Tuesday, May 9, 2006

They just don't make garbage like they used to. Do you remember the good old days when you could throw away everything when you were done with it? Actually, those were not the good old days, because we were also trashing our environment. I don't know how it is in your neighborhood, but we lived in a neighborhood where we had the privilege of sorting and putting out what used to be just garbage: bottles, newspapers, cans and glass. They're now called recyclables. It's amazing how they can take that garbage, and then recycle it into something useful again.

Friday, May 5, 2006

Over the years I've noticed a fairly predictable formula for some of those TV adventure series: there's a victim you like, a villain you don't like, a hero you really like, and a major predicament near the end usually resolved in the last five minutes. But occasionally the predicament isn't resolved by the end of the show. As the minutes run out of the hour, the villain you don't like is winning, the victim and hero you do like are in grave danger, and it ends right there - causing a serious Maalox Moment. You're protesting, "It can't end here!" And then one hope-giving word suddenly appears on the screen - continued.

Wednesday, May 3, 2006

One of the wonderful gifts the Lord has given us in our Ministry Headquarters is a great studio for producing our radio programs. As our building was being built, the builders had to keep the concrete floor of the studio area separate from the floor of the rest of the building. It's called a floating floor, which simply means that the studio floor is totally isolated from the floor under everything else. The reason? A radio studio has to have an environment where no outside sound affects what you're recording. So to help create a totally controlled sound environment, you have a floating floor so other sounds won't travel through the floor and infect the studio area. If you want a pure sound, you have to isolate yourself from all outside vibrations.

Tuesday, May 2, 2006

The man in the Disney movie was an inventor. One of his inventions was a shrinking machine. Some have suggested that's what happened to me - a shrinking machine. It did happen to his kids' baseball. It crashed through the window of his laboratory and it landed in dad's shrinking machine, turning it on as it landed, and the kids were amazed to see how their ball suddenly shrank. Thinking this machine was really cool, they started playing with it - until the machine suddenly shrank them to an almost invisible size. And the anguished cry of the father is the title of the movie: "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids!"

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Apparently, the drunk driver liked our side of the road better than his side of the road. With our whole family aboard, our car was suddenly hit head-on. By God's grace, none of us was seriously injured, but our car went to car heaven, or wherever totaled cars go. I had a busy ministry schedule during the next few weeks, and our only car was gone. Then a friend called and offered to lend us his car while he was in Florida for the next six weeks. That was awesome! An hour later, he drove into our driveway with his brand new Cadillac Coupe DeVille. That was good news and bad news. The good news was that for the next six weeks I'd be driving my friend's brand new Cadillac. The bad news was that for the next six weeks I'd be driving my friend's brand new Cadillac! I've never driven so carefully in my life! I stayed well under the speed limit, I got the oil changed about three times a week, I didn't allow one scrap of food or drink in that vehicle. Hey, this was somebody else's treasure I was driving!

Friday, April 21, 2006

Over the years, our family has had some great times at the New Jersey shore. And I love to see the Atlantic Ocean with all of its many moods. Relatively calm. Tide out. Tide in. Building surf. Towering breakers. Angry in a storm. When the waves really start getting high, most swimmers make a wise choice. They get out of the water and they call it a day. Some of those massive waves could totally swamp you and then probably carry you all the way to England. But there's another breed out there. They're called surfers; some on surfboards, some body-surfing, and they don't run out when the monster waves start coming - they run in! And they ride those monsters!

Thursday, April 13, 2006

My wife and I kept two special remembrances of our wedding: a tape of the ceremony and a piece of wedding cake. The tape was a much better idea. We froze the cake and then we ate some of it on our first anniversary. You've heard about chocolate cake? This was more like chalk cake. But the tape was a great idea. Often, even now on our on anniversary, we replay it. We relive that wonderful day that our marriage began. And we are there! Some couples go way beyond a tape - they actually dust off the old wedding dress, reconvene the wedding party, and do it all again for their 25th. You know, it's good for a couple to remember their wedding day. A trip back to the beginning can rekindle that spark.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Sometime in your life, you've probably run into a waiter or waitress with a stinky attitude; maybe even two or three. But a lot of times you can't blame them totally, if you see the way a lot of them get treated in a day's time. They're not America's best treated people. Maybe that's why I've made it sort of a personal crusade to brighten their day a little bit by remembering their name, smiling, saying thanks and sometimes even goofing off with the server a little bit. Sometimes, when they come back during the meal they ask, "How is everything?" I'll say, "Wonderful! You're a great cook!" It's always fun to watch their response. Usually they just stop cold for a minute. Sometimes they'll laugh; sort of embarrassed and they'll say, "Oh, I don't cook it!" I know that. They're delivering what someone else created!

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Chimney Mountain! I had to get to the top of it. Why? Because it was there! Of course, I had to drag my young family into this obsession with me. One vacation day, I made that "Daddy's Great Adventure for the Day." Now it wasn't a steep hike; a trail through the woods that gradually took you to the top of the mountain. As we walked along, my wife and the kids kept noticing little things - like chipmunks and squirrels and flowers and interesting rocks. Of course, whenever we noticed one of those little things, we had to stop; which was not my favorite thing to do. I had a goal, folks, and chipmunks and interesting rocks didn't help me get to it. At one point, they stopped us just to listen to the wind blowing through the tall pine trees. That's nice, you know, but not if you wanted to see the top of Chimney Mountain before sunset. Finally, my frustration made it to my mouth, "Honey, the reason for this hike is to get to the top. Don't you understand?" To which she said something like this: "Oh, I thought we came to enjoy the hike." Great! I was interested in the result; she was interested in the process!

Monday, April 10, 2006

When I say this man is a veteran test pilot, I mean he's easily old enough to be comfortably retired. Instead, he's still blasting through the skies at these mind-boggling speeds, testing some of America's most advanced aircraft. He told his amazing life story recently on a national television program. It's a story of a lifelong adventure in the skies and a long spiritual search here on earth that ended - well, with the pilot of the universe piloting his life. As he concluded his story, he told about an incident where he was sent up in a state-of-the-art aircraft to help a pilot in distress.

The fog was thick; the weather was dangerous for flying, and a rookie pilot was lost in that fog and unable to get through the weather in a plane that wasn't equipped for it. Well, Mr. Test Pilot flew close to that imperiled aircraft until he was actually positioned at its left wing. And then he radioed the desperate pilot and he simply said, "Look to your left." Then he said, "Now stick with me. Turn when I turn." Then in a plane so advanced that the veteran said that it can make a game out of bad weather, he led his frightened fellow-pilot to that glorious point where they broke through the fog and they saw the bright lights of that landing strip below. When they landed safely, the rookie got out of his plane, ran to his rescuer, and hugged him as if he had saved his life. He probably had.

Friday, April 7, 2006

As Lenny left our headquarters a few days ago, I said, "Man, you have really made a difference around here!" He really had. A company that was getting rid of a lot of office furniture donated about a dozen desks to our ministry, and we were thrilled to get them! They're good desks, but well, not exactly beautiful desks. They were all scarred and beat up, and on the surface they didn't look particularly useful. In fact, the company that donated them actually was getting ready to discard them before they learned about our need. So here, in a storage area, were all these ugly desks - until Lenny got his hands on them. One by one, he went to work with his magic touch and he slowly restored their original beauty. By the time he was done, it looked almost like we had just gotten a shipment of expensive new desks.

Thursday, April 6, 2006

The wind was blowing so hard that day, I was afraid someone was going to end up in Oz; and this isn't even Kansas, Dorothy. I was in my office during one of those blustery hours, but you couldn't miss the roar outside. At times the winds were approaching hurricane force. I mean, they were knocking out electric power to many customers, tearing branches off trees, and in one case, actually causing the deaths of four schoolgirls in New York City. They were actually in their church-school van when a 60 miles per hour gust whipped down the street and uprooted a 68-foot high maple tree, which fell on the van, killing those girls instantly. But the next day the mayor suggested that this was a tragedy that did not have to happen. Several months earlier, a nearby sidewalk had been paved without a permit, possibly weakening the roots of that tree. It may not have been the storm that caused the tragedy - it may have been the weakened roots.

Tuesday, April 4, 2006

I felt like the Big Bad Wolf in that story of Little Red Riding Hood; the part where he's masquerading as grandma. Little Red says, "What big eyes you have!" That was me when I left the ophthalmologist's office the other day. He had put dilating solution in my eyes for an eye checkup. Well, the checkup was over, but my eyes didn't know it. They stayed dilated for the next couple of hours. And everyone said, "What big eyes you have!" It wasn't really much fun. Even though it was basically a cloudy day, I was squinting and I was trying to cover my eyes. With my pupils so big and so wide open, the light was blazing right into my eyes. I wasn't missing anything and it was blinding!

Monday, April 3, 2006

Scotty was only four years old, and he was lost in Brooklyn. A police officer spotted this little guy standing on a street corner in this huge city, crying. Of course, he tried to help the boy by asking him his address, and Scotty didn't know. The officer asked him his phone number, and he answered through his tears, "I can't remember." The officer was running out of options. He was just about to take the little guy down to the station when he thought of one last question: "Little boy, is there anything near your house that I might recognize?" That was the moment that little guy discovered the one thing that really helped him finally get home.

Friday, March 31, 2006

She's a princess in the royalty of Hollywood; one of the most successful, most admired actresses in America. Behind the glamour, there are unrelenting struggles and unanswered questions. Recently, she was given some major recognition at an international awards ceremony, and as she expressed her gratitude, she also opened up her heart in a brief moment of extreme candor. She said, "You know, I play so many roles, sometimes I wonder who the real me really is." You don't have to be a Hollywood star to have that going on.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

It was early 1997, when Americans heard those unsettling words on the evening news, "airline pilots strike." Man, I hate words like that! The threat of American Airlines pilots going on strike threw everyone affected by it into a tailspin. Panicky travelers were scrambling to double book their reservations on another airline just in case, resort areas serviced by American Airlines began to add up the zillions this might cost them, the White House started adding up the devastating financial cost on the economy - so much that the President stepped in to at least delay the strike. Well, the simple fact is, planes are going nowhere without pilots. If they don't show up for their job, it gets real crazy real fast.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Maybe you're like me; one of those people who lives in a climate where there are four seasons, where the fall and spring are spectacularly beautiful and where winter is really winter, and summer is really summer. There's probably one change of seasons, then. that is probably anticipated by you more than any other - the end of winter! I've always lived with four seasons. I like them all. I just think one of them lasts a month or two too long. That's why I was so excited during a February ministry trip to South Carolina. Now February is still winter where I was living, but on this February weekend in South Carolina, the trees were starting to bloom! Not only were the flowers out on the trees, but the shorts were even out on the humans! I don't remember seeing dogwood blooming in February! That was early even for the mid-South, but there had been a string of days in the 70s with temperatures that were still mild at night. So those little flowers said to themselves, "Hey, it's warm, guys! I guess it's time to bloom!"

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

We were staying one time at, well, as the camp song says, "a little cabin in the woods." As soon as we got unpacked, our seven- or eight-year-old son went for an exploratory bike ride up the trail. When he returned he got going a little fast, and then he hit a patch of gravel right near the cabin. The bike spun out from under him and he hit the ground pretty hard. When he got up, there was a lot of blood around his mouth. He had broken a tooth and it had punctured his lip. We raced him to a hospital emergency room where they fixed him up with a few stitches. Now, he took the second bike ride that day. That was the tough part; especially after what had happened on the first bike ride. But his Mother and I encouraged him to get right back on his bike. We knew if he didn't, it might take him a long time to get the confidence back to ride again. Well, sure enough, the boy bounced back. In spite of his fall, he decided to ride again and he kept riding for many years after that.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

It was so dramatic that the cable news networks just kept replaying the video. A mother and her baby were trapped in a burning building. Some people saw the mother leaning out of the second story window with her baby in her arms, desperately trying to save him from both the smoke and the fire. The news video showed three people standing directly beneath that window, ready to catch the infant. It was an agonizing choice for that mother. If she held onto her baby, if she let him go, either way she risked his life. Finally, painfully, she released her baby and dropped him toward the people waiting underneath. It was breathtaking to see one man catch that little guy in his hands. It just so happens that he plays softball and he's a catcher. That baby's fine because a mother made a hard but life-saving choice.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Often it was the highlight of my day. My wife led me to believe that it might have been the highlight of our toddler son's day, too. She told me that the little guy heard my car pull into the driveway each night and that was his signal to go running for the door that I always used. As I opened that door, I was often greeted by a cute little guy charging my direction and calling out one word at the top of his lungs, "DA!" He couldn't manage "Daddy" or "Dada" yet, but I knew he was calling my name.