Wednesday, April 11, 2007

When I had the opportunity to visit the White House for a meeting with the President, I learned what everyone learns who is going to America’s Executive Mansion. They really check you out before they let you in there. There’s a background check. There are armed Marines at the door checking you out. You go through a metal detector to make sure you’re not carrying anything naughty with you. Believe me, you don’t just decide to drop by the White House, walk right in and make yourself at home!

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

When our friends got married some years ago, they decided they wanted to live and farm in a largely undeveloped area of the Ozark Mountains. They had some interesting neighbors - one in particular. He looked and talked and smelled like a true man of the mountains who had little use for "civilization." After they declined his invitation to dinner a lot of times, they finally consented. It was a memorable night. They stood on the porch of his cabin as he pointed to the hens running around the yard and said, "Tell me which chicken you want for dinner." They did and then they got to participate in executing the lucky winner. The conditions in which dinner was prepared would have given chest pains to any health inspector.

As they sat down at the table, they noticed a dark covering on one dish that they were about to eat. It turned out to be flies! After dinner, the two men sat in the living room and visited. My friend commented on the big holes all along the bottom of the cabin walls. His host explained that those holes were from the mice. "They must be mighty big mice and there must be a lot of them," my friend commented. The host smiled. "Oh, the holes are from me killing ‘em. I just sit here with my old .22 and shoot ‘em when they poke their head out!"

Monday, April 2, 2007

You can read about the Grand Canyon. You can see pictures of the Grand Canyon. But you can't begin to comprehend how grand a canyon it is until you're standing right there at the edge of it, trying to drink in how massive it really is. The moods, the colors, the vastness - it was really something impressive for our whole family that first time we went there together. You stand on the South Rim and you look at the North Rim in the distance - the far distance, realizing you can only look. It averages at least ten miles across! There's no way to get across that canyon. There's no bridge that will take you to the other side.

Friday, March 30, 2007

It was one of those disasters that riveted the attention of the nation. Nine Pennsylvania coal miners had been excavating when they inadvertently broke through a flooded shaft. An estimated 50 to 60 million gallons of water rushed in, trapping the men in this underground chamber. When the water rose over their heads, they had to swim to higher ground - still 240 feet underground. For two and a half days, rescuers didn't know if the miners were dead or alive. Once they made contact through a phone line they lowered into the flooded shaft, they established a line that would deliver compressed air and they began pumping out water. Seventy-seven hours after the ordeal began, rescuers brought the miners, one at a time, up to the surface in a cramped yellow rescue cage. As the last man was pulled to the surface, the Governor of the state simply said, "All nine. All nine."

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

A pastor friend of mine wrote recently and caught my attention with these words: "I'm thankful that the Lord has a sense of humor." He went on to tell about a Sunday some 55 years ago. He was in child care during the Sunday morning worship service with a friend of his, and they decided they wanted to find out what the "grownups" were doing in the sanctuary. So they devised an elaborate escape plan. They waited until the adult child care workers weren't looking and they made their break. At an opportune moment, they darted out of the kindergarten room, determined to see what went on in that morning worship service. Unfortunately, one boy got caught at the last minute, but he yelled to my friend, "Keep going, Paul! They got me!"

With adults in hot pursuit, my friend entered the first door he found into the sanctuary and found himself on the platform with the entire church looking at him. He had come in during the offering and both pastors were seated, doing nothing. To five-year-old eyes, it looked as if nothing was happening. The little explorer thought, "Is this all church is?" It was about that time his grandmother motioned to him to come down from the platform to her pew. In his words, "I was summarily grabbed, placed down next to her and told that I was in more trouble than I could ever imagine." Here's a fun footnote: for the past 25 years, the little boy who invaded that service has been the pastor of that church!

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Boys usually love foot races. It gives you a chance to show off how fast you are. Unless it's a three-legged race, in which case even an Olympian looks like a total klutz. They first roped me into a three-legged race at a Sunday School picnic when I was a kid. What they do is they tie each runner's leg to the leg of his relay partner. Then you get to see which team can round the track first, tied to each other. Speaking as a veteran, believe me, you stumble, you stagger, and you limp your way through this event where everyone looks dumb. What's really fun is when you go down and your psycho partner decides to keep running, dragging you along.

Friday, March 16, 2007

It was a TV show a long time ago, and it was resurrected again recently. The idea must still have some life in it! It's called "To Tell the Truth." Maybe you saw it. Three contestants all tell the panel their name and they all claim to be the same person. The host reads a little background on the person, and then it's up to the panel to try to figure out which one is the real one. The climactic moment comes when the host says, "Will the real Joe Slobotnik please stand up?" They all shift in their chairs, but finally one stands up. The real one!

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Roger was assistant manager of a buffet restaurant. He's on our ministry team, and the other day he was telling me about a special memory from that job early in his working career. It seems there was a male customer who had been really abusive to the waitress. So Roger, being the ranking officer in the restaurant at the time, had the joy of trying to confront this gentleman - well, this man anyway. Unfortunately, this abusive customer was young, strong, all muscular and bulked up. And Roger's like me; he's not exactly Goliath. But he walked into the lion's jaws and he bravely asked that man to leave. Initially, the customer was ready for a fight. Then suddenly, unexplainably, he raised the white flag and he just left, leaving Roger a little baffled as to why this man had suddenly given up. That's when my friend turned around and saw one of the chefs who had been - unbeknownst to Roger - standing behind him all that time. The chef was a Goliath! Roger said, "Suddenly I understood that it was the big guy behind me that made the difference!"

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

My friend, Scott, told me about a man he knows who has been a professional bus driver for years. The driver is from Australia, but he has driven bus tours in places across the world. And he says there is this one classic movie that his passengers seem to watch on just about every bus tour. In fact, it's been shown on his bus so many times that he literally knows the script of the movie by heart! But the funny thing is this: because he's always driving, he's never seen the movie that he knows all the words for!

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

If you want a unique dining experience, you should try my wife's Javanese Dinner sometime. It's actually from a friend's recipe, but man it is a smash hit once people figure it out, that is. I love to see people's reactions when they see all the ingredients she spreads out in bowls on the table. Your first impression is, "What does all this make?" There's rice, there's some chicken, there's a bowl of pineapple, there's celery over there, grated cheese, onions, there's a bowl of coconut, there are almonds, a bowl of crunchy noodles, and there's hot broth. Our guests invariably look a little dubious, but we assure them they'll love it when it's all put together. And they always do! In fact, they always come back for more.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Seattle - Earthquake! As I watched those words appearing on CNN's Breaking News, it really caught my attention in that airport. I expected to see the word "earthquake" associated with a place like California or other parts of the world, but that day it was Seattle - 6.8 on the Richter scale. Now, thankfully, the damage was not nearly as great as it could have been, but the experience was a sobering reminder of how unstable the ground beneath them really is. During the quake, a camera was rolling during a meeting in a conference room, and the video showed the reactions as the realization dawned on each person that his world was suddenly shaking. One moment, it was business as usual. The next moment, everything was moving.

Thursday, March 8, 2007

One day when our daughter was a teenager, I heard an interesting variety of emotions coming from her room. First, I'd hear her laughing, then sniffling, then she'd let out an occasional "I can't believe it!" Finally, my curiosity got the best of me; I had to know what she was doing. She said, "I'm reading my diary, Dad." Well, as she was reading that diary, she was reliving a lot of great moments, some hard times, a number of lessons learned. I've often wished I could go back and enter into how I felt at some key moments in my life. Problem is I didn't write it down.

Monday, March 5, 2007

David Letterman has been one of the kings of late-night television for years. His offbeat sense of humor has given him a prime spot in America's entertainment constellation for a long time. But one day, suddenly everybody stopped laughing. David Letterman, whose family has a bad history when it comes to heart problems apparently, went in for some seemingly routine cardiac tests. Suddenly, this comic king was rushed into surgery by his doctor and given a multiple bypass operation on his heart. The doctor saw major blockage in David Letterman's heart and he took radical action to save him.

Friday, March 2, 2007

If you want to have a philosophical discussion about the subject of grandchildren, sorry - I'm busy. Now if you want to talk about my grandson, I've got all the time in the world. I hope you do. If you want to discuss the institution of marriage, say goodnight. But if you listen to this broadcast very much, you know I love to talk about the woman I married. That would be my wife. This is a no-brainer, isn't it? It's the difference between the concept, the institution and the person!

Thursday, March 1, 2007

It's one of life's great acts of faith - checking your suitcase with an airline. You see, I fly a lot commercially, and most of my bags get where I'm going most of the time - but most, not all. Not long ago, my suitcase decided to stay in Chicago when I went to Toronto. That began a several-hour ordeal of making the rounds at the airport, trying to locate my bag.

I had carried on to the plane this very heavy, over-the-shoulder briefcase, and basically I had my office in it. My hosts in Toronto had sent a great young man named Jason to pick me up, and he was a real help. At one point, when I was waiting a long time for an agent, Jason just stood there with my heavy briefcase on his shoulder. He was slowly getting shorter as he stood there, actually. Now, we weren't going anywhere; he could have just set it down. So, I asked him a simple question, "Why are you carrying that?" He smiled sheepishly and said, "I have no idea" and promptly set it down. He felt much better.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Once upon a time, the Hutchcraft family had a little fantail goldfish, and what did our daughter name him? Well, of course, Fanny. And the time came for Fanny's murky old fishbowl water to get changed. Of course, he had to be in water while that was happening or he would have developed severe respiratory difficulties. So, we put Fanny into this cramped, tiny little bowl and we put it in the kitchen sink - poor little fish. He would try to swim as usual, and he just kept bumping into the sides of the bowl a lot because they came a lot sooner than usual! It really, obviously, was not fun being in that shrunken little environment, but hey, the purpose was to improve his world - right!

Monday, February 26, 2007

There's a church on an Indian reservation in the Southwest that makes the most of decorating for Christmas. They're in a remote area, and they're actually in a village where you don't see a lot of lights at night. So you can imagine what the church there looks like when they outline the entire church building and its outbuildings with Christmas lights - with a cross covered with lights on top of the church's steeple. One Christmas I had a chance to visit there and I got to see those lights of the church and that cross that really stands out against the darkness. And I met Rose, a Native woman who attends that church. Those lights are an important part of her story. She said, "I have struggled with alcohol for many years. And one night, during the Christmas season, I hit bottom. I was in the pit. I wandered outside and there it was–the cross all lit up in front of me. I came to where the cross was" she said, "and with the help of the pastor's wife, I finally found hope that night."

Friday, February 23, 2007

My son-in-law had to fight a battle that's all too familiar to frequent flyers; it's called Baggage Wars. That's when your suitcase goes somewhere other than where you're going. He fought a four-week battle, calling almost daily to see if the airline had located a missing bag with some pretty valuable items in it. Hooray! They finally found it! It had been checked to Chicago. Of course, it went to Portland, Oregon. It was checked on one airline and ended up tagged by a different airline. It started with his name on it, and it ended up with someone else's name on it. Do not ask me to explain this, but somehow his valuables did not end up where he thought they would. They were tagged for another destination.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

I was speaking at a church in New York, and a couple who originally came from India greeted me very warmly. They seemed to be very much in love with the Lord and obviously in love with each other. When I asked them how long they'd been married, they said, "28 years." They didn't look old enough to have been married 28 years. Then came the second and by far the biggest surprise. They said, "It was an arranged marriage." Jokingly, I said, "Well, it will probably never last." But after thinking about what they had said for a moment, I told them, "Maybe that's what we're all supposed to have - an arranged marriage."

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

CNN doesn't usually do news stories about high school football players, but there's something very special about the South Carolina player they described this way: "Sometimes the biggest heart on the field can fit into the smallest player." His name is Kos. He's a Siberian orphan, adopted by an American family, and he has no legs. He lost them the day he and his friend decided to hop aboard a freight train. For some reason, his friend pushed Kos and he landed under the wheels of that train. Now he's playing nose tackle on one of his high school's football teams. As hard as that may be to imagine, Kos had several solo tackles this past season; he recovered two fumbles; he was such a threat that other teams had to assign two players to defend against him. He just swings right into the fray and knocks them down with his strong arms and his head.

His heart on the field and his infectious personality have affected more than one school. The football coach at Clemson University brought Kos in to demonstrate his skill to that college team. The coach said, "If my players would max out on what they can give like this young man has, we'd win a lot of games." By the way, Kos' goal is to get a good job and make enough money to build a big house with several bedrooms, so he can provide a home for as many disabled Russian orphans as possible.