Monday, June 27, 2005

I was watching on TV the observance of the tenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, and my mind raced back to this unforgettable personal visit I had to the site of, well, what was a very deadly tragedy. In a pre-September 11th America, that terrorist bombing of a Federal Office Building left most Americans in stunned disbelief; at least it did me. My guide for my visit to the memorial made it really special and very moving, actually. Because he's a state trooper who was one of the rescuers that day. His recollections of the joy of rescues and the heartbreak of lost lives are something I'll never forget. Of course, all the traces of that bombed-out building are gone now. The site is now a beautiful lawn with a stone chair for each of the victims. What was the street that day is now a reflection pond. Nothing remains there from the day the world stopped at 9:02 A.M. - nothing, that is, except the tree. On an embankment across from what was the building site stands a big old tree, still partially blackened by the bomb blast. We stood there, my rescuer friend and I, and we prayed beneath those branches that somehow had endured the blast. They call it The Survivor Tree.

Friday, June 24, 2005

The Department of Homeland Security is a relatively new idea in America; a government body that coordinates our efforts to keep our country safe from forces that could hurt us. But "homeland security" is hardly a new idea. It's been the job of every parent since children were invented - the sacred assignment of guarding our family from the things that could hurt them. That job has never been more difficult.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Here's two unlikely words to be matched up - channel surfing. Of course, they have been matched up. Channel surfing refers, of course, to the practice of skipping from one channel to another to see what's on each one. Men have mastered that! Oh, we've got the most powerful thumbs in the world. When there were only a few channels, we didn't surf much, but look what cable has done. You've got dozens of channels to check out - hundreds sometimes. As you surf, you may get a glimpse of a sports channel, a food channel, a travel channel, then a movie channel, a country music channel, a nature channel, and of course, a home shopping channel. Increasingly, a lot of what you'll come upon is either raunchy or dumb or boring. Or, maybe you can't stand, let's say, country music. Or you fall asleep watching someone cook. Or you don't care about sports. Whatever, it's okay. You can't decide what's on each channel, but it's totally up to you what channel you watch!

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

We've got a family doctor that I just totally trust. I'm a blessed guy, but I can't say that I look for opportunities to go see him, of course. But if I do have to go, I have a lot of reasons to trust him - not the least of which is, he asks me about my symptoms. So, I give him all the clues I can. I tell him where it hurts, when it started, how I got desperate enough to finally come to a doctor's office. Then he investigates my temperature and checks out my vital signs. And I'm glad. Can you imagine if he walked into the room where I was waiting for him and before I could even open my mouth, he pointed at me and barked, "Penicillin!" What? He's already headed for me with that needle, and I haven't even had a chance to tell him what's wrong. Do you think I'd trust his diagnosis? Do you think I'd go there the next time I needed attention?

Thursday, June 16, 2005

Little Jessica suddenly became America's child the day she fell down that narrow shaft in a backyard in Texas. Here was a toddler, wedged nearly upside down, in a shaft far too narrow for a man to navigate, and unable to help herself in any way. It didn't take long for the press to descend on that little hole in the ground to cover this valiant effort to try to save little Jessica's life. Pretty soon countless people across the country and around the world were rooting and praying for her life. I was one of them. At first, there appeared to be no way out of this deadly situation, but the rescuers weren't giving up. They began to build a wider shaft parallel to the one Jessica was trapped in. She'd been in there for nearly three days when a rescuer finally went down that new shaft and through the tunnel they had dug to Jessica. Minutes later - a scene many of us will never forget. In the glare of the press's massive lights, a battered but breathing little girl emerged from that hole with her arms tightly around her rescuer.

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

It was a 2004 American League Championship Series, and one big reason the Boston Red Sox triumphed over my New York Yankees was a veteran pitcher named Curt Schilling. He was selected to pitch the opening game in the New York series, and although he had torn an ankle tendon in his previous start, he thought he could gut it out. He was wrong. Losing that game actually started the Red Sox into a 3-0 deficit in the best of seven series. The Red Sox started to come back, and amazingly, Curt Schilling had a chance to try again. Later he would tell the press that the first game showed what he could do. This second outing showed what God can do. Although Curt had been named "Good Guy of the Year" actually by Sporting News, he had never talked publicly about the commitment to Jesus Christ he made several years before.

This time, while praying with his pastor before the game, he expressed his willingness to speak up about his Lord if he was given the opportunity. His incredible four-hit victory gave him that chance. He clearly glorified God in his post game interview. Later, when he pitched a winning game in Game 2 of the World Series, Curt Schilling told reporters: "If you haven't checked it out, read Philippians 4:13 - that's 'I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.' I can't do anything these days without having that reverberate in my head." Those public declarations of his dependency on Christ may well have been his greatest victories. Later he said, "I've learned that you should never hide your faith. I had wasted seven years. People didn't know."

Tuesday, June 7, 2005

Some friends of ours have struggled with a wide variety of health issues over the past several years. Not long ago, a trusted friend told them about a juice taken from a rare fruit that seems to have measurably improved her health, and the health of several people she loves. Our friends invested in that juice, and they like the early results. I can just imagine what would have happened, though, if some telemarketer had called them cold and tried to sell this product to them. Click. I know these people. They never would have bought it from some professional salesman. But it helped when someone like them, and someone they knew and trusted was the one to tell them about it. They wanted what she believed in and what was changing her.

Wednesday, June 1, 2005

Our friends, Dan and Ellen, live in this beautiful farmhouse that became a little less beautiful lately. They'd been doing some heavy outdoor work and they were using a big old dump truck. Now, Ellen's a city girl who's lived on a farm for so many years that there isn't much she can't do - including driving a dump truck! Well, this particular night she had just started it up when she had to run in the house for something, maybe a phone call, and then she left it running for just a minute. I guess it was more minutes inside than she had anticipated. You know how phone calls are. Something happened as the air pressure built up in the truck's air brakes and they somehow released! Yeah, that big old dump truck started rolling until something stopped it - Dan and Ellen's dining room and kitchen! That truck plowed right through their dining room wall. The brakes on their vehicle failed and the result was major damage to their home!

Friday, May 27, 2005

Jennifer and Kourtney were three-year-old twins, and they were excited about pre-school! In fact they were so excited, they got up in the middle of the night in their Omaha, Nebraska home and they walked out of the house to make the six-block walk to school. All this while their parents were sound asleep. You say, "Isn't that cute?" No. Snow was everywhere that night, and the temperature was nine degrees below zero, and the girls were reported missing at 4:05 A.M. after family members awoke to find a light on and the front door open. Two police officers started driving the route to school, hoping to find the girls before it was too late. At one point, their squad car was actually stopped by the ice on a steep hill. They were stopped right in front of an alley, which they decided to investigate. And there they found first little footprints, then three tan boots, no bigger than the palm of the officer's hand, and finally they found barefoot Kourtney, wearing an open coat kneeling beside her sister Jennifer, who was face down in the snow, wearing socks but no coat. Even though Jennifer was near death when they found her, both girls miraculously survived. If someone had not come looking for them, they would have died.

Monday, May 23, 2005

My son bought an old Mustang when he was in high school (not the kind with four legs. I mean the kind with four wheels). He used money he got from selling some of his valuable baseball card collection. Some years later, he wanted to sell it and put the proceeds into the work that he is doing with Native Americans. He was home for a little while and that's where the Mustang was, so he put an ad in the paper about it. First day - no calls. Second day - no calls. He wasn't expecting a line at the door exactly, but he thought he'd get a little more response than that. Then he found out why the phone was silent. He checked the ad and found that the paper had goofed and published a phone number that was a wrong number. But what a difference that one number made! When we dialed the number in the paper, there never was any answer. And since it takes a couple of days to change the error, the wrong number made more encore appearances in the paper. You gotta feel bad for some guy who's looking in the paper, sees a car he wants at a price he likes, and dials the magic number that cannot possibly reach the person who has what he's interested in.