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One of the amazing frustrations about families is that you just can't get everybody to agree on a comfortable temperature. Sometimes you can't even get a husband and wife to agree on it. One likes the room cozy and warm; the other likes it cool and refreshing, shall we say. It's hard to even be in agreement on what is hot and what is cold.
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When our oldest son was little he started a hobby that really helped him pay his way through college eventually - collecting baseball cards. He was doing pretty well collecting, when he asked me to start taking him to these shows on the baseball circuit. One summer I was scheduled to speak at Ocean City, New Jersey, and he wanted to go down a day early so we could catch the last day of this huge card show. He walked into a large hall with all the money the little guy could have saved from recent chores and allowances.
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Mr. T. Murdoch. "Face." And the man with the plan, Hannibal Smith. If you're a child of the '80s, you'll recognize those names - as "The A Team." I can tell you the Hutchcraft boys never missed a show. These guys came to the rescue of people who couldn't find anybody to help, assignments that seemed virtually impossible. But their leader, Hannibal Smith, always had a plan that seemed almost unbelievable. He didn't always explain his plan - he just gave his men their assignments. And, of course, it was always mission accomplished! And Hannibal would celebrate that unlikely victory with his trademark expression - "I love it when a plan comes together." So do I. Especially when it's from the MASTER Planner!
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Well, all of us airline passengers have just squeezed down that narrow aisle to our seats, and everyone is just getting settled in. The ground agent comes on board and says, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is a destination check. This is Flight 305 to Atlanta." The next part is what I love. It's so diplomatic it's almost ridiculous. "If Atlanta is not in your travel plans for today, this would be a good time for you to exit the aircraft." In other words, "Hey, pal, make sure this flight is going where you want to end up!"
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When I was in high school, I was a part of Youth For Christ's very active Bible Quiz program. Now, it was a long time ago, but I still remember a lot that I learned in studying books of the Bible in this highly competitive atmosphere.
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One of the exciting episodes of my life was working on the Billy Graham Crusade at the Meadowlands in northern New Jersey. It was incredibly organized. One thing that was especially well organized was security. There were thousands of people coming and going, so of course, security had to be very well thought through. Now, it was my privilege to be the Chairman of that crusade. And I'll tell you, if I was stopped I still had to have my badge on. It didn't matter what your title was, because if you didn't wear your badge, you weren't going anywhere.
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Oh, it happens every year after Thanksgiving and Christmas...leftovers. I cannot believe the infinite possibilities for preparing turkey. You know how it goes: You have turkey crispies for breakfast, and turkey, butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, etc. I mean, listen, there are so many ways to get rid of that turkey! Actually, any time of the year, it's just hard to get a lot of enthusiasm for dinner when it's leftovers. It's just not fair how many times you and I serve just that to our family. They deserve much better.
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Professional tennis star - a nun. What? Sounds like two different stories doesn't it? In this case, it's the same life story. Andrea Jaeger first picked up a tennis racket at the age of eight. By 14, she was a tennis pro. Soon she was challenging tennis greats like Chris Evert and Tracy Austin; she was ranked number two in the world. Then came a serious shoulder injury that required seven surgeries and she was forced to retire. She took her prize money, she moved to Colorado, and started a charitable foundation that helps sick, abused, and at-risk children. So she became an Episcopal nun, and she was actually burying her life in a ministry to needy children. According to USA Today, after her injury she was told, "Your life's over. You've failed. You'll never amount to anything." Oh, were they wrong! The article on her new life concluded this way: "Her name will never be etched on Grand Slam hardware, but she can live with that. She says, 'It's like I have kids' names in my heart, that is life's trophy.'"
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Now, men can handle conflict, and they can handle confrontation, they can handle challenges, but they can't handle tears. You know, most men, tears are like the toughest thing for them to take. But you know something? Tears are a powerful language; they're very powerful. They have a language of their own. Oftentimes when someone is counseling with us and they're crying, I will ask them the question, "Can you tell me what your tears are trying to say?" See, when I see your tears, I know how deeply I may have hurt you. Did you know that we can do that to God?
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One day some years ago during the lunch hour, my Administrative Assistant decided to bring her two young nephews into the office. She wanted them to meet the people she worked with and vise-versa. Daniel was probably about five, and I'm sure he left wondering who that weird guy is that his aunt works with. See, when I met Daniel, he flashed a big smile. He revealed some missing teeth in the process and I asked him what happened. He said, "I lost those teeth."
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Well, as the years go by, we get more and more perspective on the presidency of Ronald Reagan. For example, people who were in his administration began writing books like crazy, telling everything they knew. And people, you know, have started to feel free to tell us what they saw, what they heard, especially behind the scenes.
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It's been quite a while since the whole country was really fixated on the trial. It was 1:00 P.M., Tuesday, October 4, 1995, and America came to a sudden stop. Everyone was waiting for the O.J. Simpson verdict. Maybe you don't remember that but I can tell you, this once famous football player was accused of the murder of his wife. It was like the trial of the century. Nine months of the most watched, most analyzed trial in history up to that point. And then, the jury's got a verdict, and the judge announced that we couldn't hear the verdict yet. See, it was placed in a sealed envelope. We had to wait until the next day to find out.
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Once upon a time there was a machinist who lived with his wife, his four-year-old son, and his new baby boy in this cheap apartment on the south side of Chicago. He spent a chunk of his meager earnings on alcohol and cigarettes and gambling, and then the bottom dropped out of his life. His baby boy died suddenly at the age of only six months. He was crushed. I mean, his grief was inconsolable. This machinist (John was his name) took his one surviving boy to church. John didn't go in - no. But he did wait out in front, in his car, smoking his cigarette and reading his Sunday paper. Until the day that one of the men of the church looked outside and noticed the man in the car. He didn't wait for John to come in. He went outside to John's car, introduced himself, asked a few questions, and then invited him in. Well, when John said he wasn't dressed for it, the man told him it didn't matter how he was dressed.
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When our daughter was little, we displayed most of her artwork on the refrigerator door. We were usually proud of her creative efforts...usually. There was this time, though, that my wife was painting the woodwork of our daughter's room and she stopped briefly to answer the phone in another room. She gave our little girl one instruction, "Do not touch the paint!" You want to guess what happened? When my wife returned from her call, little Miss Rembrandt was working on a three-year-old masterpiece. Unfortunately, she had chosen the wall for her canvas. There on her bedroom wall were Designs by The Princess done with the paint that was intended only for the woodwork.
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On the first warm day of spring I can remember my son saying, "Ready for a little baseball, Dad?" Well, 'twas the season, although that early in the season we usually ended up stuck in the mud somewhere between home plate and first base. Now, he didn't ask about playing baseball if it was fall or winter. Now, he always had a like a strong sense of season. By the same token, the first cool day of late summer, of course, that brought a predictable question, "Ready for a little football, Dad?" This is the same son, of course, that got upset when he saw Christmas items up before Thanksgiving, or phone calls when he was studying or homework that you had to do on weekends. See, this kid had and actually still does have for that matter, a strong sense of what season it is, and there's actually a lot of sanity in living that way.
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We were in the middle of a community-wide outreach event, sort of a non-traditional strategy for bringing Christ into a community. One of the committee leaders took me on a media marathon to help build awareness for it. So we raced to the local CBS TV affiliate.
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You hear a lot about plea bargaining in court cases these days, but plea bargaining... that's not a new idea. Every child learns the art of negotiating his way out of his disobedience. You might call it the art of "yeah, but." For example, "You don't have your homework" says the teacher. "Oh, yeah, but the dog ate it." Or, "My grandma died." For the sixth time? See, that art is first developed at home. "You didn't call," says dad. "Yeah, but there was no phone." "Yeah, but my watch blew up. I didn't know what time it was." See, children are experts at knowing what they should do and then finding ways to excuse not doing it. Well, father isn't impressed.
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In much of America, spring announces its arrival with an explosion of color. Those yellow forsythia flowers start popping out on bushes, the daffodils start to poke their heads through the ground, and the trees around our headquarters suddenly color the landscape with those delicate white flowers. Now, my wife, who I think was a certified plantologist, told me that those are ornamental pear trees. When I asked her about the "ornamental" part, she pointed out to me that they produce beautiful flowers, but these pear trees don't produce any pears. I guess that's why they're ornamental.
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There's at least one important principle of advertising we need to consider today, and that is you have to demonstrate the need for your product in order to sell it. I'll tell you someone who was good at it some years ago in one of the classic commercials. It was Alka-Seltzer, one of those old commercials I still remember. They would show some irresponsible eater who consumed some nightmare menu, and then the camera just made him look all distorted, like one of those trick mirrors.
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Sister is a dog. No, I didn't say my sister was a dog. My friend, Curtis, has a dog named Sister, which leads to some very amusing sentences. When Curtis' Sister first arrived in our area, Sister lived in this big, fenced-in area around the house. But Curtis got a nice dog house for Sister, the dog that is, and went to work making it a nice winter home for her. He installed two inches of insulation, put in a new floor, and even put a waterbed heater under the floor and some zip lock bags of water for the heater to heat. Sister basically had her own home with her own waterbed.
