BETTER THAN A RUBBER BAND
By Steve Bietz
Burke County
The month of March in our history books is a month of some interesting inventions. It was in March of 1933 that the Monopoly Board Game was invented. It was in March of 1876 that the telephone was invented. It was in March of 1886 that Coca-Cola was invented. And maybe the best of all, was in March of 1845, for that is when the rubber band was invented. On March 17th, 1845, the London industrialist Stephen Perry was granted the patent for the production of rubber bands.
Today there are so many ways that we use rubber bands. Yes of course rubber bands are a standard item in every office, but we have taken the rubber band to a host of other locations. There is hardly a spot in our daily lives that we do not need a rubber band.
I dated a girl while I was a freshman in high school who had rubber bands in her mouth. The rubber bands added additional pressure to her metal braces that were making her teeth line up nice and straight. I remember on a couple of occasions that a rubber band would let go and come flying out of her mouth and hit me in the face.
I remember getting a brand new baseball glove and my dad showing me how to eliminate the stiffness of that brand new glove. We rubbed it down with shaving cream and then wrapped a big rubber band around the glove so that it would open and shut properly.
I remember my mom used rubber bands as an Easter egg decorator. She would wrap rubber bands in different directions around the eggs before dunking them in egg dye. The eggs would have cool patterns on them.
I remember my mom when my little brother began to crawl around and have a real interest in getting into the cabinet under the kitchen sink, she would stretch a couple of rubber bands tightly between the cabinet knobs to lock them in place.
I could go on and on about how rubber bands have been used in my life and I’m sure that you could do the same thing.
One thing I never did with rubber bands is to do what Joel Waul from Lauderhill, Florida accomplished with rubber bands. His big ball of rubber bands is now owned by Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. According to the Guinness World Record Book, it is the largest ball of rubber bands on the planet. It stands some 6 feet tall, weighs in at 9000 pounds, and consists of some 700,000 rubber bands. Yes, that cheap, reliable, strong rubber band seems to have no end to its usefulness. Of course, I’m not sure we needed a 9000-pound ball of rubber bands.
The biggest manufacturer of rubber bands is a company known as Alliance Rubber. The company was founded in Alliance, OH, in 1923. The company tag line caught my attention: “Holding Your World Together.” That rubber band tagline reminds me that we have a God in Heaven who holds our world together, not with a rubber band, but with His Hand. In Isaiah 41:10 we read, “Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, Yes I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Or how about Isaiah 49:15,16, where we read, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will never forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.” Indeed, our God holds our world together. And every morning I hope we will each come to our Heavenly Father and ask Him to hold us in His Hands. He is so pleased when we ask Him to hold us in the palm of His hand. I pray that there is no other place that you and I would rather be than in our Father’s Hands.
May we never forget that God holds our world together, much better than even a rubber band.
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Steve Bietz is the pastor at Morganton Seventh Day Adventist Church. You can read more good Christian news from Pastor Steve Bietz HERE.
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