Governors' desks were vacant. Senators' offices were empty. They might as well have just put a sign on the door - "Gone to Iowa." Yep! It was the election season of 2016. We've been through another one recently but I'm thinking about that one. It had been the time when everyone goes to New Hampshire and South Carolina and on and on in the wild and crazy year when so many people were wanting to be president.
One little light. That's all it took to render our car totally unusable. The little light in the rear of our vehicle was left on one night after we unloaded some things, and it stayed on for several days while we were gone. When we got back, everything in that car said, "I'm not starting, pal!" because that one little light totally drained our battery. But then came the hero! Yes, up came our friend in his pickup truck with his trusty jumper cables. And those cables delivered the energy that my flat old battery needed to run again!
The love of Mary Ann's life, Tom, was coming for a visit. He lived in another state, so those visits were really special. He was due to arrive Friday night or Saturday sometime, and Mary Ann's room had been declared a federal disaster area. Finally, on Thursday afternoon, she decided she'd better get busy trying to recover her room. It was really in an embarrassing condition.
We raised a son who loves sports, but he also had an ability in music. How do you put those two together? A lot of times those two interests don't go together. Well, it was fourth grade when we thought it was time to introduce our son to a musical instrument. And when we talked a little bit about what instrument he'd be interested in, he said, "Well, maybe the saxophone."
For three months, Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer were prisoners of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, accused along with other aid workers of trying to convert Afghans to Christianity. In October of 2001 their prison cells were suddenly shaken by the thunder of U.S. bombs falling on the city of Kabul. Weeks later, after a cold, sleepless night in a steel shipping container, the girls and their colleagues found themselves in a new prison south of Kabul, with rockets crashing down on the contested town they were in. Suddenly, there were men banging on their prison doors. They thought their Taliban captors were returning, and now their fate was clearly uncertain as the situation around them dissolved into total chaos. Then, to their surprise, an anti-Taliban soldier came in with reams of ammunition around his neck. He was just shouting two wonderful words, "You're free! You're free!"
Some days I wear a shirt and tie, because, well, that's kind of appropriate for the meetings I'm going to have that day. Now, you go home a little later and get into jeans and an old shirt. Why? Well, because I don't want to do all the work I'm going to be doing there in, you know, my dress up clothes. It will be appropriate for the work I have to do there.
He was in Singapore when he got word of a massive earthquake in the Indian Ocean and the possibility of a killer tsunami that could be headed for land; land that included his own village in India. He knew what he had to do. Desperately, he tried to reach his family there by means of a cell phone, and they answered. He warned them about the approaching danger, and they in turn warned the entire village of some 150 people. Within minutes they all were headed for high ground. The tsunami did hit that village full force. The homes were destroyed, the boats were destroyed, but every single person from that village survived.
We knew some folks who owned a convenience store and they were people who worked some very long hours to make a living, believe me. But we enjoyed teasing them about the prices in their store. We'd give some astronomical price for a half-gallon of milk, or a boxes of cookies, or a candy bar. Now it wasn't quite that bad, but you usually do pay noticeably more for things in a convenience store. See, that's the profit factor in being open at times and on days when other stores are closed. Our store owner friends were quick to defend those prices. They reminded us of a simple fact of life - convenience costs more. They're right.
La Conchita, California - a community sitting on this narrow strip of land between the Pacific Coast Highway and a steep cliff. In 1995, 600,000 tons of mud collapsed and buried nine houses there. Well, thankfully it moved slowly enough that everybody was able to get out alive. Well, not this time. In January of 2005, a chunk of the 300-foot bluff that towered over the town collapsed with a loud roar. In moments this sea of mud had crushed 15 homes and damaged 16 others. One man who missed the mudslide because of a quick trip for ice cream ran back to his buried home and began frantically digging for his wife and family with the rescuers. Tragically, they were some of those who died in the mudslide. It had been such a nice place to live; such a deadly place to live.
Quite often, I'll speak in churches that have two morning services, and it was a Sunday like that. I went into that little room off the sanctuary where you meet to pray with church leaders. But the people who were there when I went in weren't praying. They were playing - their trombones, that is. Actually, they were warming up to play in the brass section of the church's worship band. Now, there were some very interesting sounds coming from that room. In fact, I was almost afraid to go in, but I did. And I got involved in a conversation with the men behind the music. One of them had just made a minor goof in what he was practicing. Of course, how would I know - Mr. Music Dork? But that led to George telling me why he would much rather play with a band than play a solo. He said, "It is so much easier when the band is there to support you." When I asked him what he meant by "support you," he said, "Well, the rest of the band sort of carries you along and they cover up your mistakes!"
She must have been scared to death. She wasn't a public speaker, but that day she agreed to speak to 70,000 people in a football stadium in the Northwest. It was the last day of Billy Graham's Crusade in her city. And he had asked her to read a letter she'd received from her son. It was the end of the first Gulf War, and the troops were coming home; except for a relatively few American soldiers who weren't coming home and her son was one of them.
Birds had moved into the vent in the exhaust fan of our kitchen range while we were on vacation. They set up their little nest and made themselves really at home. And, man, were they noisy neighbors! The nest was so huge it made the fan unworkable. And some lovely spiders were hanging down from the hood on the stove. Our problem was that trying to remove that nest might have killed that nest full of baby birds. Well, we couldn't see them, but man, we could sure hear them when they were hungry! So, we waited until Mom and Dad bird took the babies out. A couple of weeks later, after we were sure they were gone, I got a long stick and I proceeded to rake out the rest. But when we removed the nest, we discovered a little surprise. Well, actually, a big, fat surprise. There was the fattest bird we had ever seen, sitting in the nest. As my wife went to get gloves and a box, he got away. But it literally took a major earthquake to get that bird out of his nest!
I'll never forget my Grandmother Irene. She was one funny lady. She laughed a lot and she laughed loudly! And she gave me money, she was the life of the party. Some people in our family think she was a big influence on my personality. That's not a very nice thing to say about a woman who is no longer here to defend herself, right? But there's no doubt my grandmother did have a great impact on my life. I almost never got to meet her though, because she had a serious bout with cancer before I was even born. But she made it and I got an awesome grandma out of the deal. It took some radical action on the part of the doctor to save her though. He went in and totally removed the cancer and the areas around it. It was painful, it left some scars, but I'm sure thankful that he did what he had to do to keep her alive.
For many years, Penn State was just one college of many with a powerful football program. And then not too long ago, it suddenly became the epicenter of a whole lot of outrage.
It was a massive tsunami that hit South Asia right after Christmas in 2004. I immediately flashed back when I heard about that to a real life lesson I had about tsunamis prior to that. I was in Kodiak, Alaska, with our On Eagles' Wings team of young Native Americans. They had just finished a string of grueling days of outreach, so we took them to a special spot on the ocean for a few hours off. Many of us were fascinated with these beautiful formations we saw just under the water near the shore. That's when our host told me about what happened after a major quake in Anchorage some years earlier. Folks who were at this same shore area watched the ocean suddenly recede dramatically, and that left all those beautiful underwater formations and shells totally exposed. So they seized this unusual opportunity to go in and collect all these treasures of the sea - not realizing that the sudden disappearance of the water was the first sign of an impending tsunami. Moments later, that monster wave suddenly enveloped everything in sight, including the people who literally had run right into its path.
I think I've been on a diet since I was about three days old, and I've become somewhat of an expert at what works and what doesn't work at losing weight...or putting it on.
Usually a total eclipse of the moon seems to happen when I'm counting sheep in the middle of the night. But this one started about 9:00 at night, and this one I got a chance to see. It's a pretty amazing sight to watch that shadow slowly move across the moon until it eventually covers it completely. I said to the friend who was assisting us with ministry that weekend, "I just wish we had binoculars." "Me, too," he said. Then it dawned on him, he said, "Hey, I do have binoculars in my truck!" All of a sudden we moved from seats near the back to something like front row seats on this eclipse. Those binoculars revealed the craters and all the fascinating details of that disappearing moon. What a difference it made to see it up close!
You don't have to watch TV very long to find out how to be a beautiful woman. They will tell you about hair, skin, mascara, teeth, and all the rest. But every once in a while, you meet a woman and there is this very special kind of beauty about her. There's a quality that is hard to put into words but really makes her special. It's kind of like a beach ball I saw the other night. You say the other night? Yeah. Actually you can use this beach ball in the dark. It has a light inside of it. It's pretty cool! It's the light inside that makes it distinctive.
I don't think I've ever "teared up" during a President's State of the Union Address to Congress - until that unforgettable moment during President George W. Bush's State of the Union early in 2005. For me, it had absolutely nothing to do with politics. It was just an intensely human moment that almost transcended politics.
It's amazing how creative parents can become when it's time to explain the facts of life to a child, and they really get creative when it comes to the vocabulary they choose. Now, we tell our kids that an ear is an ear, a leg is a leg, an elbow is an elbow and so on. But when it comes time to explain the more private parts of the body and the facts-of-life talk, we have a hard time using the right words. Frankly, I've heard some pretty weird names for human anatomy. Words invented, I guess, by a red-faced parent, but not recognized by any doctor on the planet. You know, it's good to use the right words when it comes to sex, especially the one that really counts - the Bible does.
