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Missionary pilots are some of my greatest heroes. See, missionary pilots fly around the world and land places where you think a plane could never land. They know how to take their plane apart; they know how to put it back together again.
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There are certain occupations where I think you need a particularly strong self image. For example, I would think a dentist needs a strong self image. I mean, he's a professional, he's helping people, but it's just hard to have so many people dreading what you do. Or in the world of sports, like a baseball umpire? Everybody thinks they can see better than the umpire can. You can tell because they keep yelling, "Hey, are you blind?" Because they don't agree with your call. Everybody thinks they have a higher IQ than you do. They keep commenting on the intelligence of an umpire negatively just because they don't agree with him.
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I remember when our local pizza joint got new owners. We were living on the East Coast then and the new owners really turned that place into something pretty impressive. It was a fairly large restaurant. And their menu had more than just pizza on it, although pizza was fine with me.
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My wife and I were on a ministry trip to Phoenix, and much to my surprise she decided to have her gall bladder out there. Actually, it was much of a surprise to her, too. You don't plan these things. I remember that night she left dinner early, and I found her about an hour later in unbearable pain. Nothing was making a dent in that pain. Finally we went to the emergency room and they said, "Time for this gall bladder to come out."
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Rwanda - It was the centerpiece of a lot of news attention back in 1994. Bloody civil war; tens of thousands of Rwandans were slaughtered there. There were nightly images of emaciated refugees, dying of disease, dying of starvation. And children; oh, you just couldn't forget the children. Many of those kids had lost everything in the carnage.
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I opened the refrigerator and there it was again - the pig! Yes, years ago someone bought it, put it in the refrigerator for a while and then it disappeared. I thought maybe he'd gone to the bacon factory, but then the pig was back. See, this pig was actually plastic, and whenever you would open the door, the plastic pig started oinking at you. It's annoying, but it does make you think about what you're about to do to yourself.
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When I visited the Gulf Coast of Florida, I got to see a couple of glorious earth turns. The sky was ablaze with color and the sun disappeared on the horizon. You say, "Excuse me, Ron, that's a sunset." Hey, wait a minute. Are you from the 14th century or something? The sun doesn't set; it doesn't move! The earth moves! As it makes its revolution, your point on earth turns away from the sun every 24 hours. So that would be an earth turn, right? And we say the sun sets. Well, the earth is turning and you can see how mankind got it wrong for so many centuries. I mean, it looks as if the sun is revolving around the earth. It revolutionized a lot of thinking when people finally understood what was revolving around what.
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I don't like to perform a wedding unless I can first have several premarital counseling sessions with the couple. I remember when I told my youngest son (he was very young at that time) that I was going to be performing a wedding ceremony for one of the women on our staff. But the way I said it was this: "Hey, guess what? I'm going to be marrying Margaret." He burst into tears. He said, "What about Mommy?"
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Our dog, Missy, had just ridden with us on a 1,600-mile round trip to Chicago and back. That was the first for her. It was a first for me to do it, too, with a dog and we both survived! Miracles still happen. Missy had been through a lot of upheavals in her routine as a result of that trip, and she'd had an exhausting two days. I can't believe now I was empathizing with our dog!
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Let's talk about a goat. "You wouldn't kid us, would you Ron?" No, I'm serious, and that's terrible. It's not a goat I've ever met. I mean, I lived in the New York area most of my life. Where would I meet a goat? But there's this college student who told me about this goat that he met in Israel on a college-sponsored trip. Now, Bill and his buddies were hiking in this desert-like area that's between Jerusalem and Jericho. It's the area actually where Jesus said that man was attacked by thieves. You know the one who was helped by the Good Samaritan?
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We had a few days off, and the phone rang in our little cabin in the woods. A family member was calling. She said, "You need to turn on the news. A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center." I watched the news for much of the next three days. I was trying to absorb a scene I had no mental file folder for. I don't think any of us did. I felt sickened, I felt vulnerable and profoundly sad beyond words.
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Professional football wasn't the same for me once I began to have the opportunity to speak at NFL chapels. All of the NFL teams have chapel services before their games. And so, a few hours before game time, I had the opportunity to meet in a hotel conference room with a number of the players; sometimes from our local team, sometimes from a visiting team. And the players were so intense! I mean, it was a lot more than a game to them. By the time that day was over, their career could have been in jeopardy, their income was on the line, sometimes what shape their body was in was on the line. Sixteen Sundays that made up a professional football schedule. Let me tell you, there was intensity in the room.
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One way to make a lot of money in America today is to have a good book or seminar on the subject of management, especially time management. We are management crazy! Tell me how to get more from my time, how to get more done, and get other people to do things. Well, I've got some very interesting advice and it didn't cost me a dime. It was on a wall plaque. Maybe you'll like it. In fact, consider this: You might even want to make this your new life motto as to how to manage your life. It said, "When in charge, ponder. When in trouble, delegate. When in doubt, mumble." I told you you'd want to make a life motto out of this.
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My son had the privilege of playing football for one of the best coaches in our state. Now, he had six years of championship football behind him when he took over our team. And they managed to win a conference championship every season, or in some cases, they won the state championship. One of the reasons is that he was a genius at knowing what position a boy would play best. Of course the player didn't always agree with that.
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Not many parents can sleep real soundly until they know their children are in for the night. At our house, we asked our kids... big, teenage guys to stop by our room no matter how late it was and just say, "Hey, we're here." Sometimes they get delayed, or sometimes they're in a situation where they couldn't call. And it's natural, I think, for a mom or a dad to be anxious until they can get a fix on where their kids are, and the great time of relief is when they come in the door and we know everything's okay. Right? I guess some of the most beautiful words in the English language are, "Mom, Dad, I'm home." Maybe you know a child who's way overdue.
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Let's take a look at Nemoria arizonaria. I'm sure you were just talking about him at lunch, right? It's a caterpillar! That's what a lot of us know him as. Now, some caterpillars are born in the spring and some are born in the summer. The spring bunch I understand, eat oak catkins. That's the dangling flowers on an oak tree. And within days, guess what? They look as fuzzy as their meal was that they ate just a few days ago. Oh, let's take the summer bunch now. They eat smooth leaves because that's what's out then. Would you believe it? They become smooth caterpillars. It's amazing! Caterpillars exemplify that old adage, "You are what you eat." They literally are. That doesn't mean you're going to begin to look like your lunch I hope. That's a scary thought. But in another way, the caterpillar dynamic is happening to you.
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You know, handmade gifts are always the most special. Well, there are better crafted doll houses than the one my daughter got when she was a little girl. But we made it; it's handmade. My wife and I, for better or worse, did it with our own hands. One December we closed the basement and we started hammering and sawing away to build that doll house. There was a sign on the door that said Do Not Open Till Christmas. That meant the basement. That drove the kids crazy, but we were having a great time doing it. Frankly, my month was crammed. But even though the work we did was often very late and it took quite a few hours, especially since I'm not the neighborhood handyman, I enjoyed every minute of working on it. Did I get tired? Yes. Was I too busy to do that doll house? Yes. Was it outside the things I do well? Yes. Was it a pleasure? Yes. Why? Because it was for a little girl I loved very much.
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You've probably been speeding down the highway as I have at times, and all of a sudden you'll come to a construction area that says, "Slow down-35 mph." So everyone, of course, slows down by two or three miles an hour. They're down to 57 mph or something like that. And then you'll see as you get a little more into the construction area these words, "Be prepared to stop." Well, I don't want to be prepared to stop. I don't know if you're like me, but I calculate how many miles I've got to go, how long it's going to take. Let's see, "Sixty miles – sixty minutes." Something like that. I don't want to be prepared to stop. I'm prepared to do the speed limit. You know, sometimes we live our whole lives that way. We're speeding too fast to stop.
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If you're a teenager, it's got to be one of the ugliest sentences in the English language. You ready? "You're grounded!" Or if you're a traveler who flies very much, it's not a very nice word for you either. "All flights have been grounded." And if you're a Christian, it's not a fun word either. But there's a way to be grounded without being ground under.
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So this friend of mine pulled out his wallet and said, "Ron, can I show you my pride and joy?" And he did. There was a picture of a little dusting compound called Pride and a dish washing detergent called Joy. So, here were these two household items. I was fully expecting to see his children, but then, of course, I have strange friends.
