. God delivered them from Egypt, and this psalm begins with the wilderness march.
Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion [Psa 114:2].
God is speaking now of the whole nation being a tabernacle. God's original intention was that Israel would be a nation of priests—not just one tribe—which means they were to be priests for the world. I think that that is what will happen in the Millennium when Israel will serve in the earthly temple.
The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back [Psa 114:3].
The children of Israel not only crossed the Red Sea, they also crossed the Jordan River (Jos 3:13-17).
What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back? [Psa 114:5].
The God of creation (whom we saw in Psalm 113 with His omnipotent power) rolled back the Red Sea, and He also held back the waters of Jordan. These were miracles, and I don't think they can be explained on any other basis. When the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea they had been delivered from Egypt by blood—blood on the doorposts. When they crossed over Jordan they were separated from the wilderness and brought into the Promised Land. These are the two stages of redemption, and they illustrate the two stages of our redemption. The Lord Jesus, on the cross, has delivered us from the penalty of sin—that is for the past. He delivers us from the power of sin in the present—provided we meet His conditions—and He will deliver us from the presence of sin, which has not yet been realized. The crossing of the Red Sea and the crossing of the Jordan picture the two stages of redemption.
Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob;
Which turned the rock into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters [Psa 114:7-8].
You can see how appropriate the reading of this beautiful little psalm would be at the celebration of the Passover. It is a call to remembrance of God's mercy and power on behalf of His people.
Jay