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Tuesday, November 26, 2002

I had just returned from an exciting but exhausting ministry trip. I was, as I think the British say, "cabbaged" kind of described me. Two of our staff picked up my remains at the airport, and I settled deep into the passenger side of the front seat. As we were approaching my home, one of my co-workers said, "I can tell you're really tired." I asked how. The answer: "You didn't ask to drive." Now that's amazing. I always want to drive, and this time the thought hadn't even occurred to me!

Thursday, November 21, 2002

It was a sign of hope in the awful despair at Ground Zero. There's a good chance you've seen a picture of it. In the horrific collapse of the World Trade Center towers, two cast iron beams, forming the shape of a cross, apparently were driven through the roof of the 6 World Trade Center building. Later, in the shell of 6 World Trade, rescue workers found that cross, amazingly, standing upright in a sea of rubble, with insulation hanging on one arm of the cross. Ironworkers eventually removed it from the rubble and they mounted it on a concrete slab, a remnant from a collapsed bridge between two World Trade Center buildings. One Brooklyn firefighter said the cross was a symbol of some hope to his heroic "brothers." He said, "It reinforces their faith in God - that God's here for them."

Wednesday, November 20, 2002

It's one of life's great "mixed emotions" moments for most fathers - when it's your daughter's wedding day and you give away your precious little girl to the man she's marrying. The usual Daddy sentiment is, "Nobody's good enough for my little girl - but here she is." I have a friend who expressed many a father's wedding day feelings in an especially graphic way. He loved the man that his daughter was marrying. He was very happy to receive him as a son. But still, he said, "When I placed my daughter's hand in his hand, there was this feeling I couldn't get over - that I was taking this rare Stradivarius violin and placing it in the hands of a gorilla!"

Monday, November 18, 2002

My wife and I have always enjoyed going to a county fair together. But when we went to our most recent local county fair, we had an extra reason - a personal reason to enjoy it. There's one exhibit hall that is filled every year with various entries that have received awards; cooking entries, produce, sewing, art, photographs. Of course, they only display the ones that have been judged the best. But there was one unique display in that hall and that's the one we wanted most to see. Our daughter and son-in-law's church had a display of pictures that had been drawn by their four-year-old Sunday School kids. Each one had been asked to draw a picture of their family. And they displayed every one of those pictures, no matter how much of a Rembrandt or an un-Rembrandt they were. Our grandson is in that class. So, needless to say, we went looking for his picture in particular. And his picture had a blue ribbon on it. But, then, so did all the other pictures.

Thursday, November 7, 2002

It's still okay for grownups to read the comics in the newspaper. I mean, sometimes you actually stumble upon one of those "hmmm" kind of insights in a comic strip. Last week I had one of those "hmmm" moments. It was a "Family Circus" cartoon where the Dad and the little boy were in a cemetery looking at Grandpa's gravestone. Pointing to the epitaph on the tombstone, Dad says, "Those two dates are the year Granddad was born and the year he died." Then, pointing to the mark between his grandfather's date of birth and date of death, the little guy says, "That means that little dash between the years is Granddad's lifetime!" Hmmm.

Wednesday, November 6, 2002

For me, it was the most heart-rending moment of the September 11 first anniversary observation at Ground Zero. There, at the very site where nearly 3,000 people died in the World Trade Center towers on that awful morning, thousands now were gathered for a solemn commemoration of their lives and of their deaths. The name of every victim was read aloud. But the one person at the microphones that I will not soon forget was a 17-year-old young woman who read a letter that she had written in memory of the stepfather she lost on that fateful September 11. Her letter was tenderly and lovingly written. But near the end, she read a simple admission that really touched me, and must have touched many others very deeply. She just said, "I don't know when was the last time I told you, 'I love you.'"

Monday, November 4, 2002

Since September 11, 2001, Americans have gotten used to what someone has called the "new normal." Part of that is this color-coded terrorism alert system provided by the Government to let authorities and citizens know that the level of risk that they have assessed from recent intelligence has gone up or down. It's not a great shock that before and after the first anniversary of those September 11 attacks, there were increased indicators of possible terrorist activity. So, the Attorney General, John Ashcroft, announced that they were raising the alert status from yellow - level 3 on a 5-point scale - to orange, the second highest state of alert. In explaining how Americans should respond to that elevated risk, the Attorney General gave some simple advice that really stuck with me - "Be alert - and be defiant."

Friday, November 1, 2002

Our friend just got two beautiful new horses. The mother is half Morgan, the filly is mostly a Morgan horse - one of our favorites. The filly has a silky brown coat that is so smooth to touch and she's got this white blaze on her face that makes her look pretty striking. Of course, she's still a baby. She's still getting around on a foal's spindly legs. And it's interesting to watch the interaction between mother horse and baby horse. There are times when the mother nuzzles her filly lovingly and protectively. But there are also times when she nips her baby, usually when her little girl is doing something mom considers out of line or dangerous - like when she starts mixing with a strange horse that the mother isn't sure of.

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

It was a mother's nightmare. A mother had just finished shopping at Wal-Mart and had just situated her three children in her mini-van and was returning her shopping cart. In that moment, a woman who had been cruising the parking lot snatched little month-old Nancy from her seat and started driving off with the baby. The mother raced to that fleeing car, and hung onto the door as long as she could. But the kidnapper got away with her precious baby. A store security camera actually caught the abduction on video, and millions of us saw it on the news. But, thank God, this was one child abduction that had a happy ending. Thanks to some alert citizens and good police work, she was found safe and her abductor was arrested. Needless to say, it was a beautiful, emotional scene when they returned that little girl back to her mother's arms. A family member said of that month-old little treasure, "It's like she was born again today."

Monday, October 28, 2002

When our friend Rich went for his annual physical, the doctor proclaimed him totally fit. Three days later he went on a business trip. That night his associates found him in his hotel room, dead of a massive heart attack. Later, his wife Linda told us, "We had some beautiful weeks before Rich died. And every wife I see, I tell: 'Cherish your man.'" Their kids had not been able to be with their folks on Easter, which turned out to be the Sunday before Rich's death. But Martha, his daughter, followed this prompting she had to call Dad and say she loved him that day. And Paul, his son, wrote Dad to tell him in writing what he had never been able to say to him - "I love you. You're the best Dad in the world." That was Sunday. Wednesday morning, Dad was gone.

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