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Wednesday, May 5, 2010

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It was one of the most compelling television documentaries I'd seen in a long time. It aired on the anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The stories of rescuers and of survivors, told first-person, took the viewer into what that day really felt like for the people who lived it. One story I just can't shake was told by a British young woman who worked in a brokerage firm high up in Tower Two. She recalled with remarkable composure the confusion in her office on whether or not to evacuate the building. She's alive today because she made the right decision. But many of her coworkers never made it out. She broke down for the first time as she talked about her good friend in the office. All she could say was, "I keep thinking, 'I should have asked him to go with me.' I can't get that out of my mind."

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

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He was five years old. His mommy wasn't feeling well, and so she was taking a nap. His little two-year-old sister wanted an ice cream cone, so he did what Mommy would do. He picked up the car keys Mommy had left on the kitchen table and took his little sister out to the car and put her in the back seat. Then he proceeded to climb into the driver's seat, turn on the car and somehow start driving. (This is a true story.) Then Mr. Five-Year-Old pulled out onto the main thoroughfare at the corner. Thankfully, a police officer saw the car going by apparently without a driver. That got his attention! He pursued the mystery car and managed to get the driver to pull over. Needless to say, there was one shocked policeman when he opened the door and saw a little boy at the wheel. I'd say it's a good thing he stopped him.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

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In recent years, there's been a stretch of Oklahoma, including Oklahoma City, that has seemed like "Tornado Alley." On the Weather Channel, many spring and summer days show that part of the country colored in the bright red that indicates severe weather. The most powerful tornado America ever had roared through the Oklahoma City area just a few years ago. As I drove through that area on a spring day between storm systems, I couldn't help but be impressed with what I saw as I drove by a church. Right in front of the church you could see an open door sticking up out of the ground. The church actually has a storm cellar right out on the street, and the door was wide open!

Thursday, April 15, 2010

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Once you've gotten used to a new convenience, you find yourself asking, "How did we ever do without these?" Sadly, my cell phone is one of those new things that seems indispensable now. Especially when you have lots of irons in the fire and you're on the road a lot. Often, by the end of the day my cell phone and I have something in common - our battery is dead and we both need recharging. I get into a bed - my phone gets plugged into an outlet. Not long ago, I went through my night-night drill in my motel room, including plugging in my cell phone. It wasn't happy the next morning when I went to turn my cell phone back on. Oh, I had plugged it in - on one end. See, I had connected my phone cord into the phone. I just had forgotten to plug it into the wall. So, my dead phone was still very dead.

Friday, April 2, 2010

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A listener shared a story with me recently that is just too powerful not to share with you. A man named George Thomas was a pastor in a small New England town. One Easter Sunday morning, he got up to speak and he set a rusty, bent-up, old bird cage next to the pulpit. You could tell by people's faces that the pastor had some explaining to do. He said, "Well, I was walking through town yesterday when I saw a young boy coming toward me, swinging this bird cage. On the bottom of the cage were three little birds who were shivering with cold and fear. I asked the boy, "What you got there?" He said, "Just some old birds." The pastor then asked, "What are you going to do with them?" The answer came back, "I'm gonna tease 'em and pull out their feathers to make 'em fight. I'm gonna have a real good time." The pastor pointed out that the boy would soon get tired of those birds and he inquired what he would do with them. "Oh, I got some cats," the boy said. "They like birds." What happened next is what puts you and me into the picture.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

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I was scheduled to speak at an Easter Sunrise Service not far from the home where we were staying. Since I was leaving before anyone else in the house, my hostess gave me verbal directions to the park; directions which really weren't all that complicated for most people. I shot out of the driveway in a big hurry to get where I was going. I turned in exactly the wrong direction. Later, our hostess told me; actually, she also told everyone at the service where she introduced me, that I was driving all around this complex of buildings near their home instead of heading down the road to my destination. Meanwhile, she was in her yard, waving her arms frantically, trying to get my attention as I, in my obsession with figuring out where I was going and getting there, blew right through a stop sign and kept right on driving in the wrong direction.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

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I was teaching at a national seminar on how to communicate an unchanging Christ in our rapidly changing culture. Well, at the end of a session, a pastor from Kentucky came up to tell me a story that he thought really illustrated some of what I had been saying. He said, "When I was a young man, we used to have some big tent revivals in my community. Each night an invitation was given for folks to come forward if they wanted to be, well as this country preacher said, 'borned again.'" The pastor went on to describe how some of the deacons would actually go out into the audience and go row-to-row to, shall we say, to "encourage" folks to make that choice. Near the back, one of the deacons came to a young man who gave him an honest and memorable response. The deacon said, "Son, do you want to be borned again?" To which the boy said, "No." The deacon pressed the point, "Why don't you want to be borned again?" The young man answered in all seriousness, "Cause I'm afraid this time I'd come out as a girl!"

Friday, March 26, 2010

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Before D. L. Moody became the greatest evangelist of the 19th Century, he ran a storefront Sunday School to reach some of the street kids of Chicago. The story is told of one tough little guy who was seen on Sunday after Sunday, trudging by on his way to that Sunday School. He lived a long way from his destination. Well, on one brutally cold and snowy Chicago day, one man saw the boy walking into the wind, stubbornly making his usual Sunday morning journey to Moody's Sunday School. He asked the boy why he would make that effort every Sunday, even on a day when no one else was out, especially when he passed by many churches that were much closer to his home. The boy's explanation was pretty clear and pretty simple, "I go there because they make a fellow feel loved there."

Monday, March 22, 2010

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Jeremy was a young man who worked in our office every year after he got out of college, and then, a veteran of our On Eagles' Wings Native American team. But something was different this particular year for him - a woman! Yes, a woman in Jeremy's life! And, believe me, it is no secret. He started telling us all about her as soon as we saw him again. The romance had just developed in the weeks preceding, and there was nothing he would rather talk about. She lived quite a ways from where we are, and the more he talked about her, the more he wanted to be with her. At first I was kind of amused by this young love, until I remembered that was me not so many years ago, telling anyone who would listen about the woman I loved. And still do.

Monday, March 1, 2010

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It's hard to find any "good news" in the bad news of being diagnosed with cancer. But Ellen did, and she told me about it after a recent seminar I led in her area. I'm really excited about how God is using our A Life That Matters training events to help everyday believers help people they know be in heaven with them. Ellen told me she'd read my book about that when it came out, but she didn't really look for or see many opportunities to tell people the good news about Jesus...until she got cancer. Suddenly she was in the middle of many people who in her words were "facing their own mortality; people whose future was suddenly uncertain because of that chilling word - cancer. Now, because of what she was going through and they were going through, her cancer strangely qualified her to share the Christ who died and rose again to get us ready for eternity. Ellen said, "I went back and re-read your book so I'd know what to do." God has used Ellen in a powerful way. She said, "Ron, I've led so many cancer patients to Jesus - people from many different religions and people with no faith at all!"

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