June 18, 2020

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The saying is about as old as dirt, "While the cat's away, the mice will play." To the extent that's true, the mice don't usually announce that they're planning to exploit the cat's absence, but not so with one business in our town. Where we were living back then, I drove by there. I saw a new display on the big sign that was in front of the business. The sign said, "The boss is away, so we will play." Let's hope the boss didn't come back early. Or maybe we should hope he did.

June 17, 2020

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It was always pretty exciting traveling with my wife. Well, but my wife with her camera was really exciting, because she could see things that I didn't see. Oh, yeah, I'd have to stop the car for what appeared to be no reason because she'd go, "Stop! Quick!" And, you know, when I'd see the picture, then I'd realize why we had to stop back then.

Oh, sometimes it was a little sign that later told a powerful story, or she'd seen one face in the middle of a hundred faces, or that one face captured on film some very poignant human emotion. Or we all got to see that glorious sunset, or that bird she saw in flight, or some very interesting scene that she saw and I missed.

June 16, 2020

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For most of us it's rare to see an eagle, and so an event when you do see one of those majestic birds soaring overhead it goes something like this: "Look! An eagle!" If you're driving when you hear that, your passengers might be in serious danger. Of course, an eagle isn't born knowing how to fly. Just like us learning to walk, they need to learn to fly and it's actually I imagine a pretty traumatic experience. Mama Eagle takes you high for a ride on her back and then she dumps you. Suddenly, you are hurtling through the sky with the ground below racing toward you. All the while, Papa Eagle is circling overhead, just watching. In a panic, the little eagle remembers watching Mom and Dad use these feathery things at their sides, so he clumsily extends his wings and starts flapping them frantically. That's a good start, but it's not enough to save him from this rapidly approaching disaster below. At that moment, Papa Eagle suddenly swoops downward at eye-blurring speed, flying straight for his falling child. And in a perfectly timed rescue, the father swoops in under his baby, catches him on his back, and takes him back to the sky.

June 15, 2020

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I was getting pretty bored with our family fishing vacation in Minnesota. So my dad decided to take little nine-year-old Ronnie to see Paul Bunyan, the legendary giant lumberjack. Actually, it's this huge Paul Bunyan, sitting on a chair with his big ax and Babe the Blue Ox nearby. And there was this little log cabin at his feet. My dad went over to the ticket booth and came back with my ticket, which I eagerly gave to the ticket taker so I could go in and see big old Paul. As I walked in, I almost became the youngest heart attack victim in Minnesota history. Paul Bunyan's big old voice boomed out across the grounds and said, "Hello, Ronnie." I was blown away! How could I know that this was all a conspiracy? The ticket booth guy gets the kid's name, relays it to the little man with a microphone in Paul's log cabin, who then uses that information to welcome some unsuspecting little guy like me. All I knew was that that big guy knew my name!

June 12, 2020

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Jeff was the quarterback of our high school football team back when we lived in New Jersey. He always attended this little Bible study we had pre-game, but he never made a commitment to Christ. Well, I saw him on one of his breaks from college. He said, "You know, Ron, I have made a commitment to Christ now, but it was hard to do it in high school, especially because we were guys.

June 11, 2020

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Our daughter was gone for the morning and a friend had come to babysit our two grandsons. That was a brave lady! Actually, she had a relatively problem-free, crisis-free morning, except for one time when she just had to reprimand our three-year-old angel. Being a firstborn, he was very sensitive to being corrected. His later comment indicated that he had clearly recorded what was a very gentle reprimand - the kind you do with a smile on your face, not a snarl. When Mom returned and asked our little guy how his morning was with "Miss Wilma," he invented a new phrase to describe her correction. He said, "Miss Wilma got mad at me; she got happy mad."

June 10, 2020

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Okay, do the math! At one point in time, we had one grandchild. I couldn't believe my wife was old enough to be a grandmother! Can you believe that? Well, you know what? Within a matter of years, that one became nine grandchildren!

June 9, 2020

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You might look at these 50 Native American and First Nations young people from 30 different tribes and you may not see anything miraculous until you hear their stories. Like the young man who buried 14 friends and loved ones and got lost in a haze of drugs and suicidal thinking. The young woman raped by a trusted loved one and sexually abused by others. The young woman who felt reduced to nothing by a father who said, "You're a worthless mistake." She was crushed by her mother's suicide, and her father offered her a rope and said, "Why don't you just go out and do what your mother did."

June 8, 2020

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Okay, if you had been my next door neighbor, you could have pointed over to the yard and said, "Look at that grown man gathering sticks." Excuse me; I don't have the kind of a boring life where I just go around gathering sticks all the time. It's for a purpose. We put all those sticks into this kindling box in the garage, and then we happen to like having a fire in our fireplace. And I learned that the basic old Boy Scout law that you've got to have kindling to get a fire going. It's true!

June 5, 2020

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If you're a mayor, you're used to taking the heat, of course, but not the flames. Several years ago there was a story that was pretty amazing. It came from Newark, N. J. where Cory Booker was Mayor, and what he did to save his next door neighbor.