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Voicemail I guess is better than nothing. It doesn't respond, it records. One friend captured how I feel in what he recorded tongue-in-cheek. You call, then you know, you get the little click and you hear the friend's voice saying, "In a world of cold and uncaring humans, isn't it refreshing to be greeted by a warm and friendly voicemail?" No! You just can't automate a personal response!
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When I used to go places with my two sons, people would often say, "And who are these young men?" And I'd say, "Oh, these are my bodyguards." We'd all get a good laugh at that! Of course, you know, these guys of ours grew up pretty fast, and it was believable that they could be my bodyguards.
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It had been a frozen and freezing winter in New England and Canada. They got walloped with a mega ice-storm that left two inches of ice on everything. In Montreal, for example, power lines and poles and trees just collapsed under the weight of the ice, and thousands of people were without power for days; which means many were without heat in the middle of a Montreal winter. In one neighborhood, one man got pretty resourceful after shivering for five days. He marched across the street with a lot of orange extension cord and asked his neighbor if he could plug into their outdoor outlet. The people on one side curiously were without power and very cold. The people on the other side of the street had power and were pretty cozy.
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Forgetting can get you into a lot of trouble. Like forgetting someone's name, or maybe forgetting an appointment, or maybe you forgot your homework. Or, "The dog ate it." Yeah, uh-huh, or you wouldn't want to forget your wedding anniversary. Oh, no... No, that can cause trouble. But forgetting is a basic skill for people who want to be emotionally free and spiritually alive. Oh, some kinds of forgetting really help. No, not the accidental kind. We're talking about the deliberate kind.
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Whether you're in your car, or in your home, or almost anywhere you are right now, I think you probably have available to you what you're going to need for our next few minutes. Yeah, because you're either near one or you might even carry one. Now, some people use this object too much, other people could afford to use it a little more. Maybe you've guessed what it is by now. Yep, it's a mirror, and you'll need it today, because that's where we're going to end up.
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When a little child gets home later than they're supposed to, you know there's going to be something on the other end. There's going to be a worried and not very happy parent waiting for them. I heard recently about a little girl who got home unusually late from school only to find a daddy who was, of course, not happy at all. He asked the little girl why she was late. She said, "Because my friend broke her dolly." Her dad said, "Oh, okay, so you stayed with her to fix it?" He didn't expect her gentle little reply, "No, Daddy. I stayed with her to help her cry."
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I really like football. I just don't have a lot of time to watch it. But you know, I watched a whole game that wasn't even my team! It was the Denver Broncos when they won that astonishing victory over the heavily favored Pittsburgh Steelers in a wild-card playoff game. But I was watching more than a football game; I was watching Tim Tebow and the drama that unfolded every time he took the field. That game was no exception.
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One of the amazing frustrations about families is that you just can't get everybody to agree on a comfortable temperature. Sometimes you can't even get a husband and wife to agree on it. One likes the room cozy and warm; the other likes it cool and refreshing, shall we say. It's hard to even be in agreement on what is hot and what is cold.
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Now, men can handle conflict, and they can handle confrontation, they can handle challenges, but they can't handle tears. You know, most men, tears are like the toughest thing for them to take. But you know something? Tears are a powerful language; they're very powerful. They have a language of their own. Oftentimes when someone is counseling with us and they're crying, I will ask them the question, "Can you tell me what your tears are trying to say?" See, when I see your tears, I know how deeply I may have hurt you. Did you know that we can do that to God?
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In much of America, spring announces its arrival with an explosion of color. Those yellow forsythia flowers start popping out on bushes, the daffodils start to poke their heads through the ground, and the trees around our headquarters suddenly color the landscape with those delicate white flowers. Now, my wife, who I think was a certified plantologist, told me that those are ornamental pear trees. When I asked her about the "ornamental" part, she pointed out to me that they produce beautiful flowers, but these pear trees don't produce any pears. I guess that's why they're ornamental.
