April 13, 2020

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Ocean City, N.J. - actually "memory City" for our family. Like the large, annual youth conference I used to speak for there. One of the favorite activities of the week was a sandcastle competition where delegations from all over competed to see who could win the coveted prize for best sandcastle. And you should have seen the masterpieces they created! They were massive, creative, detailed - little empires made of sand. Of course, they made them at low tide. It was kind of depressing to go back there a few hours later at high tide. Because no matter how elaborate, how imaginative, how brilliantly designed they were, they were gone. They just couldn't survive the onslaught of high tide.

April 10, 2020

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Twenty-three marks on the wall of his four-by-four prison cell told the story. It had just been three weeks since the soldiers captured him - the number one name on the Most Wanted List - at a local bar and they hauled him into this cell. The charges were robbery, treason, and murder. Day 23 was going to be just another day there, or so he thought until he heard the growing sounds of that angry mob outside the window above him. He managed to grab the bars on the window and pull himself up high enough to hear what the crowd was screaming. It was a combination of shock and fear that swept over him when he heard they were shouting his name! "Give us Ba-rabbas! Give us Ba-rabbas!"

April 9, 2020

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"Embedded reporters." It was a concept I had never heard of until Operation Iraqi Freedom years ago. But the U.S. Military decided to allow reporters to actually travel with and report from active combat units, fighting for the liberation of Iraq back then. The result was these amazing live transmissions from sandstorms, rapid troop movements, actual combat in progress, and even the takeover of some of Saddam Hussein's palaces. It was the ultimate in reality TV. Of course, it had one disadvantage; one that briefers and Pentagon officials kept reminding people of. The embedded reporter could only report on the small slice of the big picture that he was able to see from his unit's vantage point. A seasoned military observer expressed it this way on television: "The closer you are to the battle, the less you can see the whole war."

April 8, 2020

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A lot of us were broke most of the time we were in college. Sound familiar? So, it was always nice to find some free Saturday night entertainment. And in downtown Chicago, there was a place called Bug House Square. Yeah, it's not the real name I don't think, but that was how it was affectionately known in the neighborhood at the time. See, Bug House Square was a small city park just north of downtown Chicago. And it was a place where anybody could get up and make a speech about anything - thus, the name. So, people who couldn't find a platform anywhere else, well, they could find one at Bug House Square. Some frustrated people got to deliver the message that they never got to deliver anywhere else. You know, and actually it's frustrating to have a message and no platform to proclaim it from. And it's surprising sometimes where our platform turns out to be.

April 7, 2020

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They're usually some of the most exciting moments in sports - that touchdown, that field goal that wins the game with no time left on the clock. That game-winning basket; the buzzer-beater as the final buzzer sounds. The game-winning home run with two out in the bottom of the ninth. Whatever the sport, there's nothing like a sudden victory when victory seems out of reach, and the fans go ballistic.

April 6, 2020

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I had the last handful of dirt. Many of our dear Native American friends had led the way. They really loved my Karen. As I threw mine into that six-foot hole, I spoke three words engraved inside our wedding rings, "Til Jesus comes." And then just quietly I said, "See you soon, baby." And I know I will because of Easter. Easter didn't stop the tears. Easter didn't cushion her adoring grandchildren from the shock that they would not see again on this earth the one whose hugs and laugh and love had lit up their lives. Neither would I. Neither would her children who never stopped depending on her prayer and her wisdom. Easter doesn't shield us from the grim reality of the casket, that hole in the ground, the empty blue recliner. Or the gut-wrenching emotional ambushes when the "I'm missing her" feelings that usually whisper, suddenly scream. But the reality of that empty tomb near a skull-shaped hill in Jerusalem is a game-changer in so many ways. For the one by the grave, and the one in the grave on both sides of the dirt.

April 3, 2020

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I've always been fascinated with lighthouses. I actually saw this feature on the evening news about a photographer who decided he loves the seagull perspective on lighthouses. He's got this little customized aircraft, he flies over Maine's many picturesque lighthouses, shooting unusual aerial photos of them. They're beautiful; they're even inspiring. He's seen them and photographed them in all kinds of settings: sunshine, clouds, storms, high tide, and low tide. And here's how he summarized what he's seen: "The lighthouse is always there, but everything else is changing."

April 2, 2020

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We saw it a few years ago. Boy, in one weekend, it was like a string of corporate meltdowns. And when that happens, Wall Street gets a very bad case of the jitters. I mean, when you suddenly discover that a major company that we thought was doing well was actually in big trouble, it doesn't exactly inspire investor confidence. In some cases, some have some shall we say unusually "creative accounting." And it can, for a while, conceal how bad things are. Of course, the fundamentals of financial viability, they don't ever change. Your outgo and your income, your losses and your gains have to at least balance. That's why you look at your checkbook. And it's management's job to, of course, be sure that they do balance.

April 1, 2020

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It's no secret that we live in a pretty dangerous world. And one of the reasons for that is there's an awful lot of people with an awful lot of missiles. I remember when there was this one superpower other than us that had the power to do a lot of destructive things with missiles. And today there's a proliferation and many countries have nuclear capability. It seems like more are on the way. And out of that came the idea of a new kind of missile, an anti-missile missile. And the idea there is that we can launch a defensive missile to pre-empt and destroy an incoming enemy missile. Well, if we've got to live in that kind of a world, that sounds like a good idea to me.

March 31, 2020

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The cable news people called it a miracle. So did the man who is alive today because of what happened. He'd gone out for an afternoon on his boat off the coast of California. He didn't expect that sudden high wind that hit his vessel. Threw him catapulting over the rail and into the water. The boat continued moving with its propellers nearly cutting him to pieces. He escaped that danger with relatively minor cuts, but now he was alone and adrift in these cold waters, knowing that hypothermia would soon set in. He was unable to sustain himself in that water, and he prayed for divine help. And at that moment, he saw a balloon floating on the water nearby. He grabbed the balloon, put it under his shirt to keep him buoyant. There's one problem with balloons - they tend to lose air. And slowly, the balloon that was holding him up just did that.

March 27, 2020

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There was this little song from a children's TV show. It goes, "One of these things is not like the other; one of these things doesn't belong." That's how I look in the middle of twenty or thirty professional football players. That's where I've ended up a number of times when I've spoken for NFL chapel services. Every professional football team actually has a chapel meeting before their game. Often, I was invited to join the players for the team meal after the chapel. Of course, their game day meal was this massive buffet, designed to help them power up for this grueling afternoon they have ahead. After one chapel, I had the privilege of visiting for some time with one of the players who had actually played in three Super Bowls and had been named the Most Valuable Player in one of them. I said, "So you have three Super Bowl rings?" He said, "Yep, but it's still not enough. I've got ten fingers. I won't be happy until I've got a Super Bowl ring on all of them!" Wow!

March 26, 2020

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When my ministry teammate, Donna, showed me how it started, I wasn't very impressed. It began with a Mason jar lid and a little cloth circle she made with it. Great. A little cloth circle. O.K. Donna then sort of gathered that round piece of cloth into a puckered little circle called a "quilted yo-yo." Finally, she had that piece finished and looking like what she wanted. Great. A little piece of cloth that's now a little quilted yo-yo. But she kept making those pieces, and then she began putting them together in a pattern I didn't see. When she was finished, she had this large American flag creation, made from all those little pieces into something really impressive.

March 25, 2020

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If you're a parent, or even a grandparent, when your kid gets a great teacher, they become a hero to them and to you. But every once in a while, a teacher does something so unforgettable that we nominate them for the Heroes Hall of Fame. Robert Bailey - he was in the news a while back - is one of those. He's a 27-year-old British teacher, serving in a school in Japan. A school that suddenly was right in the path of a monster tsunami that swamped northern Japan. The students there had eight minutes to find a safe place after the tsunami sirens went off. He described the moment that earthquake hit this way: "We first heard a weird cracking noise, and then came the violent shaking."

March 24, 2020

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Our boys wore clothes with labels way outside my budget, because of the generosity of a local doctor and his wife. He had first been a major medical blessing to us with the excellent care he provided. Then he and his wife blew us away with these bags full of cool clothes that their boys had outgrown.

There was a special connection that led us to being dinner guests in each other's home. I don't remember the dinner at their house, but I'll never forget the conversation. They knew we were Christians, and we knew they were Jewish. I thanked them that night "for how much your people have meant in our lives." Needless to say, they wanted to know more.

March 23, 2020

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Television at its best - which it all too seldom delivers - can take you to some fascinating places in the world that you might not see any other way. Like the ancient Inca city of Machu Picchu, for example. The ruins of that ancient city, high up in the Andes Mountains of Peru, are remarkably well preserved, almost as if the city was just abandoned a night long ago. A recent documentary showed burros making their way up this rugged, winding, perilous road to Machu Picchu, carrying the burdens of the humans who were leading them. You'd expect animals to be pretty skittish on a narrow trail and this deadly drop-off only feet away. Oh, but not those burros. No, they were remarkably calm the whole trip. Of course, there was a reason. They were blindfolded!

March 20, 2020

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I can't begin to count how many hundreds of thousands of miles I've flown commercially. And I don't think I've ever missed a flight where it was my fault. Well, almost never. Recently, I was on a ministry trip with one of our young Native American leaders - not a very seasoned traveler. We had one more connection to reach our destination. It was a smaller plane - so our gate was at the far end of the airport with flights being called right and left. No call yet for our flight. So I excused myself to go to a nearby counter for some health food - actually, a pastry. There are different kinds of health, don't judge me. There's like emotional health you know. When I got back to our gate, I went to check on our flight. That's when I saw the dreaded words I had not seen before - FLIGHT CLOSED. NO FURTHER BOARDING. My young associate was quite impressed with Mr. Seasoned Traveler. No way we were going to get on that plane!

March 19, 2020

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Over the years, with the arrival of each new grandchild, I've watched this device appear in their home - a little transistor radio-like looking thing. Really not much channel selection on this little radio. In fact, there was only one channel. It's tuned to Baby. When Mom put the little angel to sleep, she'd go into another room and turns on what they call a baby monitor. With it, you can hear unusual noise coming from the baby's room, and then you know baby needs you. My observation in our family was that no matter what else was going on in the room, Mommy remained mentally tuned to that one channel; always listening for a sound from baby.

March 18, 2020

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Frankly, I have never enjoyed eating worms. I don't know about you, but I assume you would agree with that. It's never really been appealing to me. But I know the saying, "The early bird gets the worm." Well, if that's the case, why would anyone would want to be the early bird? I mean, fish like worms. Oh, yeah! I never understood that, but they really do. I like pizza. But how would you like to go fishing and try to put a slice of pizza on the hook? See how many fish you catch when you use what you like to eat. Now, if you're not catching fish, I think any fisherman would tell you it's time to check your bait.

March 17, 2020

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Most of us don't have a friendly neighborhood blacksmith anymore. Some of us city folks might never see one if they didn't have them at historic sites and some old-time American theme parks. I'm pretty sure the first blacksmith our three-year-old granddaughter ever saw was the one at the park we took her to. When we stopped by the blacksmith's shop, we were the only ones there. Our granddaughter was really interested in his fire and how he pounded those hot, shapeless metal things into useful objects. Later, as we started to leave, Mr. Blacksmith stopped us. Even though he does some pretty tough work, he's obviously a caring man. He caught up with us because he wanted to do something special for our little girl - he handed her a nail that he had just made. She wouldn't let go of that nail for most of the rest of the day. And last I knew, it was still one of her treasures.

March 16, 2020

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Snacks. Oh, I know a lot of them aren't the most healthy stuff in the world to put in your body. But when you're driving, I view them as something that helps with an essential function. It's called staying alive. As in staying awake at the wheel, you know. A number of times I've asked my wife to open up some cookies or chips or some other goodies for me, only to find that when she passed them to me that they weren't all there. At first, I thought maybe the company had robbed me. No. No, see, I only had to look across the seat to the passenger side to find the culprit. It was the woman I love. Yeah, the crumbs on her lip and the chewing in her mouth; that was my first clue. Our conversation predictably would go like this: I would say, "What happened?" Then, with a whimsical smile, she would answer: "Tax. There was a small service tax." Right!