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Friday, August 5, 2016

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The lady in the airplane seat next to me was from Norway. And I knew she had experienced something I needed to know about-winter months with very long nights and summer months with very long days. With our Native American team planning some major summer outreach among Native young people in Alaska at that point, I was especially interested in what our days would be like up there. My neighbor from Norway made the answer very clear-they'd be endless! She said that even after all the years living there, she could never sleep much in those northern days where there is virtually no dark. I thought, "O-o-o, it should be a lot of fun getting our team to sleep at night, when there is no night." But then I was curious to know about those December days when we have only about nine hours or so of daylight. She told me about a time when it was, in her words, "almost always dark" where she lives. It's hard for me to imagine weeks where you basically never see the light of the sun. It's not hard for me to imagine the way my Norwegian neighbor said many people feel during that time - really depressed.

Thursday, August 4, 2016

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Spring is nice. I mean, it means flowers! Spring is not nice. It also can mean floods! One North Dakota town some years ago, saw it coming; the floods, not the flowers. And they decided they weren't just going to sit there and float away. Because of a winter that had produced mountains of snow, they knew where that snow would go when it melted - right into their homes and businesses. So, while the snow was still deep, they started to make an island out of their town. Everyone pitched in to literally build an earthen dike around the town. Yes, they would be an island. Yes, they would be surrounded by a flood. But they made a wall so they would be safe in the middle of it!

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

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My wife and I had been staying at a friend's house at the New Jersey shore. It was a great setting to be working on a book about "Peaceful Living in a Stressful World". One night this powerful storm hit the area, and we heard the wind howling and the rain was bombarding that house all night long. By morning, the storm was over, and I wanted to go to the beach to see what the storm tide might have deposited there. Even though the sun was out and the storm was history, the sea was still churning all brown. In fact, even when there wasn't a storm that week, the ocean never rested.

Monday, August 1, 2016

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Not long ago we met some wonderful radio listeners from the Sault St. Marie area of Michigan. That's way up north, you know, near the Canadian border. They told me this amusing, and slightly amazing, true story about a woman they met recently. She was driving from Detroit, which is about six hours south of them, so she had made a good northward trek, and she was lost. So she stopped in at our friend's workplace looking for directions. Now that's not anything unusual. But she walked in the door blurting one frustrated question, "Which way's Texas?" Texas! Well, for starters, ma'am, you need to turn that car around and go six hours back to the place you started!

Friday, July 29, 2016

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Some people have wall-to-wall carpet. Some people have a wall-to-wall schedule. I think I'm one of those. And it was like that when we took our daughter to college. She and I had just returned from a mission's trip to the Philippines, and I had to be in Chicago Friday to produce radio programs and deliver her to college. It had to be perfectly timed.

Thursday, July 28, 2016

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While our Ministry Headquarters was being built, we had a problem. We were soon moving out of the space we had rented in another area of the country, and we had no space to move into and the ministry couldn't stop in between! That's when my wife began to take a second look at the one structure on the land that we were about to build on. It was an old pole barn. At first glance, it looked like a good storm could knock it over. Someone jokingly suggested that it was still standing only because the termites were holding hands! But my wife has this incredible ability to see potential in something that everyone else would tend to give up on; which might be why she married me.

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

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Our son's first word was the name he called me, "Da!" I know it's supposed to be "da da," but it was good enough for me. He'd greet me at the door each night with a loud and impassioned "DA!" Now, our grandson's first word was "mama," which he liked so much that he just kept it rolling, "ma-ma-ma-ma-ma." Sort of the opposite of "da!" The first words children learn reflect what's going on around them. If they see Mama all the time, you can expect them to say her name early on. Sometimes, those first words aren't happy words. Our friends were dedicated missionaries in a war-torn part of the Middle East for years. Not long after their daughter was born, their area became a place where frequent bombardments and violence erupted all around them. Some of her first words told the story: "bomb", "gun."

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

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It was Moving Day! If you've ever moved from one house to another, across the street or across the country, you know how much fun it can be. And if you think it's fun, you've never done it. Our daughter and son-in-law and their two boys had moved a lot of their belongings to a temporary house while major repairs were being done on their house. A few weeks after they hauled a lot of their life into their temporary home, they got to move it out again and back into their real home. We all pitched in and there were a lot of trips back and forth with armloads of boxes and bags, and loading everything into several family vehicles. Our then three-year-old grandson was watching all the work going on, and as he heard some of us discussing what was still left to do, he quickly volunteered his personal perspective. We hadn't yet asked him to do anything, but he still turned to walk away with these words on his lips: "I'm not available right now."

Monday, July 25, 2016

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What mental picture comes to your mind when you hear these words, "They keep going and going and going." Do you per chance see this rabbit with sunglasses? Do you hear the drumbeat from the bass drum he's beating on as he moves across your TV screen? Then the people who created those Energizer battery ads have succeeded! Actually, think about it. Batteries are a pretty boring thing to advertise, "Here, would you like some batteries?" But most of us have watched with amusement as this particular brand of batteries keeps that crazy bunny going and going and going.

Friday, July 22, 2016

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Sometimes when we travel to Indian reservations in North America, we end up on roads that go where not many go. Our Director at the time, our Qjibwe brother, Craig Smith, was on one of those roads. His destination was a remote reserve in Northern Canada. At one point in his 140-mile journey, he noticed a van coming from the other direction, proceeding very slowly. Craig decided to slow down, too. That's when he saw what the van driver had already seen-a beautiful deer by the side of the road. Sadly, one of his rear legs was broken and just kind of dangling limply when he moved. Actually, my friend said it was too painful to watch. At that point, he saw the rest of the picture that had caused the van to stop in front of the deer. On the other side of the road was a wolf, stalking the wounded deer. It was obvious all the van could do was postpone the inevitable. There was no happy ending for that deer.

Thursday, July 21, 2016

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As a musical composition, Frederick Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" stands in a category by itself. There are few pieces of music that has the power to stir our hearts like that majestic chorus that even brought the King of England to his feet the first time he heard it. But before Frederick Handel wrote the "Hallelujah Chorus" and "The Messiah" oratorio of which it's a part, he wasn't having much of a hallelujah time. He was basically broke, depressed, and against a wall. Then someone asked him to write an oratorio, to be performed at this benefit concert on behalf of people who were in debtor's prison – locked up because they were too poor to pay their bills. There were 700 people who contributed to be at that premiere performance of "The Messiah" and the "Hallelujah Chorus" and 128 prisoners went free as a result!

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

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When you've got a God like ours, even a parade can turn out to be a place for Him to amaze you. What I'm about to tell you is not Uncle Ronnie's Story Time. It's really a story about a God that you may really need right now. I was scheduled to speak at a Native camp in Canada, and our hosts wanted me to bring a few of the Native young people that God used so mightily on our reservation teams that summer. They've been so excited about being spiritual rescuers that they asked me, "Is there a reservation near the camp?" They wanted to continue the outreach of the summer. There was a reservation, or as they say in Canada, reserve. But we knew no one there who could help us. My wife and I got to the area a couple days early and we decided to take in a parade in the nearby town. We prayed about God directing us where to sit. Basically, we just wanted a shady spot. Our neighbors in the spot we chose turned out to be a Native family.

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

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Life wasn't easy on the little farm where my wife grew up. The land was hard to farm, the money was pretty hard to come by, and the water was sometimes even harder to come by. In fact, on several occasions, Dad tried to dig a well. Again and again, they dug but they ended up only with dry wells. Thankfully, though, there was this spring not too far away. My wife actually remembers her grandfather hitching up Jack and Betsy – that was two mules, not cousins, and going down to this amazing spring that just gushed horizontally out of the rocks. And with each trip, they'd bring back two large barrels of water.

Monday, July 18, 2016

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It's a well known fact, of course, men are never lost, right? We just find alternative routes-scenic routes. I've found more than my share, but my choice of a wrong road has never led to deadly consequences. It did for Comair Flight 5191 out of Lexington, Kentucky some years ago. Somehow, the pilot went down the wrong runway; one half the length of the runway from which he'd been cleared to take off. He ran out of runway, he hit a row of trees, and tragically, 49 of the 50 people aboard died in that crash. As the investigation of the crash unfolded, we found out that the one flight controller in the tower wasn't looking when the plane turned onto that fatal runway. He had what was described as "administrative duties" to tend to, and he turned his back, and moments later-disaster.

Friday, July 15, 2016

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If you asked our daughter what was one of the most memorable Christmas gifts she ever received as a girl, I think she'd say the dollhouse. Now there are certainly better crafted dollhouses than the one her mother and I gave her, but we made this one! One December, we just hung a "closed" sign on the basement door and we made it into our workshop. Of course our hammering and sawing down there drove all three kids crazy. "What's going on down there?" Frankly, my December was really crammed, so the work was often pretty late. And it took quite a few hours (Face it, I was not ever asked back in the days of that Tool Time show to ever make a guest appearance). But I enjoyed every minute of working on that dollhouse. Was I tired? Yes. Was I too busy to be taking on this project? Yes. Did this make me go beyond the things I do well? For sure. Was it a pleasure? Yes! Why? Because it was for a little girl I loved very much.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

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Some years ago, my wife had a very serious case of hepatitis. Later, the specialist told her that the battle for her liver was so acute he could hear the blood rushing to save it; just like Niagara Falls, he said. Thank God, she recovered fully with no trace today of that disease or any of its effects. But it took a while – seven months of bed rest. That was an interesting time for Daddy – suddenly known as Mr. Mom – and for our three children. Thankfully, our church brought dinner to our home almost every night. God bless them! It's a good thing. I mean, if it had been up to me to feed the kids, they probably would have been on the cover of something like World Vision magazine. But tough as it was, my wife said she had so much to praise God for in her recovery from hepatitis. For one thing, no one could really look to her or count on her for seven months. Here's what she said about it. "God gave me the gift of cleansing my schedule!" He had weeded out a lot that she said didn't matter after all and left only what did.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

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John Parker had it made. After two attempts to escape being a slave to a Southern slave owner, he had finally gotten his freedom. He chose to live in Ripley, Ohio, right on the freedom side of the Ohio River. He got a house and he got a good job as a factory worker. In fact, ultimately, he owned a foundry and he invented many processes that were used widely in the foundry industry. He was safe, secure and successful. But night after night, John Parker risked it all. Under cover of darkness, he rowed across the river to the Kentucky side-slave territory. If he was caught, he could lose his freedom. He could even lose his life. But in spite of the risks, John Parker went looking for runaway slaves. And he found them and rowed them across the river to the freedom side. It's actually believed that John Parker was responsible for at least 900 slaves going free.

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

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I kept telling my wife that I expected Tarzan or George of the Jungle to come swinging through our house at any moment. She had set up a corner of the house as her own personal little jungle to accommodate the new guests in our house-our orchids. She found some sources for orchids that were pretty reasonable, and she really enjoyed collecting them. They were very stately and lovely flowers.

Monday, July 11, 2016

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When you've got young grandchildren, over the years you keep learning about these "heroes" they have from children's videos and television programs. Now, we had grandchildren who got very well acquainted with characters like Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber from "Veggie Tales". Back in their day it was "Blue's Clues", "Bob the Builder", and so we had to learn about those. Bob the Builder, now he was the cause of some major excitement one Christmas. An aunt and uncle gave our 3-year-old grandson Bob the Builder coveralls. See, Bob would wear this yellow hardhat and blue coveralls, with yellow tools hanging from a tool belt. The coveralls even have the belt, with a yellow plastic hammer, a plastic screwdriver, a plastic wrench. When our grandson emerged from the bedroom as Bob the Builder, man, he just lit up with excitement.

Friday, July 8, 2016

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I was speaking for an Easter Sunrise Service in the Ozarks, and I saw something that seemed strangely out of place. In front of this church, there's a 10' section of a brick wall with a sign in front of it that says, "Berlin Wall." I was thousands of miles from Berlin, but here was a chunk of what used to be the most famous, and maybe the most infamous wall in the world. Many of us remember how the Berlin Wall represented for decades the Cold War division of our world into Communist and free. The Communists built it on the border between East Berlin and free West Berlin. In spite of that wall, many people still risked everything to scale it and escape to freedom. A few made it. Many died trying.

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