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October 2, 2020

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It seemed harmless enough when I entered. I was just a kid at an amusement park in Chicago, and the ride was just this big cylinder that made you feel like you were walking into a washing machine. They called it The Rotor. I stood against the edge and I waited for it to do its thing. Then it started to do what something called The Rotor might be expected to do - it rotated. As it began to spin faster and faster, the floor started to disappear in front of my feet. I was plastered against the side of that cylinder, looking down into this yawning black hole. I hated it. I wanted off. Too bad!

October 1, 2020

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A friend of mine who's served on his local school board for many years. And, of course, this year there are unique challenges. But over the years, they've had challenges too. The more demands that have been placed on schools in recent years, the more complicated the work becomes and they've got more things to figure out. One of the days that he was most frustrated that kind of surfaced in a conversation we had. And he said, "You know, our state keeps passing mandates to us for things our school system has to do, but lots of times they give us the mandate without the money. They decide what we have to do, and we get to figure out how to pay for it."

September 30, 2020

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When you've done youth ministry as long as I have, you've seen a lot of volleyball. Yep! Some of the dramatic moments in a volleyball game, of course, come when one player slams that ball over the net and right into the ground before any opponent can touch it. He or she just spikes it in. But often there's an important move that precedes spiking it in; that's when another teammate lofts that ball up and into perfect position for someone else to spike it in. That's how to score points: first, you set it up, then you spike it in.

September 29, 2020

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Don't you love it with today's technology we can record a TV program and fast-forward past the commercials to get to the program. With the sorry state of a lot of shows today, it might be smarter to fast forward past the program and maybe watch the commercials. A lot of them are more entertaining than the show they're part of! There's one I saw years ago that was a little strange, but I obviously still remember it. It was advertising a particular pain reliever. They started their fairly annoying advertisement for the product, and then they suddenly interrupted it for this one aggravated person looking in the camera. They had this great line, addressed to the company whose product was being advertised: "I hate your commercials, but I love your product!"

September 28, 2020

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I don't think our area had ever seen anything like it. It was a thick, almost unbreakable sheet of ice that covered much of our state. And it wasn't just here for days. It was here for weeks. Two consecutive storms actually created a double and triple freeze situation that made walking as treacherous as anything I have ever experienced. We had a couple of horses that needed hay and grain and unfrozen water. It didn't matter how dangerous it was to get to them. I tried to reason with them, but they just wouldn't listen. So here was a city boy carrying two heavy buckets of water at a time when no one should have been trying to walk on this ice. I have never walked so carefully. I have never prayed so continuously in my life! And while local emergency rooms were jammed with people with broken limbs, I didn't fall!

September 25, 2020

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It was during a major energy crisis in the United States. From the White House on down, people were turning off lights, canceling or combining automobile trips, and using energy conservation steps they had never even considered before. A Christian college in the Boston area had a chapel with a yellow-lit cross on the top. In keeping with the need to conserve, they turned off that light. Before long, they got an urgent call from an air traffic controller at Logan Airport. He said, "You need to turn on the lights on your cross...immediately!" Here's what the college learned that night that they hadn't known before. The flight controller said, "That cross is the first landmark for flights coming in from Europe, and we have a flight coming in now on low fuel. I know we're having an energy crisis, but turn on the lights on that cross. If they can't see the lights on the cross, they can't land safely."

September 24, 2020

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Whenever we had a young grandchild come over to our house, it was almost all good news. The reason I say almost is because of the preparations we have to fly into to get ready for the arrival of like a two-year-old. Yes, I said two-year-old. That's as in "super inquisitive." (Yeah, you know.) See, our little grandchildren...they had a way of exploring and experimenting with every object within their reach. There are two kinds of things that need to quickly disappear before a young grandchild starts his little adventure at Grandma and Granddad's house. Things that can damage either the child or that he could damage. So as we would joyfully anticipate a little one being with us, we would also fly into a frenzied little exercise called baby-proofing our house.

September 23, 2020

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I told a friend that if I were to die today, I'd have no complaints because I have lived what I think is like a whole lifetime a long time ago - maybe several of them. The Lord's been very, very good to me in terms of opportunities.

September 22, 2020

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The Greek ferry boat was loaded with more than 500 passengers, and a lot were visitors from other countries. Suddenly, that ship plowed into a rocky outcropping, and in minutes the ferry went down two miles from shore, claiming the lives of 66 people. But you know what? It was a tragedy that never had to happen. Those rock outcroppings are clearly marked on navigational charts, and the ferry had passed by them countless times, and there's even a light atop them that's visible for seven miles. But the captain and three key crew members were not at their posts that night; they were reportedly down below watching a soccer match on television. A Greek newspaper headline proclaimed, "A blind course on autopilot." So as the ship was on a collision course, the captain was not on the bridge.

September 21, 2020

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Four boys in a house on fire; that's what happened to my friend's nephews. Thankfully, the Fire Department got the call early and they were there in minutes. It was clear there was no way they could go into that blaze to bring the boys out. But all four of them were huddled around a second floor window, which meant they could be saved. So, the firefighters quickly prepared to catch the boys. They yelled to them to jump into the waiting net below. The oldest boy jumped; he was safe. A second boy, then a third brother jumped to their rescue below. Their ten-year-old brother was the last one left at the upstairs window. He hesitated. Again and again the firefighters were begging him to jump. Every time, he refused..every time. Sadly, it cost him his life.

September 18, 2020

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A dear friend of this ministry donated the car he was about to trade in. It was a whole lot more car than I was used to driving, and it was a wonderful gift. It was pretty much fully loaded. One of its nice features was a compass that was mounted on the rear view mirror. At any given moment, it was showing an "N" for north, or an "S" for south...you get the idea. Now, why is that such a big deal? You don't know my sense of direction. Did I say "sense"? That compass is a real boon. I have no excuse now for not knowing where I'm going. Just consult the compass, right?

September 17, 2020

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It might happen to a community once in a lifetime, or maybe even just once in a century. But sometimes there are those disasters that define and redefine a town for years to come. The Johnstown, PA, flood would be one of the most famous historic examples. You've probably never heard of the flood that swept into my wife's hometown years ago, but it was a major defining event for that town. She was a teenager when, with just a brief warning from upstream, the local creek burst out of its banks into this massive flash flood. While there was major damage done to the community, thankfully, only a few lives were lost. They actually were some older folks who lived on the south side of town. Rescuers actually came by their creek-side house before that wall of water hit. They offered them a place in the lifeboat. They refused to get in. They said, "Hey, we've lived here a long time, we've seen a lot. We've been fine this far. We'll be fine this time." They weren't. They died in that flood.

September 16, 2020

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Every time I hear anyone mention the first Gulf War, it brings back to my memory an interview with a soldier who was there as they were about to go to war from Kuwait and into Iraq. She said, "You know, we've gotten training when we were in boot camp about chemical warfare. We kind of dozed off, you know, and didn't take notes, It was boring, threw paper wads, whatever. It was just boring stuff." She said, "Now they're covering chemical warfare again, because we're about to go into Iraq where they have them." She said, "We're taking notes, we're asking questions this time, we're staying late after class." I thought, "Wow! What a big difference; same material, same information." What was different? All of a sudden soldiers knew that their life could depend on what they were learning, and they were going to need it, not just know it.

September 15, 2020

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When you go to a church potluck dinner, you never know what kind of luck you're going to have in your pot. Friends of ours were at one of those dinners with their granddaughter, and someone there had baked what they called a Jesus cake. That raises the obvious question, "What is a Jesus cake?" They were told that someone had actually baked a very small plastic baby toy into the cake, and they called it Baby Jesus. (Okay, do not try this at home.) I'm just telling you what happened. If anyone found the baby in their piece of cake, they would win a prize. Well, crazy, but our friends' granddaughter became obsessed with finding the baby - to the point of downing five pieces of cake - the ultimate "sugar high." She was desperately trying to find what she thought was baby Jesus, and she did. And when she found the baby, the little girl said, "Finding Baby Jesus changes everything."

September 14, 2020

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I was at the end of seven weeks of ministry travel and, believe me, I was really anxious to be home. Delays, of course, are just a part of air travel and I'm used to them, and I'm usually patient with them. But when they announced that the very last leg of my journey home was going to be significantly delayed, that was a test of my patience. Every half hour, they would tell us that they would get another update in another half hour. I knew the plane was there, the crew was there, all those passengers were sure there, but the flight just kept getting postponed. My homing instinct was going crazy.

September 11, 2020

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He's a noted surgeon who wants to make a difference in the world. So once a year, he dedicates a month to going to Central America to do volunteer medical work. Well, I heard on the news he was in an emergency medical clinic one year performing urgent surgery on a young boy in a really remote location. The boy started losing blood faster than expected, and he clearly needed blood. The problem was he had a rare blood type that only 2% of the population carries. And this village clinic certainly didn't have anything that rare. In that critical moment, the doctor suddenly put down his scalpel and went to another room - where he gave blood. He, too, had that rare blood. The boy got the blood he needed, the surgeon returned to finish the operation, and that boy came through just fine.

September 10, 2020

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Okay, it's no secret. I am technically challenged. When it comes to computers, I know just the basics, you know, just enough to get by. Even I know enough to appreciate some things God provided for our ministry, like new computers that worked much faster than our old ones. We were able to upgrade some of our software. And the new software had capabilities that made a lot of things possible that weren't possible before. When it comes to the computers that make such a difference in our lives, a software upgrade can take you to a whole new level.

September 9, 2020

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Up in Maine, where the roads run out, it's logging country. Now, the loggers will tell you that once you get a tree down, the next challenge is getting that big, old log where it's supposed to go to the mill. The answer? Well, you're not going to carry it there probably. So, you use natural power. They float those logs right down the river, until of course; well, sometimes too many logs decide to have a meeting in one place. You know what they call that. Right! We call it that in many parts of our life. They call it a log jam. Suddenly nothing's moving. The answer? Explosive power. Dynamite breaks that jam, gets things moving again. Of course, that's kind of how real life log jams are, too. It takes something explosive to get them going.

September 8, 2020

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A friend had been doing a lot of remodeling in his house, including some in his four-year-old son's room. They were building a little room inside his room that would have its own window and desk, and it would sort of be Troy's own little space. Of course at that point, it was just a frame with no walls. So Dad took Troy in there one day to see the work that he'd been doing. The little guy went into the frame of what would soon be his personal space. He came out with his lower lip out so far he almost tripped over it. Dad couldn't figure out why this nice thing they were doing for him would make him so sad. He quickly found out why. Troy said, "Dad, is this going to be my cage for my timeouts when I'm bad?"

September 7, 2020

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Jim was spending his first night as a college student. As he began to fall asleep in his dorm room, he was suddenly awakened by a frightening sound. A train whistle blew, and the train was coming right through his room. Well, at least that's how it sounded to this particular college student. It turned out that the railroad tracks were right next to his dorm. That's probably why they put freshmen there, right? Well, Jim found it pretty challenging to slip into la-la land for the night when it sounded like a train was roaring through his room. I said, "But I'll bet you eventually got used to it, didn't you?" He said, "Well, after a while, I didn't even notice the train anymore!"

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