Monday, August 27, 2007

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I hate it when a five-year-old makes me feel dumb; especially when it's my grandson. I mean, he doesn't mean to make me feel dumb. He doesn't know he's making me feel dumb. But he is really smart, and he knows a lot about a lot! Like the solar system, for example. He's got the planets down cold along with all kinds of facts about the universe. Things I either have forgotten or maybe never knew. Another thing our grandson is really mastering is numbers. Man, can he count! He's working on thousands, millions, billions, and his favorite quantity, a google! When it comes to our universe, he's never going to be able to count that high!

Friday, August 24, 2007

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There's a bridge in a park not too far from here; they take carriage rides there. It's just a bridge to most folks, but not to our son and daughter-in-law. That will always be a very special spot to them. It's where he asked her to marry him. It's interesting how a plain old piece of geography becomes forever special when something special in your life happens there: the place you were born, or where you had your first date or your first kiss, or where you were married, or where some significant "first" in your life took place. When a certain place is where something important started, it will always be a special place.

Friday, August 17, 2007

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Every once in a while as you're cruising down the highway, you'll see one of those trucks - the ones that are carrying a truckload of smashed cars. We're talking, you know like, steel pancakes here. Sometimes you'll drive by the scrap yard where these junkers end up, and there you'll see row after row with stacks of these flattened old vehicles. "Junk," you say. Today it is, but there was a day when that hunk of steel was someone's dream come true. It was the new wheels they'd hoped for and saved for; a prize they wouldn't let anyone touch - now flattened.

Friday, August 3, 2007

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My son and I were waiting in front of a restaurant and we saw this dad desperately trying to keep his impatient two-year-old occupied. What's that word they use sometimes to describe the "two's"? "Terrible"? Now there's something in a little child that wants freedom, and will go for it at the first opportunity. This kid was no exception. As soon as his dad let go for a moment, he started chugging down the sidewalk. Dad started after him, pretending he was having a hard time catching the little guy. Well, you knew he wasn't. My son just watched in amusement and he said to me, "It's so funny watching a kid trying to get away from his father. You know he's going to lose."

Monday, July 30, 2007

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It was home improvement time at our house, and with me having a chronic sense of "uncoordinitis," well, we obviously need some help. And our friend Tim is the man for the job for two reasons. First, he's just really good at designing and building and problem-solving. Of course, there are a lot of people who are craftsmen like that. See, the second reason is what really made Tim the man for the job. Sometimes we were gone when he was going to be at our house working. And since he was working in all parts of our house, he needed keys to everything, and there was no place in our home that he couldn't go. That meant we needed not only someone who could do the job, we needed someone we could totally trust. And we had someone like that.

Monday, July 23, 2007

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I shave the old fashioned way - hot water, shaving cream, and a razor. I guess that makes me a "real man," huh? Well, the other day I was shaving in a hotel and I realized I had run the hot water too hot. It's one thing to soften your beard; it's another thing to cook your face. So I ran just a little cold water into the sink. Now that was amazing! Suddenly, the water was not hot enough! See, I underestimated how quickly the cold can cool off the hot.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

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I’ve flown into the Anchorage, Alaska, airport before, but I’ve never driven around that airport before. I was returning my rental car, which had to go to one terminal, and I had to race to make my plane at the other terminal. It was still dark, which didn’t help in reading the signs at an unfamiliar airport, and somebody else must have my sense of direction. I thought I was heading for the rental car return until suddenly it looked like I was heading out into nothing that looked like an airport at all. As soon as I realized I was going the wrong direction, I knew what I had to do. I turned around as fast as I could and drove very quickly in the right direction. And I made it!

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

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We get our share of storms where we live, and we’ve got our share of trees. So, you can probably figure out the rest. After almost every storm, I make the rounds in the yard, picking up the souvenirs the storm left behind. I haul all those downed branches to my special brush pile place, even if they’ve got leaves on them. Even if I am a city boy, I know there’s no use planting those branches in the ground and hoping they’ll grow more leaves. In fact, those leaves they have are soon going to fall off. As soon as the branch gets separated from the tree, it starts dying.

Monday, July 16, 2007

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My wife and I will never forget our time on the little island of Haiti, some years ago. It's the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and a heartbreaking place for anyone with a little compassion in their heart. While we were there, missionaries told us about one recent tragedy; one indicative of so many in the lives of these beautiful people. There had been an epidemic of conjunctivitis, or "pinkeye" as it's often called. Women were frustrated by having their eyes crusted over or running with conjunctivitis, so they tried what they thought might cure it - bleach. They rubbed bleach in their eyes. You know the outcome.

Monday, July 9, 2007

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It was pretty scary for a four-year-old little girl. My wife's grandfather had somehow managed to drop his favorite pen down a cistern in his yard. She remembers it as being about 25 feet deep, and she remembers that because she was the one who had to retrieve Granddad's valuable pen. Her Daddy made this makeshift harness for her to sit in, tied a tope around her waist, and began to lower her down into that hole. Her mind was focused partly on the lost pen, and partly on what snakes might be down there in that damp hole in the ground. As she dangled in space in a scary place, she was counting on one thing: her big, strong Father was holding the rope.

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

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It's got to be one of my favorite plays - "Fiddler on the Roof." The story is virtually a modern classic, telling with this incredible charm and warmth the story of 19th-century Jews in Russia. All the joys of Jewish faith and Jewish family are there, along with the pain of persecution for being Jewish. Tevye, the milkman, is the colorful father of the family; a man who is forever arguing with himself. If you're familiar with the play, you'll remember how his conversations with himself - and even with God - will go back and forth as he talks himself in and out of opposite viewpoints. Tevye will present one view, and then inadvertently he will say, "On the other hand..." and he'll talk himself out of it. He doesn't actually reach many conclusions!

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

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When I'm speaking for some event, my needs are pretty simple. Just get me a bottle of fresh water, and I'll be able to keep going like the Energizer Bunny. Recently, I realized that I was heading into a speaking session without my trusty bottle of water. Someone directed me to a hospitality room the host had set up for those on the program. I bypassed all the goodies and I reached for the first bottle of water I saw. As I sat on the front row of the auditorium, awaiting my time to go up to the platform, I mindlessly twisted open the cap on the bottle so I could get a swig. Well, much to my surprise and chagrin, the contents immediately began erupting out of the bottle! I hadn't read the label, and I didn't know what was inside until I opened it. It was sparkling water, and it was sparkling all over me!

Monday, July 2, 2007

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It's a ghost town now. But in the 1880s, she was one of the boomtowns of California - all because of some silver in the ground. When the price of silver soared, so did their fortunes and so did the population of this little town that we visited not long ago. But when the price of silver crashed, well, so did the town. Back in some of her better days, a fire hit the town and it burned a lot of it to the ground. The only original buildings still standing there today had one thing in common. In a town that was mostly wood structures, these were the ones that were made of adobe. They've reconstructed some of those wood buildings, but hey, they weren't there long ago because they couldn't survive the fire.

Friday, June 29, 2007

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We hear millions of words in our life - especially if you spend much time around me or our family. We forget most of the words we hear, except for some that are just too important to forget. Like our baby's first words, or the last words of someone we love, or the words that end up changing our life. Our five-year-old grandson called me one day and said, "Granddad, I stayed up extra late tonight till I could talk to you and tell you what I memorized." It took me a while to recover from what he said, and I'll never forget it.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

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I am much too young, of course, to be having senior moments. Although I think I've been having them since I was about 25. One of those is when you seal an envelope and you suddenly realize you left something out; maybe it's a check or a letter. And you've already gone to the trouble of addressing it, putting your return address on it, maybe even stamping the envelope. Then, too bad. You're going to have to open up what you just sealed. Good luck. You probably won't be able to use that envelope. Once it's sealed, it's meant to stay that way.

Monday, June 25, 2007

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People who know me know that I'm a very focused person when I'm working on something. Except when it comes to the most distracting person I know - my little granddaughter. When she was only one-plus-year old, there was just no way to resist her when she came my way. She'd pull herself up by my pant leg, she'd stretch her arms my direction, and then made these cute little noises and irresistible faces - virtually begging me to pick her up. I'm not the only one who's gotten nothing done when she's around. No, she was that way with other family members; reaching out to be held. And I'll tell you this: our arms were always open.

Friday, June 22, 2007

On the September 11th we'll never forget, she was the last person brought out alive from the rubble of the World Trade Center. Fleeing down the stairs from her office on the 64th floor of the north tower, Genelle Guzman got as far as the thirteenth floor when the building collapsed around her. Suddenly, she was in total darkness, she was buried alive and she was unable to move much of her body. Genelle cried out to God for help. And that help came in the person of a rescuer breaking through the rubble and grabbing her hand. In her darkest moments, Genelle Guzman promised her life to Jesus Christ. Her emotional miracle was the total peace she has had every day since then; a peace that her psychiatrist, who's worked with many nightmare-plagued survivors, simply could not understand. In his book "Breakthrough Prayer," Jim Cymbala quotes Genelle's bottom line on what happened to her as she told it to her amazed psychiatrist. She said, "The tragedy I suffered was something I needed to go through in order to know Him."

Thursday, June 21, 2007

When a little child gets home later than they're supposed to - well you know that there is going to be on the other end. There's going to be a worried and not very happy parent waiting for them. I heard recently about a little girl who got home unusually late from school only to find a daddy who was not happy at all. He asked the little girl why she was late. She said, "Because my friend broke her dolly." Her dad said, "Oh, okay, so you stayed with her to fix it?" He didn't expect her gentle little reply, "No, Daddy. I stayed with her to help her cry."

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

When my wife and I stuck our head out the door of our motel room one morning, we were greeted by a torrential rainstorm. Because we were driving a larger-than-usual vehicle, we had to park a distance from our room the night before, which meant we were in for a wet run to our vehicle. I was collecting our overnight bag, so my wife was the one who struck out into the monsoon first. For the most part, she was able to run under the cover of a motel overhang. So I took off, sprinting along the route that she had just taken. What I missed was her yelling "No!" to me as I approached a place to cross the parking lot. I missed her warning and promptly ran full speed into a huge puddle that had accumulated at the edge of the sidewalk: soaked socks, soaked shoes, squishing for the rest of the day. Oh, and my wife's feet? They were dry. Mine were soaked. The difference? She looked ahead to see where she was stepping. I didn't.

Friday, June 15, 2007

For years, the stories of J. R. R. Tolkien's "Middle-Earth" were contained in his "Lord of the Rings" book trilogy and enjoyed by a relatively small number of people who loved those stories passionately. But since the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy exploded from books to blockbuster Hollywood movies, millions became enthusiastic fans. The engaging fantasy world of Tolkien's "Middle-Earth," the unique characters, the epic battles, and the spiritual themes that run through the stories; there are many layers that have blended into an experience that has magnetized millions of people. It's a great story, but for many, this is a story that seems to say something - something important. Tolkien, the author of the "Lord of the Rings," was a man with a deep Christian faith, and that faith helped to shape the provocative spiritual themes that many find in "Return of the King," the finale of the trilogy. There is the ring. There is the king. And there, somewhere tied to both, are many of us.