OK, I couldn't put it off any longer—we had to move the piano. And in spite of my Arnold Schwarzenegger-build (this is radio; you'll never know), I decided it wouldn't be a good idea to move that monster alone. In fact, I remember my dad needed surgery after he helped move a piano once! So the time we moved the piano was determined by one thing: what time could some guys be there to help? As we eased that piano slowly down the front steps, I was so thankful for those other guys. I had my hands full just carrying my corner. This was something that was obviously never meant to be carried alone.
Somewhere back in the deep storage of your brain file, you probably remember him from World History class: the emperor Charlemagne. Actually, Charlemagne was the most powerful European ruler of the Middle Ages, leading a people he called the Franks to rule most of Europe. Under his rule, many people got baptized into the Church. It was pretty much expected of his soldiers, for example. In fact, they would go down to the river en masse and take the plunge. But one source reports that there was one thing that was a bit unusual about the baptism of those soldiers. When they would go under the water, they would hold one hand out of the water with their sword in that hand. They didn't want that hand baptized. That was the one they wanted to be free to use to kill whoever they needed to kill.
My friend, Scott, told me about a man he knows who has been a professional bus driver for years. The driver is actually from Australia, but he has driven bus tours in places across the world. And he says there is this one classic movie that his passengers seem to watch on just about every bus tour. In fact, it's been shown on his bus so many times he literally knows the script of the movie by heart! But the funny thing is this: because he's always driving, he's never seen the movie that he knows all the words for!
The more opportunity I have had to spend time with our Native American friends, the more fascinated I have become with eagles. See, where I lived in New Jersey, the only eagles we saw were the ones from Philadelphia that came to play the New York Giants every once in a while. But spending time on reservations, man, we've seen a lot of eagles and learned a lot about them. Of course, the big show is watching the eagle soar through the sky, right?. But sometimes you have to wait a while before he does. See, the eagle may just sit there for quite a while. He's actually waiting until he feels the wind that he needs to ride on. Eagles have this amazing instinct to sense the current and go with it. And they won't move until they sense that wind that will carry them to the clouds.
It was Yogi Berra who gave us that unforgettable wisdom of the ages, "It ain't over 'till it's over." I'll tell you one man who believes that: John Glenn. Now, he had become an American hero in 1962 with his historic, manned, orbital flight around the earth. And, oh yes, he had gone on to become a United States Senator. That should be enough for one lifetime, right? Especially at the ripe old age of 78. But not for John Glenn! No! At an age when some people are just coasting to the finish line or riding around in an RV, John Glenn went back into space! It was just amazing to see him be part of the crew of the Shuttle Discovery, blasting into space with crewmen half his age. What a hero! At a time when a lot of people think all their important missions were behind them, John Glenn was still flying them!
When our kids were growing up, the early morning shift around our house was particularly exciting. I was getting ready for a full day, three kids were scrambling to have what they needed for school, my wife was playing maid, chef, valet, and chauffeur. Man! In the rush, a lot of our communication was basically non-verbal. For example, one morning I was shaving and thinking through this endless list of things I had to do that day-all the Lord's work, of course. I was mulling over a sermon, radio programs, an important appointment that day, an event I was planning, and my son popped in. Now, I must have somehow succeeded in telegraphing how much I had on my mind (The Lord's work, remember? Right.); he disappeared as quickly as he had appeared. Then, as I was praying about all the Lord's work I had to do that day, I remembered an important decision my son had to make that day, one that he probably needed to talk to his father about. I had just missed the Lord's work.
David Letterman was one of the kings of late-night television for years. His offbeat sense of humor gave him a prime spot in America's entertainment constellation for a long time. But one day, suddenly everybody stopped laughing. David Letterman, whose family had a bad history when it came to heart problems apparently, went in for some seemingly routine cardiac tests. Suddenly, this comic king was rushed into surgery by his doctor and given a multiple bypass operation on his heart. The doctor saw major blockage in David Letterman's heart and he took radical action to save him.
One of the most amazing Christian warriors in my lifetime was a man who came to be known as Brother Andrew, or 'God's Smuggler'. He risked everything to get God's Word into spiritually closed countries where that was virtually impossible. Many have considered him a spiritual hero. No one could doubt that he was, at the very least, a bold risk-taker for Christ.
In his biography, he tells about an incident in his early life as a follower of Christ that showed him the kind of God he was serving. After some pretty wild years without the Lord, he came to Christ and almost immediately felt the call to begin training for ministry. He went to this small Bible school in Scotland, and before the students were allowed to graduate, they were given a very unusual assignment. They were asked to go out for a month to do evangelistic outreaches in Scottish villages, and they were given some money to live on - one British pound, to be exact. For those of us who are Americans, it would be like being given a dollar to live on for a month. The students were to go with that one bill and eat, and sleep, and rent halls, and buy refreshments, and hold outreaches, and return that one bill at the end of the month. Brother Andrew's team went out and they did just that. Except he returned with enough money for the school to send out two missionaries!
Our friend, Vicki, is one very happy woman. For many years now, she has carried a heavy load of nagging credit card debt. If you've ever been in debt for a while, you know how it always weighs you down like this heavy backpack on your back. Well, Vicki recently came into some money through an inheritance, and you know what she did with it! She had a party-a check writing party! All the debts are paid, and you can tell she feels like she just got out of prison!
When I look out my window I can see everything clearly. But if I need to read these notes right in front of me, I have to put my glasses on. When I'm driving down the road later today, I won't need my glasses. I've got no problem seeing the road ahead, the cars around me, that road kill I want to avoid. But if I need to pull over and look at my map, forget it – I'd better have my glasses or I'll never find that small town I'm looking for. I am, as they say, farsighted.
Some years ago, we took a delegation of teenagers to a youth conference at the Jersey Shore, and one of our volunteers was one of the counselors. One evening she left the meeting early to check on one of the kids from our group. She started walking down the Boardwalk. Suddenly she hears this cry for help from the water down below. She realized that a girl was out there in that dark ocean about to drown. So she yelled for others to come, she pulled off her shoes and she jumped into the water. She knew this was a life-or-death situation, and she said, "I just had to do something." Pretty soon a couple of men jumped in to help her and together they were able to rescue that young woman. And you know what? Our friend realized the real reason she had been out on the Boardwalk that night. Much to her surprise, she had literally been placed there to save a life!
There's one kind of mail from the bank that nobody wants to get - you know, that notice that you've overdrawn your checking account! Yeah, especially when they sock you with a penalty for it! It can happen because you've been traveling or unusually busy, or you know, kind of cutting things pretty close financially, or just because you inadvertently wrote some checks before your recent deposit has cleared. You can't try to buy or pay before the money is there to cover it, or you'll just end up paying for that.
It was the house Grandma and Granddad built with a little help from their granddaughter, who happened to turn out to be my wife. That was over forty years ago. Grandma and Granddad are gone, and the house was in the hands of renters for a number of years. And the landlord, my wife's dad, lived hours away, and his age and his health prevented him from keeping up with what was happening. And man, I'll tell you, the house and the land around it, not good stuff was happening. When he deeded that house to the rest of the family, they weren't real pleased with what had happened over the years. The house was rundown; the carpet was infested with bugs; various encroachments had slowly whittled away about three acres of the property, and fences had been moved. That's a long list. And nobody in the family had to do anything to accumulate this mess. All we had to do was do nothing.
It's one of those photos you never forget – like, you know, the picture of those American soldiers raising the flag on Iwo Jima. You've probably seen the photo of those three weary, dusty firefighters raising the American flag in the ruins of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. USA Today says "it may have been the blackest day's blackest hour" when that picture was taken. It was becoming apparent that there would be few survivors, and another tower – 7 World Trade Center – was about to fall. An evacuation order was issued to all firefighters searching in the rubble. But one firefighter saw something on a docked boat – a debris-covered American flag on a broken pole. With the help of two other firefighters, he found a large metal flagpole jutting at a 45-degree angle from a ledge about twenty feet above the ground. They climbed up and they rigged the flag to the pole, totally unaware that a photographer was watching and capturing it for all the world to see. A woman who taught nearby, summarized what that moment meant: "People were grasping for hope," she said, "and suddenly there it was."
When the President of the United States declared a war on terrorism, the lives of millions of American military personnel suddenly changed dramatically, and the war still rages on. Some of the first to be affected were the crews of our major combat ships, like aircraft carriers. In a matter of days, thousands were shipping out; maybe you remember those days. Reporters were trying to guess what their destinations were. But, of course, not even the crews knew. Except for a few commanders, their orders were unknown.
Three feet of snow! That was a weather record I didn't really want to participate in. But, sure enough, we woke up that cold New Jersey morning to three feet of snow that had literally buried the metropolitan New York area. Even New York, the city that never sleeps, had been effectively shut down by the storm. Our little guy really wanted to go out in the snow that blanketed our backyard. So we bundled him up and we watched as he ventured out into that white stuff. And he promptly disappeared! I went out after him and, as short as I am, I just about disappeared myself. It took quite a while for that snow to become manageable and for life to get back to normal. And it wasn't the last snow dump of the winter. But for those of us who have lived through some pretty long and tough winters, there is one word that sustains us through it all. You know the word: spring.
I know this is going to come as a shock to you, but there were a lot of rumors in college that I was behind some practical jokes and pranks that happened while I was there. That's hard to imagine, huh? I mean, it probably wouldn't come as a total surprise to some of those folks if finally I ended up in the penitentiary. Fortunately, my sentence was only about four hours, because I did end up at Alcatraz. Yep! Now, we had taken some young people out to that famous prison in the middle of San Francisco Bay to do a special radio program. Of course, it's been some years since any prisoners were held there on what they called The Rock, but it is still quite a place to see. While we were there, we experienced this awful claustrophobia of being locked in one of those little cells; the isolation of being in solitary confinement. For the closing segment of the program, we walked out of one of the prison gates and down to the rocks outside that overlook the bay. One of the young people with us was walking out with me, and he made quite an observation, because it was really a tremendously commanding view. He said, "Just think, there was only a wall between them and all this beauty."
When our son entered high school, he carried with him the study habits that had served him well in junior high. They didn't serve him well in high school. He learned a whole lot about studying his freshman year. His grades weren't awful-they were just, you know, like below his potential. So the last part of the year, we resorted to, uh, martial law. We enforced three hours of study nightly and we allowed no calls...no going out until his homework was done. Now, turn the page to his second year in high school. I'd go into my study at night and I'd find him with these books and notebooks all spread out across my desk. Sometimes I'd tell him there was a phone call for him. And he'd answer, "Tell them I'll call them back later. I'm not getting on the phone, Dad. Not his year; not till my homework's done." I didn't have to discipline my son. He was disciplining himself.
When my wife and I inherited her grandparents' old farmstead in the country, we knew it was going to take some work. We were just grateful that we had a place to kind of get away, you know, and get some "r and r". We had several workmen there, racing a deadline to get some building and remodeling done before we had a lot of company. Well, on Thursday, they brought in some of the specialized tools they would need to finish the job on Friday. We went to bed Thursday night looking forward to having everything finished the next day. Now I don't usually wake up in the middle of the night, but this particular night I did. As I looked at our glow-in-the-dark digital clock, I noticed its' red numbers were flashing the same time at me, over and over again. This is not a good sign. Power outage! I almost went right back to sleep, figuring the power would come back on sooner or later. And then it hit me. Those workmen are going to be here shortly after sunrise, and they're not getting anything done without those special tools. And those tools won't work without power. Believe me, we didn't get back to sleep. We got right on the phone to the power company! Actually, hey, I did my part. I identified the problem. I asked my wife to get up and make the call. What a guy!
On a visit to the home area where my wife grew up, she took me to this picturesque spot along the beautiful river there. When she was a little girl, she and her whole family went swimming there with the pastor of their church and his wife. That little patch of river became the scene of a dramatic rescue that afternoon. The pastor almost drowned and my father-in-law jumped in and literally saved this pastor's life. I learned recently that that pastor was one of four people that my father-in-law saved from drowning in his life. He got very serious about that when he told me the reason why. He told me about a time when he was a boy, and he literally watched two young girls drown in a river before he even knew how to swim. Immediately after that he learned to swim and to rescue drowning people. You know what motivated him? I'll tell you what, in his own words, he said, "I saw someone I couldn't rescue and I decided right then that would never happen again."
