Irony is often satisfying to read about. Perhaps it is because you are witnessing a cosmic joke being played on…someone else.
More than 100 food-safety experts who attended the 2014 Food Safety Summit in Baltimore, Maryland, got sick from food poisoning after eating the food at the convention center.
Ben Bernanke applied for a loan to refinance his mortgage, but the bank’s computerized approval system denied the loan because he’d recently changed jobs, which automatically puts up a “red flag.” The job that Bernanke left; he was the chairman of the Federal Reserve which determines the interest rates for banks.
In February 2015, 800 graduate school applicants received acceptance e-mails from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, a school recognized around the world as a leader in all facets of computer science. Later that day those same applicants received a second e-mail informing them that the first e-mail was a mistake. A school spokesperson blamed the goof on a “computer error.”
A newspaper truck for the Republican, based in Massachusetts, crashed into a home in 2010. Printed in big letters on the side of the truck were the words, “Where News Hits Home.”
In the ninth century, Chinese alchemists were trying to create an “elixir of immortality” but instead ended up creating gunpowder.
Who invented the fire hydrant? No one knows for sure because the patent was destroyed in a fire at the U. S. Patent Office in 1986.
In 2015 a Chicago building caught fire. More than 150 firefighters battled the blaze, but they couldn’t save the structure because of a lack of water nearby. The building, by the way, housed a factory that manufactured fire extinguishers.
In 1964 a University of Illinois industrial design student named John Spinello got an assignment: create an electronic game in which the players try to insert a metal rod into a hole without setting off the buzzer. He got to work and decided on a surgery theme. Good news: Spinello got an A! Bad news: he sold the rights of the game for $500 to the Milton Bradley Company which turned the assignment into the game Operation. Spinello’s invention became one of the 20th century’s most popular board games, but Spinello never made another cent off of it. That could be why, in 2014, the 77 year old couldn’t come up with the $25,000 he needed for…..an operation.
While not purely ironic, there are some things about following Jesus that seem backwards. The first will be last the last will be first. The measure you give will be the measure you get back. You are forgiven as you forgive, just to mention a few.
I’m wondering if it is ironic that those who try to save their lives lose them and those who lose their lives for the sake of Christ find them. Ironic or paradox, either way it is true.