When you hear about the weather on the East Coast, you almost always hear about a place called Cape Hatteras. It's a barrier reef off the coast of North Carolina; it's been called the Graveyard of the Atlantic. And it's probably the storm center of the East Coast. In fact, when you look at the map or hear the weatherman in the morning he'll say, "There's a blizzard off of Cape Hatteras. There's a hurricane off of Cape Hatteras. There's a major storm system off of Cape Hatteras."
Passages - that's how one author described life's major points of transition where you are moving from one life-stage to another. I remember when our daughter and son-in-law were in one of those passages. They were going to have their first child.
When our oldest grandson was 14 months old, he had a ball discovering his world. I loved to take him in my arms and get him excited about something in God's world. I'd point to a tree, or a flower, or a dog, or a cow and I'd teach him the word for it. After that, whenever we'd be together, he'd start the pointing, and he'd give me his version of the word for whatever he was pointing to. But I think I saw the greatest wonder in him when he'd look up at the night sky. It didn't matter what was going on around him, he'd start looking up and pointing at the moon, the stars. Man, he loved the stars! He just couldn't miss those lights shining in that dark night sky.
The man in the Disney movie was an inventor. One of his inventions was a shrinking machine. There's been some suggestions that that's what happened to me - I got into a shrinking machine. Anyway, this actually did happen to his kids' baseball. It crashed through the window of his laboratory. It landed in dad's shrinking machine, turning it on as it landed, and the kids were amazed to see how their ball suddenly shrank. Thinking this machine was really cool, they started playing with it...until the machine suddenly shrank them to an almost invisible size. And the anguished cry of the father is the title of the movie "Honey, I shrunk the kids!"
It all started when my Dad helped some people lift a piano. There were not enough men to lift it, but they all thought they could handle it. And the next thing I knew, my Dad ended up in the hospital for a hernia operation, all because of lifting that big piano. He never should have tried to lift that much. You know what? I'm talking to somebody now who is sweating, and straining to lift...oh, not a piano! But it might be something you were never meant to lift.
A listener shared a story with me that's just too powerful not to share with you. A man named George Thomas was a pastor in a small New England town. One Easter Sunday morning, he got up to speak and he set a rusty, bent-up, old bird cage next to the pulpit. You could tell by people's faces that the pastor had some explaining to do. He said, "Well, I was walking through town yesterday when I saw a young boy coming toward me, swinging this bird cage. On the bottom of the cage were three little birds who were shivering with cold and fear. So I asked the boy, "What you got there?" He said, "Just some old birds." The pastor then asked, "What are you going to do with them?" The boy said, "Well, I'm gonna tease 'em and pull out their feathers to make 'em fight. Then I'm gonna have a real good time." The pastor pointed out that the boy would soon get tired of those birds and he said, "What are you going to do with them then?" "Oh, I've got some cats," the boy said. "They like birds." What happened next is what puts you and me into this picture.
You know, a hand shake just isn't what it used to be. It used to be all that you needed to guarantee an agreement between two people. There aren't very many deals done today on just a hand shake. If someone says they'll do something, out come the papers, the contract, the warranties, the fine print, the lawyers, the notary public. I've learned from following my wife around antique stores, where we've mostly just looked, that the less there are of certain objects the more valuable that one is. That's true of people too. In a world where words are cheap, you can be one of a rare and priceless breed.
We were far from home in Phoenix, Arizona, living in New Jersey, when my wife had a gallbladder crisis. In fact, she was going to have to have her gallbladder removed. Well, I wasn't too happy about that happening so far from home, but God was in it. Because our friend who we were there with at a conference said, "Well, I just had this surgery not long ago, and our doctor here is one of the few in the country (at that time anyway) who is an expert at doing gallbladder surgery with lasers. Really? Well, instead of the six weeks that I thought my wife was going to have to recuperate in Arizona, why she was up and around in a very few days, because of the amazing power of a laser. Think about that. I mean, lasers can penetrate steel. They can help you get better eyesight, or take care of a gallbladder that needs to come out. It's pretty amazing power. Now, diffused light can't do that; only the focused light can do it. If my wife had been under just diffused light all that time, it wouldn't do anything about her gall bladder. But it took the focused light - that powerful energy - to really change things. There's awesome power when you focus the energy on one thing.
Our oldest son was only two years old when our neighbor's daughter, Kim, broke her leg. Now, on the scale of world disasters, Kim's leg wouldn't even move the needle. But it was a very big disaster to our two-year-old son. We got the news, and when we did we stopped, and as a family we prayed for Kim. We were done, but my son wasn't. All day that day he kept coming up to Mom while she was at the sink or the stove, cleaning the bedroom, or whatever. And he tugged on her pant leg, and she would say, "Yes?" And he would say, "Pray for Kim."
"Office of Homeland Security" - I suppose there are some younger people that didn't know that wasn't always part of the United States government. It's a pretty new thing. The fact that we have, and that we need, an Office of Homeland Security pretty much tells the story of the kind of world we're in right now. I mean, we've got enhanced security at our airports, sometimes tours are curtailed at many public utilities, your bags get searched at sporting events, and business is booming at security companies.
When you're a little kid, they're pretty rough on you if you tell on somebody else. Remember? Oh, maybe that happened to you. Oh, the names they call you when you do that are not particularly complimentary: tattle tail, traitor, (depending on your generation) rat fink. Those are the nice names. It gets worse than that. Kids almost get to feeling that telling about something wrong is worse than doing something wrong. That's not true.
Maybe you've seen those old world maps that were created when a lot of the world was still unexplored. When they reached the edge of what had been explored, they drew a line and then they showed dragons and monsters beyond it - which didn't exactly encourage exploration. The story is told of this first century Roman commander who had to lead his troops beyond the line on the map and into "dragon" territory. He sent a courier back to Rome with a straightforward message - "We have just marched off the map! Please send new orders!"
When you work at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, you know there will be no physical link to the outside world for you between February and October. You are 840 miles from the nearest populated site and you're facing average winter temperatures of 80 below zero. Now, imagine being one of the women stationed there and discovering a lump that indicates you may have breast cancer. Distant medical authorities determined that this lady had to receive some emergency medical supplies. (And it really happened.) Getting those supplies though? Well, easier said than done.
Our local high school team won the state championship in football one year, and the coach gave at least one reason in the newspaper. He said, "We have mastered the two-minute offense. In other words, you have to know how to do the "hurry up" offense and get a lot done in a short time in order to be a championship team, like when there's only two minutes left in the first half or the end of the game.
My wife always had a very full life, but not too full to keep her from exercising her mischievous streak once in a while. (Once in a while?) Like with some of the gifts that she's given me over the years. She's been known to take a gift and put it in a little wrapped box inside a little bigger box, inside a little bigger box, inside... well, you know. I had to open all of those boxes to get to my little present. You wade through several empty boxes, except for the newspaper that's wrapped around nothing, and you begin to wonder, "Is there really any gift in here?" And, "Is it really worth all this?"
Arnold Schwarzenegger - now, that's not exactly a stage name. But, boy, he became a star! And in case you haven't been around for a while, you know Arnold Schwarzenegger became one of Hollywood's hottest properties and then the Governor of California; the bodybuilder who became a movie star. In fact, I'm often mistaken for him on the street. Uh-huh. He's made the cover of magazines, and apparently when he's in a movie it has guaranteed a big draw at the gate.
I've had days when my back felt about 20 years older than the rest of my body. Ever had that? Sciatica is what I think the doctor called it. I just called it "sorebacka." I'm grateful I haven't had a bout like that for several years, but I can tell you that when I wake up crooked, I feel like just staying in bed or in any comfortable position I can find. But I got some weird advice. Someone said, "Go for a walk when your back is hurting." Now, let me tell you this, walking is the last thing I feel like doing, but I decided to try it. I walked around our lake, and by the time I returned, the pain had basically gone away. I had to force myself to exercise, but it was exercise that actually made me feel better. Now there's a new scientific study that compared two groups of people with "sorebacka" (wait a minute, oh that's sciatica) - one that took it easy and one that exercised. The exercisers reported less pain and more mobility. Now, what you don't feel like doing when you're hurting is what will actually help you stop hurting!
One moment they were in their apartment building. The next they were under it. Ninety people were trapped when a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar suddenly leveled their building.Fifty Myanmar children went to preschool that day. At least a dozen died there in the sudden collapse of their school.
I was out of the country, and my wife was visiting her father, along with our daughter and son-in-law. My wife convinced her dad to hike with them back into the woods to see the spring where they used to go to get water when she was a little girl. That spring gushing from the rocks, just beneath a cave above it.
