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Friday, August 5, 2005

There were only two words in the headline in USA Today, but most of us understand how urgent those two words can be: "Blood needed!" They were talking about an alarming shortage of blood available in blood banks due to severe winter weather, a holiday season, and a bad flu season. One spokesman for the Association of Blood Banks said, "If you've had a bad car accident or a couple of gunshot wounds, you're in a world of trouble." I guess so. There is no fact more basic to human life - without the blood you need, you die.

Thursday, August 4, 2005

My friend, Jerry, was a pilot. And not long ago, he went home to be with the Lord that he loved. At his memorial service, his son told some of the stories of Jerry's very adventurous life. Like the time just a couple of years ago when he was flying a twin-engine plane over our area. This made the headlines - both engines went out on him! Jerry was pretty unflappable. That's a pretty good characteristic for a pilot, huh? He quickly surveyed the ground to find the safest place to make an emergency landing. His choice - the local golf course. There weren't any golfers out there. It's a good thing. (They would have really been teed off, I suppose.) He started to bring the plane down for a landing, but as he neared the ground, he saw the one obstacle between him and a safe landing - a huge oak tree coming right at him. And he had no power to help him miss it. So Jerry quickly talked to God about it. He just said, "Lord, it will take a miracle. Please do one." And at that moment, one engine leaped to life for just a moment; just long enough to give Jerry the lift he needed to clear that tree.

Tuesday, August 2, 2005

Recently, I spoke at a church and I followed it up with a question and answer time. The questions ranged from things about our ministry, to questions about reaching lost people, to my family. It was a little of everything. One man in the back asked a question that was even a little amusing. He said, "Where do you get all this energy?" I have been accused of being the Energizer Bunny, but the ironic thing is that I had come into that church totally depleted by a heavy weekend of outreach. I was wishing I could just go to my room and sleep, to tell you the truth. In fact, I even told the pastor that the meeting isn't going to be very long because I was too exhausted. It went for two hours! Physically, I think I must just have deep reservoirs of adrenaline. Adrenaline is our friend at times when we just don't have what it takes physically to meet the demands of the moment. Adrenaline is that amazing substance that you don't have when you don't need it, but that surges into your system at just the moment you do need it. And you are able to do things that if I had asked you earlier you would say you could never do.

Monday, August 1, 2005

Marty McFly met a strange scientist with a machine that promised interesting results - the ability to go back in time. And he did. He went, as the title of the movie about it says, "Back to the Future." He had a most amazing experience getting to know his mother and his father when they were teenagers - an experience some of us might find very interesting. His dad, George McFly, was a milquetoast, bossed-around kind of guy, afraid to stand up to anybody. Marty has always known him to be that kind of a man, until he is transported back to the night that will determine the course of the rest of his Dad's life - and his Mom's. One decision - whether or not George McFly will stand up to the bully who is attacking his girlfriend - who is to become Marty's mother - is the turning point of George's life. And Marty is there to help his Dad make the right and courageous choice. It totally changes the course of George McFly's life. He steps up, defends his girl, and neutralizes the bully who wanted her. So instead of the life Marty has known with a pretty unsuccessful, wimpy dad, he returns to his life with a strong and successful dad because of that choice. A very different life because of one decision that changed the future.

Friday, July 29, 2005

It may have been the scariest moment of my life. I was only ten years old, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I was with my friends in Lake Michigan. We started out just wading, but they kept getting deeper - until the lake bottom dropped off sharply. My buddies started swimming. I didn't know how, and I was too embarrassed to tell them. And I started taking on water fast. I went under once, I went under twice, and I was desperately thrashing around. As for my buddies, they thought I was just clowning around. Can you imagine me clowning around? Well, I was drinking the lake. I can see that water burying me there like it was yesterday, and honestly, I was almost a goner. And then he came - the man from the shore who saw my predicament and he jumped in to do something about it. He had come to rescue me. I grabbed him with both hands. I hung onto him as if he were my only hope. He was.

Thursday, July 28, 2005

I've never seen the TV show, and based on what I've read about its moral content, I don't plan to see the show. But there's no denying it has skyrocketed to being a hit from its very first season. Maybe, in part, because so many women can relate to its provocative title, "Desperate Housewives." There are more than a few of those.

Thursday, July 21, 2005

We're not horse racing fans, but I happened to stumble onto a horse race on TV when I was looking for the evening news. It was The Preakness; the second race in a three-race series called the Triple Crown. Those races are, in essence, horse racing's World Series. The first race in 2005 had been won by a horse whose odds of winning were 50 to 1, beating out the odds-on favorite, Afleet Alex. Then came that second race, The Preakness. As the race passed the halfway point, Afleet Alex made his move. He quickly caught up with another horse who had been in the lead - who, for some reason, swerved unexpectedly right into his path, and both horses started to collide and stumble. Afleet Alex's jockey ended up hanging onto his horse's neck, fully expecting to go down in a potentially deadly fall that could all be trampled. But amazingly, Afleet Alex somehow managed to regain his balance, surge into the lead, and win the race in a dramatic finish. The headline the next day said it all: "From stumble to stunning finish."

Monday, July 18, 2005

Lori Piestewa was the first woman killed in the Iraq war. She was a Native American and a single mom with two children. She died in an Iraqi ambush, and her good friend Jessica Lynch was wounded, captured and rescued. You may remember that. She was determined to help fulfill Lori Piestewa's dream - to have a house for her parents and her children. Jessica Lynch contacted the TV program, "Extreme Makeover," to see if they could make it happen. Their popular program shows them doing amazing makeovers of people's homes in a very short time, re-creating them into houses that are far beyond anything the owner's ever dreamed. And they did it again for a war hero's family, moving them from their deteriorating trailer home into a wonderful new home. Given those good TV ratings that show has, apparently a lot of people love to watch these amazing transformations.

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Boxing. Now, some people like it and some people don't. But those ever-present "Rocky" movies seemed to give us boxing as a mythical battlefield between the nice guy underdog and the not-so-nice favorite. A lot of boxing fans thought it was sort of a Rocky matchup when several years ago Evander Holyfield went against Mike Tyson for the WBA heavyweight championship. Holyfield was a 25-1 underdog when the fight was booked. Tyson was the almost invincible "Iron Mike" then - called by some commentators "the baddest man on the planet." Well, much to everyone's surprise including Las Vegas, where a lot of money was lost, the underdog Holyfield soundly defeated Mike Tyson. USA Today's lead sports story carried this headline, "Holyfield puts faith in more than his fists." It went on to tell about the boxer's strong emphasis on prayer before and during the fight. In fact, let me quote an amazing perspective from that article that goes way beyond boxing. "Holyfield sang along to a gospel tune on his CD player before leaving his dressing room, leading his camp in a joyous, revival-style celebration. One fighter said, "It was as if the fight was a preliminary. He had already won the main event in the dressing room!"

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Remember those classic Alka-Seltzer commercials - the two tablets dropping into a glass of water to the tune of "plop, plop, fizz, fizz"? Usually they showed someone eating something disagreeable just before bedtime. Right? And someone who could only be rescued from terminal indigestion with a "plop, plop, fizz, fizz." Several years ago I met someone who knew the agony of late night stomach revolt. Terry works in the theater on Broadway in New York. He told me many show people just can't eat before they go on, so they're starved by the time the show is over and they get cleaned up. It's around midnight then. And Terry said they would go out together for a big dinner and shortly thereafter head home for their night's sleep and their night's wrestling match with what they had just eaten. Eating's nice - if it's followed by digestion!

Thursday, July 7, 2005

I had just finished speaking for a Christian leaders' gathering that was part of the countdown to a Franklin Graham Festival. The setup team there was in their early days of working together on this massive mobilization. The team leader thought it would be a good idea to get his team together for a few minutes after the meeting ended, and he invited me to join them. Then he handed me a cluster of helium balloons tied together. Suddenly, I felt like I'd gone from speaker to like circus clown. And, you know, I've read Winnie the Pooh stories to our kids enough that I couldn't help picturing Pooh Bear being carried into the sky by just such a bunch of balloons. After all, I'm not much bigger than Pooh Bear. But in spite of my trivial imaginings, the team leader there had a holy purpose for having me stand there with those balloons. He asked his team members to spread out around the room. They ended up widely separated. He asked them to get as close to me and my balloons as they could. Within moments, those workers, who had been so scattered, were shoulder to shoulder in a clump around me.

Monday, July 4, 2005

The love of Mary Ann's life, Tom, was coming for a visit. He lived in another state, so those visits were really special. He was due to arrive Friday night or Saturday sometime, and Mary Ann's room had been declared a federal disaster area. Finally, on Thursday afternoon, she decided she'd better get busy trying to recover her room. It was in pretty embarrassing condition. You know sometimes you have to make things messier in the process of getting them put away or thrown away. Mary Ann's room was at that point on Friday morning when the phone rang. It was Tom. He was calling to say he loved her and that he was looking forward to seeing her soon. That was all the incentive she needed to finish the job. Unfortunately, she didn't get that opportunity. Tom had called from downstairs. He had arrived earlier than Mary Ann expected. So in he walked and there she stood, dressed in her "grubbies," hair matted on her forehead, surrounded by an indescribable mess!

Friday, July 1, 2005

It was supposed to be a one-hour fishing trip off the coast of South Carolina. For 17-year-old Josh and his 15-year-old friend Troy, it turned out to be a six-day nightmare at sea. When they set out on their little 14-foot Sunfish, they didn't know about the small craft warnings in that area. Within hours, the fierce winds had pulled them out to sea - to a point 111 miles north - well outside of the Coast Guard's search area. They fought to stay alive by eating raw jellyfish and gargling sea water. They were severely sunburned, exhausted and dehydrated. After 48 hours, the Coast Guard announced they were suspending their search and moving from a rescue operation to a recovery operation. But there was this uncle who refused to concede the boys were dead. He's a police officer, and he thinks rescue. After studying the weather and the currents, he concluded that they might be as far as the area where they actually were found. He made sure that fishing vessels in the area were alerted to be looking for the boys. And as they were praying that God would either take them home or take them to heaven, some fishermen spotted them - and saved them.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Eight wedding showers in a month! Six hundred guests scheduled to be at the wedding where 14 bridesmaids and 14 groomsmen would attend the bride and groom. Four days before the wedding, the bride went missing after she went out for a jog. The American news channels were dominated by the all-out search and investigation into the case of the vanishing bride, and now we know what happened. The bride turned up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, claiming she had been kidnapped; a story which she later changed to tell the real story of what happened. She said that the stress leading up to her wedding had given her cold feet, and she just kept running with those cold feet. In retrospect, I'm sure folks must be saying, "Girl, why didn't you just tell someone what you were feeling?" Instead she ran from her family, her community, her wedding, and even from the truth. Tens of thousands of dollars and countless man-hours were spent looking for her. Now she faced the additional stress of negative national notoriety and even the possibility of legal or financial penalties. Running solved nothing. It never does.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

"Our planes were in the air." That's what the Air Force briefing officer told us as we had the privilege of touring a major American defense command facility. He was talking about a day during the Cold War when, unbeknownst to most Americans, World War III may have almost begun. America's warning systems had indicated clearly that Russian planes were in the air and headed for the United States. In those days when nuclear war was our greatest fear and a real possibility, the orders were given to get our planes in the air. Those planes were headed for the Soviet Union with the capability of starting a nuclear war. Thankfully, the trackers discovered in time what sent out what turned out to be an erroneous message about the Russian planes - one defective computer chip. Now that's a close call.

Monday, June 27, 2005

I was watching on TV the observance of the tenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, and my mind raced back to this unforgettable personal visit I had to the site of, well, what was a very deadly tragedy. In a pre-September 11th America, that terrorist bombing of a Federal Office Building left most Americans in stunned disbelief; at least it did me. My guide for my visit to the memorial made it really special and very moving, actually. Because he's a state trooper who was one of the rescuers that day. His recollections of the joy of rescues and the heartbreak of lost lives are something I'll never forget. Of course, all the traces of that bombed-out building are gone now. The site is now a beautiful lawn with a stone chair for each of the victims. What was the street that day is now a reflection pond. Nothing remains there from the day the world stopped at 9:02 A.M. - nothing, that is, except the tree. On an embankment across from what was the building site stands a big old tree, still partially blackened by the bomb blast. We stood there, my rescuer friend and I, and we prayed beneath those branches that somehow had endured the blast. They call it The Survivor Tree.

Friday, June 24, 2005

The Department of Homeland Security is a relatively new idea in America; a government body that coordinates our efforts to keep our country safe from forces that could hurt us. But "homeland security" is hardly a new idea. It's been the job of every parent since children were invented - the sacred assignment of guarding our family from the things that could hurt them. That job has never been more difficult.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Here's two unlikely words to be matched up - channel surfing. Of course, they have been matched up. Channel surfing refers, of course, to the practice of skipping from one channel to another to see what's on each one. Men have mastered that! Oh, we've got the most powerful thumbs in the world. When there were only a few channels, we didn't surf much, but look what cable has done. You've got dozens of channels to check out - hundreds sometimes. As you surf, you may get a glimpse of a sports channel, a food channel, a travel channel, then a movie channel, a country music channel, a nature channel, and of course, a home shopping channel. Increasingly, a lot of what you'll come upon is either raunchy or dumb or boring. Or, maybe you can't stand, let's say, country music. Or you fall asleep watching someone cook. Or you don't care about sports. Whatever, it's okay. You can't decide what's on each channel, but it's totally up to you what channel you watch!

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

We've got a family doctor that I just totally trust. I'm a blessed guy, but I can't say that I look for opportunities to go see him, of course. But if I do have to go, I have a lot of reasons to trust him - not the least of which is, he asks me about my symptoms. So, I give him all the clues I can. I tell him where it hurts, when it started, how I got desperate enough to finally come to a doctor's office. Then he investigates my temperature and checks out my vital signs. And I'm glad. Can you imagine if he walked into the room where I was waiting for him and before I could even open my mouth, he pointed at me and barked, "Penicillin!" What? He's already headed for me with that needle, and I haven't even had a chance to tell him what's wrong. Do you think I'd trust his diagnosis? Do you think I'd go there the next time I needed attention?

Thursday, June 16, 2005

Little Jessica suddenly became America's child the day she fell down that narrow shaft in a backyard in Texas. Here was a toddler, wedged nearly upside down, in a shaft far too narrow for a man to navigate, and unable to help herself in any way. It didn't take long for the press to descend on that little hole in the ground to cover this valiant effort to try to save little Jessica's life. Pretty soon countless people across the country and around the world were rooting and praying for her life. I was one of them. At first, there appeared to be no way out of this deadly situation, but the rescuers weren't giving up. They began to build a wider shaft parallel to the one Jessica was trapped in. She'd been in there for nearly three days when a rescuer finally went down that new shaft and through the tunnel they had dug to Jessica. Minutes later - a scene many of us will never forget. In the glare of the press's massive lights, a battered but breathing little girl emerged from that hole with her arms tightly around her rescuer.

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