Friday, January 26, 2007

It's a familiar scenario. A man is driving his family on vacation; let's say they're going from Chicago to California. His wife gently points out to him that she just saw a sign saying, "Welcome to Kentucky." Kentucky is definitely not between Chicago and California. Repeatedly, the Mrs. suggests that the Mr. stop and ask directions. Then she says that four-letter word, "I think we're lost." But will he stop and ask for directions? No! Maybe it's something in the male chromosome. Like most men, he's too proud to admit he's lost, and he's probably not going to end up where he hoped.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Few things in life are so depressing as a boy's long-uncleaned room. Sometimes you might not even want to ask them to clean it. It might be better just to torch it or hose it out like a monkey cage. I remember one time my wife and I wanted to say, "I love you" to our boys in a special way. So while they were gone one Saturday, we literally attacked their room. We thought it would be a little easier to keep it clean if we would, this one time, make it clean. When we were done, it was a great place to be again, and when the boys walked into their room, they became believers in miracles. And we did make two things really clear to them. First, "We love you guys." Secondly, "Don't expect us to make this a habit."

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Oh, those firstborn children. Somewhere inside their brain is this tattoo: "I can do it myself." Wait. I'm a firstborn. So is our daughter. And when she decided at the age of five that she was going to bake a cake, she, of course, didn't need any help. Her "I'm going to bake a cake" moment was a good news/bad news announcement for me. Good news: my little girl is growing up. Bad news: I have to eat it. Well, we heard a lot of banging of pans in the kitchen and ultimately the smells of something baking. Maybe this was going to work after all. Minutes later, my little girl came into the living room, almost tripping over her lower lip. She was sad. She explained: "Daddy, it came out flat." Then she brought in her first cake. Or maybe I should say pancake. It was that flat. That's when Sr. Baking Advisor, Mom, entered the picture to see what our daughter could learn from the cake that fell flat. She'd put in the milk, the eggs, the flour. But she forgot just one ingredient - the baking powder - the anti-flat ingredient in a cake.

Monday, January 22, 2007

The plan was flawless. They told me that Cadillac Mountain was the first place you could see the sun rise in the United States. And my job, of course, was to provide wonderful memories and special experiences for my children. We were vacationing in Maine, and I was determined to let them have this thrill. Somehow, they didn't seem as excited about it as I was; must have been a maturity thing. Then why wasn't my wife excited? Anyway, I carefully checked the weather forecast every day until I was sure we'd have a clear morning to see the sunrise. I made everyone go to sleep early. I woke everybody up at 3:00 A. M. We were in a campground and I was afraid the kids would wake up complaining and waking up the neighbors, so I had a doughnut ready to stuff into each little mouth - including mine. I bundled everyone into the car and up we drove to the top of Cadillac Mountain. I kept checking my watch, waiting for that magic moment of the scheduled sunrise, and the moment came. No sun. We waited and waited. Surprise! The weatherman was wrong. We saw a distinctly unmemorable cloudrise.

Monday, January 15, 2007

I know what it is to need a stamp. You've got something that has to be mailed - like an urgent bill, for example. You've gotten spoiled by having electricity in your house, and you really don't want to see what it's like without it. Your electric bill is due, the check is written, the envelope is addressed, but you can't find a stamp. But something that happened during a recent election has to be ultimate postage desperation. An absentee ballot arrived with an unusual stamp on the envelope, a picture of an inverted World War I airplane. The news report said that stamp may well have been a rare collector's item worth $200,000! Yes, postage rates are going up, but this is out of control!

Thursday, January 11, 2007

I heard a true story from the life of veteran missionary, Helen Roseveare, and it touched me deeply, and it reminded me of why I face some huge needs with perfect peace. I though it might be the encouragement you need today. Helen was a medical missionary to Zaire, and she tells about the night she had tried to save a mother in the labor ward. In spite of all their efforts, the mother died, leaving the missionaries with a crying two-year-old daughter and a tiny, premature baby. They had no incubator. They had no electricity to run an incubator, and they had no special feeding facilities. And even though they lived on the equator, the nights were often chilly. They wrapped the baby in cotton wool, they put him in box, and they stoked up a fire. They really needed a hot water bottle for the tiny newborn, but they discovered that the last one they had was burst and there was nowhere to get one. So they put the baby as near the fire as they could safely and they hoped it would be enough. It was a touch-and-go fight for that little life. And then came the little girl's prayer.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

The thought of a fire on an airplane is really pretty unsettling. That's exactly what happened on an Air Canada flight a few years ago. The fire started in the lavatory and smoke quickly spread throughout the plane. The pilot couldn’t see and he didn't know how he was going to land. But suddenly this calm, measured voice came into the cockpit, "Just do what I say. I'll bring you in." It was the flight controller. And that calm voice literally talked the pilot in for a miraculously safe landing!

Monday, January 8, 2007

One day our ministry got a call from a lady who identified herself as being with a bank that we don't even do business with. She said, "The wire transfer has not come through yet" and she wanted us to call her back with more information. Interestingly enough, no such lady works at the bank she mentioned. The folks at the bank told us that things like this can actually be part of a very clever scam that crooks use to get your money. They lead you to believe that a donation is coming through; they just need your bank routing number. But that information might be all they need to access your bank account and get what's in your bank account transferred to their bank account. So you have to be a little careful out there. There are plenty of folks out there who are claiming to give you something, so they can take something!

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

When you're taking a team of Native young people to nine different reservations - often in pretty remote places - you need a combination command post/prayer room/counseling room/supply room on wheels. Our rented RV served all those purposes. Now I'm still getting used to this RV thing. Some of them are like entire civilizations on wheels. They're actually in two zip codes everywhere they go. Ours was a lot simpler, but it did the job. One challenge for me was the distance from the RV to the ground. I think really that there may have been some mix-up at the factory and some NBA player got part of my legs. It looked like a long way to the ground for Mr. Vertically Challenged. But the RV had a cool feature. As I stepped out, a step automatically came up under my dangling foot and helped me land safely every time.

Tuesday, January 2, 2007

I don't mind visiting people in the hospital. I just don't stay in hospitals myself. Visitor - yes. Patient - no. My medical value system sort of works like this: minor surgery is any operation on you, and major surgery is any operation on me. I've actually learned that there's something worse than being a hospital patient myself. It's having one of our grandchildren in the hospital, especially when the treatment means pain. I can take it when I'm the one hurting. It's just hard to take it when it's one of them. A few weeks ago, our ten-month-old grandson had to go to the emergency room in another town, and it wasn't a happy time for the little guy. They had to try multiple times to get a needle into a vein for a blood test. It was excruciating! He was increasingly traumatized by one injection after another and by that big old oxygen mask they kept holding over his nose.

As soon as I got there, I decided there was just one thing I could do that might help. It's a little song I've sung to him since the first times I held him. It's always seemed to calm him down, even when he was unusually upset. So I leaned down so my cheek was touching his cheek and I began to gently sing our little song in his ear. With medical folks continuing their necessary but pretty scary work, he stopped his panic crying and he settled down a lot. I must have stayed there for thirty or forty minutes. I think that song must have nearly driven a couple of nurses cuckoo. But my grandson - well, a little song made a big difference.

Friday, December 29, 2006

I guess you could call it creative architecture. Or you could just call it a big stone in the middle of a high brick wall. I saw this phenomenon when I visited the new station of one of our radio partners recently. The front wall of the station has this big old 230-pound stone, about halfway up the wall in the middle of the bricks. There's no way that could be mistake or an accident. It is, in fact, a message. A masonry contractor offered to do some of the work on the station, and somewhere along the way he thought about a stone like this. He thought about what the Bible says about Jesus being the "chief cornerstone." So he went to the local quarry and found this impressive piece of rock, which he installed in a central spot in the front of the building, with the "chief cornerstone" scripture reference under it. I love the reason he gave for this unusual feature. He said, "You build everything around the cornerstone."

Monday, December 25, 2006

When I was growing up, Christmas was a double-header for me, because my birthday is just a few days before Christmas. Just in case you care, it's on the date that the Wright Brothers flew the first airplane successfully. With all the time I've spend on airplanes in my life, you gotta wonder if that's some kind of destiny. That's also the date of the Battle of the Bulge. Destiny again? But I have never had a complaint about when my birthday is. As a kid, I tried to turn that into an advantage by asking for a gift that would be too much for just Christmas but not for Christmas and your birthday. And besides cleaning up in the gift department, it's just neat to have a birthday at a time when all the world seems to be celebrating. All right, not my birthday obviously, but it's just the best time of the year!

Friday, December 22, 2006

Our family opens our Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve, and I've got to tell you, it's usually one amazing outpouring of love. There is not a member of our family who just runs out to some mall and says, "Oh boy, I gotta get something for her or for him." No, there seems to be this almost scientific process where they say about each person they're buying for, "Now what do I know about what this person? What do they really need? What do they really like?" I think we've even got a couple of sons who evaluate their gift-giving success on the basis of how touched the recipient is - you know, the tear test. And there are always some neat, touching moments.

Everybody really seems to like giving a gift more than receiving it. And though none of us has a lot of money to spend, folks seem to sacrifice, if necessary, to buy or make a gift that's really a gift of love. Now here's a way I could ruin this beautiful scene. My wife or one of the kids gives me the gift that they've carefully thought about and maybe sacrificially paid for. And I get up, walk over to that family member, pull out my wallet and say, "So what do I owe you?" They would say, "Nothing." And I would just keep pushing, "Look, I want to pay for this gift, man. Here, take this money!" They'd be pretty hurt; they'd be pretty ticked. I'm trying to buy what they already paid for as a gift.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

It was our grandson's two-year Christmas, and he was so much fun to watch. One day during the season, his mother unpacked the family Nativity Set for her and her boy to set up, and he loved it. I mean, they put up the manger, and Mary and Joseph, and the angels, and the shepherds. They put out everyone except the one figure they couldn't find - Baby Jesus. Well, our grandson was pretty concerned about this missing person, so Mommy told him that Daddy would look for Baby Jesus when he got home from the office. Hours after that, our grandson heard Daddy coming up the back steps. He ran to the door and greeted his father with an impassioned two-word question, "Where's Jesus?"

Monday, December 18, 2006

Right after Thanksgiving, I made my annual pilgrimage to the Christmas corner of our garage, and I brought out Christmas. We've been accumulating ornaments and decorations for many years now, and it's always a big deal for the family when they make their annual re-entry - all those decorations. The house is alive with Christmas now - for a while. But before very long, I will reverse the exercise, repack everything in their aging boxes, and put them back in storage for another year.

Friday, December 15, 2006

We attended a concert, only to learn that it was being taped for later use as a TV program. The host introduced two other men who were going to sing with him, the accompaniment track started up, and they launched into the song, cameras were rolling. I'm not sure what the problem was, but they weren't all singing the same song, and that's a problem! Oops! The host stopped the song, looked up at the control booth, and he said, "Guys, let's start that one over." You'll never see that on TV. Then he said to the audience, "Good thing this is taped, not live." He was right. I've done plenty of live radio, and I want you to know, live is unforgiving. You blow it, you blew it!

Monday, December 11, 2006

Our friend, Vicki, is one very happy woman. For many years now, she has carried a heavy load of nagging credit card debt. If you've ever been in debt for a while, you know how it always weighs you down like this heavy burden on your back. Well, Vicki recently came into some money through an inheritance, and you know what she did with it! She had a party - a check writing party! All those debts are paid, and you can tell she feels like she just got out of prison!

Friday, December 8, 2006

Matt is 16, and he hates his birthday. At least, that's what he told some of his friends. He said his birthday is always the worst day of the year for him, ever since his sixth birthday. He remembers that like it was yesterday. His mom went out and bought a special cake, invited all his friends to come over for Matt's birthday party, and nobody came. And since there was nobody there for the party, his mom took the cake back to the store. There was no one there to celebrate him.

Wednesday, December 6, 2006

I only had 24 hours in Athens, Greece. Well, what am I going to do? Well, I knew what I wanted to see - the Acropolis, and there it is. It's on this hill that dominates the city, and it's there that the ancient Greeks built this incredible temple to their goddess Athena. Even after 20 centuries, I have to tell you, it's still an impressive, imposing structure and it still dominates the city. The Acropolis was the most sacred, most protected, most honored place in all of Athens. In fact, it was a serious crime to violate that temple, as it was in many ancient cultures. Hey, everybody knew the temple got first class treatment because the gods live there.

Monday, December 4, 2006

They often give you one when you check into some sprawling motel complex, or a big theme park, or a large convention facility. It's a map of the place. And for the directionally challenged like me, there's one important thing I look for on that map. It's that "x" and those three very helpful words, "You are here." See, you're not helping me very much by just giving me a drawing of where everything is. In order for me to use that to get where I want to go, I need that one fundamental piece of information - locating exactly where I am right now!