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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.

Tuesday, June 7, 2005

Some friends of ours have struggled with a wide variety of health issues over the past several years. Not long ago, a trusted friend told them about a juice taken from a rare fruit that seems to have measurably improved her health, and the health of several people she loves. Our friends invested in that juice, and they like the early results. I can just imagine what would have happened, though, if some telemarketer had called them cold and tried to sell this product to them. Click. I know these people. They never would have bought it from some professional salesman. But it helped when someone like them, and someone they knew and trusted was the one to tell them about it. They wanted what she believed in and what was changing her.

Wednesday, June 1, 2005

Our friends, Dan and Ellen, live in this beautiful farmhouse that became a little less beautiful lately. They'd been doing some heavy outdoor work and they were using a big old dump truck. Now, Ellen's a city girl who's lived on a farm for so many years that there isn't much she can't do - including driving a dump truck! Well, this particular night she had just started it up when she had to run in the house for something, maybe a phone call, and then she left it running for just a minute. I guess it was more minutes inside than she had anticipated. You know how phone calls are. Something happened as the air pressure built up in the truck's air brakes and they somehow released! Yeah, that big old dump truck started rolling until something stopped it - Dan and Ellen's dining room and kitchen! That truck plowed right through their dining room wall. The brakes on their vehicle failed and the result was major damage to their home!

Friday, May 27, 2005

Jennifer and Kourtney were three-year-old twins, and they were excited about pre-school! In fact they were so excited, they got up in the middle of the night in their Omaha, Nebraska home and they walked out of the house to make the six-block walk to school. All this while their parents were sound asleep. You say, "Isn't that cute?" No. Snow was everywhere that night, and the temperature was nine degrees below zero, and the girls were reported missing at 4:05 A.M. after family members awoke to find a light on and the front door open. Two police officers started driving the route to school, hoping to find the girls before it was too late. At one point, their squad car was actually stopped by the ice on a steep hill. They were stopped right in front of an alley, which they decided to investigate. And there they found first little footprints, then three tan boots, no bigger than the palm of the officer's hand, and finally they found barefoot Kourtney, wearing an open coat kneeling beside her sister Jennifer, who was face down in the snow, wearing socks but no coat. Even though Jennifer was near death when they found her, both girls miraculously survived. If someone had not come looking for them, they would have died.

Monday, May 23, 2005

My son bought an old Mustang when he was in high school (not the kind with four legs. I mean the kind with four wheels). He used money he got from selling some of his valuable baseball card collection. Some years later, he wanted to sell it and put the proceeds into the work that he is doing with Native Americans. He was home for a little while and that's where the Mustang was, so he put an ad in the paper about it. First day - no calls. Second day - no calls. He wasn't expecting a line at the door exactly, but he thought he'd get a little more response than that. Then he found out why the phone was silent. He checked the ad and found that the paper had goofed and published a phone number that was a wrong number. But what a difference that one number made! When we dialed the number in the paper, there never was any answer. And since it takes a couple of days to change the error, the wrong number made more encore appearances in the paper. You gotta feel bad for some guy who's looking in the paper, sees a car he wants at a price he likes, and dials the magic number that cannot possibly reach the person who has what he's interested in.

Friday, May 13, 2005

When my wife gets a headache I tease her that pain always attacks at the weakest point. What a sensitive guy I am! Actually, a while back she was having headaches every day and burning eyes and stinging eyes. And she attributed it to the long hours that she was working. She barely even noticed that her vision was slowly becoming worse. Well, after some time went by, she did take some time to see the optometrist and he said, "Lady, you need glasses!" That was the day her eyes stopped burning, the headaches stopped, and the road signs suddenly cleared up. She only had one regret. She said, "Why did I wait so long?"

Thursday, May 12, 2005

We have a hummingbird feeder and those busy little guys are fascinating to have as back porch visitors. You've probably seen them. Their wings go so fast you can hardly even see their wings. They're God's original helicopters! They hover, they fly backwards and sideways. I love to watch them, and do they love sugar! My wife mixes up this red liquid that's basically sugar water and they flock to it. Then they'll fly off in this burst of acrobatic energy only to return a few minutes later for a refill. Now, I've been told that if they go very long without some sugar, whether it's the natural kind they get from flowers or from our backyard potion, they become sort of catatonic or maybe "birdatonic." If hummingbirds could talk human talk you'd probably hear them sing as they come back for their 47th consecutive drink, "Must have sugar, must have sugar!"

Monday, May 9, 2005

Sometimes during pro football games the camera focuses on a single player on the sidelines, the guy who just made that great play. And he'll look at the camera and he'll say those two words they almost always say, "Hi Mom!" See, it's just and indication of the debt that a lot of people owe to the love of their mother.

Friday, May 6, 2005

She must have been scared to death. She wasn't a public speaker, but that day she agreed to speak to 70,000 people in a football stadium in the Northwest. It was the last day of Billy Graham's Crusade in her city. And he had asked her to read a letter she'd received from her son. It was the end of the first Gulf War, and the troops were coming home; except for a relatively few American soldiers who weren't coming home and her son was one of them. He had died in a helicopter crash on the last day of the war. He had written a letter to his mother and given it to a good friend with instructions to mail it only if he was killed. Now she shared that letter with the masses in that stadium, knowing that her son still had something to say by way of what he had written. His letter said: "Mom, if you're reading this letter, it means I didn't make it. But that's OK, Mom. Because now, for the first time, I'm smarter than you are! Because Mom, I've seen heaven. I've seen Jesus!"

Thursday, May 5, 2005

They just had the battle of the Little Big Horn again, and Custer lost this time too. Actually it was part of a movie on the life of the great Oglala Lakota chief Crazy Horse. My Lakota friend, Jerry, was asked to be one of Crazy Horse's warriors in the movie. Now, one challenge was riding bareback. They had to do that full speed in the battle scenes, and of course, the big scene was the portrayal of Custer's last stand. Now, interestingly enough, Jerry can't even find himself in those scenes because the warriors were going by so fast in a cloud of dust. Someone asked him how many warriors they needed to reenact a battle that involved so many Indians. He said, "Oh, about 80." Hollywood of course is all about illusion, so they just had these 80 guys charge up to the soldiers, turn their horses sharply and circle around again and again and again. There weren't nearly as many warriors on the other side as it looked like in the movie. Custer might have wished that the real odds might have been that even.

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