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Okay, spoiler alert. I am not talking about politics.
But, I can't remember an election where emotions have run this high. And the flood of passion is swamping the pundits. And that flood is sometimes carrying people where they never should go.
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It was hard to believe. Our daughter was pregnant. My wife was going to be a grandmother! And I was going to be...married to a grandmother! Our daughter and son-in-law had a lot of fun surprising both families with this wonderful news.
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Here's what my airline ticket said: Friday afternoon Ron will fly from Newark to Houston. An hour later, he will take a connecting flight from Houston to Guadalajara, Mexico. So much for what the ticket said. I was on my way to be with the Director of our radio outreach to Latin American young people. But little did I know that my flight would be delayed for a last-minute repair. Many passengers were concerned because they, too, had connecting flights in Houston and then on to various destinations in Mexico.
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When I was young, I hate to say it, so was television. Prehistoric guy you know! One of my television heroes was a space explorer called Captain Video. I wish I still had his decoder ring.
The day they took me to that children's hospital for those tests, they tried to pull a Captain Video scam on me. See, I'd been born with a heart murmur, so I was in the hospital to have a series of what was then state of the art tests to see how my heart was doing.
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It used to be that two armies would line up, then they would plunge into combat, and the best army would win. It was simpler then. Today it isn't necessarily the fellas with the best army who win; it's the ones with the best air force. It happened in World War II, it happened in certain Vietnam engagements, and it happened dramatically in the Persian Gulf War. I mean, the air force went in, they immobilized Iraq's capacity to respond, and then they kind of softened up the opposing forces, and there was an air war before anybody moved on the ground. And then once the troops started to move, the planes provided that vital air cover for their operations. Saddam Hussein had a big army, but he lost because his air cover just didn't function.
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If you've listened to this program before, you might be familiar with the dog we had, Missy. She provided a wealth of stories for me throughout the years. She was our little, often spunky, black and white shiatsu. Oh, she wasn't always spunky, especially in the mornings. I'd often get up early before anyone else, and when I hit the kitchen there she was. A definitely "unspunky" Missy.
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It was one of those ministry trips where I had to take my office with me. I had my files and I had my computer. I was going to three different cities so I had to be prepared for everything. In other words, I had a lot of luggage. There was this one garment bag that I used often and I always ended up stuffing it to the gills! I actually introduced my bag to airline agents as Big Bertha. Yeah, I named my suitcase.
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It was an awful night in Paris. Many of us watched the heartbreaking scenes from those awful terror attacks in Paris, and as I watched it, my mind flashed back some 22 years. The morning after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, I was flying from New York to speak in another city. To my surprise, we were greeted by a TV crew, asking, "How are New Yorkers feeling after this attack?" Then they came to me. Let's see, first word that came to my mind, "Vulnerable." That was it. We all suddenly felt very vulnerable.
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I really enjoy picking out gifts for the people I love; thinking what they like and what they need. Well, and then I enjoy giving the gift. I don't enjoy wrapping the gift. In fact, they wouldn't enjoy the gift I wrapped if I wrapped it. In fact, it's tempting just to hand them the present, but it just isn't really special to get a gift in a K-Mart bag, you know. It's nicer to have it wrapped in wrapping paper and bows, right?
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If I was back in elementary school, and they asked me to write a composition on "My Summer," I'd have one word on the paper. Amazing! Because I spent it on Indian reservations with a team of 60 Native American young people who stood on reservation basketball courts, pouring out their Hope Story of how Jesus has rescued them. I had a front row seat on God's awesomeness.
And then there was the moose.
