Friday, October 22, 2004

My friend Tom has a taste for some of the beautiful things in life like great food for example. In face, he's a wonderful chef. I think I'm still wearing some of his culinary creations on my body. Tom also really appreciates nature, including plants. Actually, I've been fascinated to hear him tell of some of the incredible creations of God that live in that world of plants and flowers that I don't know much about. The last time we saw him, he told us about a flower called the Night Blooming Cyrus, which he said he's only seen bloom once. That's because they don't do much when folks are awake. In fact, they only bloom for two hours a day, and that's from midnight till 2:00 A.M. But for those who stay up late or set their alarm, there's the splendor of a richly colored flower that measures about six inches in bloom. It's beautiful late at night.

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

As I was checking out of my hotel, my host said, "Ron, did you turn in your key?" I was sure he had been talking to my wife. See, she's the one who gets to mail all those keys back. I've been known to own a hotel key collection. You know, everybody needs a hobby - right? Some people collect stamps, some collect coins - you get the idea. It's not really my intention to walk off with hotel keys, but all too often I end up taking what I never meant to take, and I didn't even know I was taking it.

Friday, October 15, 2004

My wife and I have always enjoyed the helicopter of the animal kingdom. Yep, the hummingbird. On our vacation we hung out a hummingbird feeder and we filled it with this sweet red liquid that they love and we sat down on the porch and we sort of swung back and forth, and settled back to watch those cute little guys come to drink. They're not as cute as we thought. No sooner would one land on the feeder and begin to drink, than another hummingbird would swoop down and knock him off. Then another bird would swoop down and knock that bird off. Eventually, we had as many as five hummingbirds at a time hovering and darting around that feeder fighting with each other, dive-bombing each other. When one managed to finally win a spot on the feeder, he couldn't even enjoy what was there; he was so busy looking around for his next attacker. As the provider of all these goodies, I was frustrated. I was irritated. These dumb birds were so busy fighting over it, they couldn't enjoy it.

Thursday, October 14, 2004

It's always a good idea to lock your luggage when you're flying commercially. It's especially a good idea if you're going out of the country. It's an even better idea if you know where the keys for your suitcase locks are before you lock them! I was packing in a rush for my flight to Mexico, and I had my padlocks ready to go. I couldn't find the keys, however. With only minutes left before I had to leave, we launched this all-out desperate search. We checked drawers we thought we'd seen them in - no keys. We looked in creative places - no keys. I was resigned to leaving with unlocked suitcases - when I zipped my garment bag shut and I found the keys. Someone had been wise enough to attach them to the zipper that we use the lock on - right on the suitcase. What a concept! What I had been looking for everywhere had been right in front of me all along.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

We tend to measure life by its milestones. Take our first-born child for example. There have been a lot of milestones in her life. I remember looking at the films of her learning to walk. That's a big milestone a long time ago. Her first piano recital - we have pictures of that. Her first band concert - that was a big one. Let's see, there was her junior high graduation, her high school graduation, her college graduation, on to her wedding. Well, it's been a lot of things. I remember that when she graduated from college there was this sense of completion I think for all of us. She had a double major in college, and she graduated with honors. She got a degree from a great school, and I wrote something on her graduation card for all the work and all the money that degree cost. I told her, "There's another degree that she needs - one that is far more important."

Monday, October 11, 2004

The passengers were there, the plane was there, but our plane wasn't taking off that day. It was time, but we were still sitting in the flight lounge, and there weren't many smiles in that flight lounge. Then we finally found out what we were waiting for. Our pilot wasn't there. His earlier flight was delayed and he hadn't landed yet. So, even though we all had to get somewhere, our pilot was flying something else when we needed him.

Friday, October 8, 2004

When you are in a hurry, there are words you just don't want to see on the highway, like "reduce speed," "construction ahead." Sometimes that slowdown occurs long before you see the sign, and then you wonder why you're in a two-mile traffic jam. Usually, everything has to slow to a crawl around a construction area.

Once when I was on a major road in a metropolitan area, we had to slow down for this big construction area. They were obviously doing major work, so that meant the expressway was going to be slowed down for a while. My cab driver had a good attitude toward it all. He said, "Well, it's an inconvenience, but it will be so much better when they're done."

Wednesday, October 6, 2004

You can get into a pretty good debate among American sports fans over which of their sports is more exciting. You have the brains and brawn of football, or someone will say that soccer's their game, or hockey is a really bruising sport. I think my two sons would vote for basketball as the most exciting sport, and basketball action is really pretty physical. I mean, it's constantly changing, it's intense, it's unpredictable. There's this one point where it slows down a little, though, much to the relief of the players. You know if a player is fouled by someone from the other team he gets to shoot one or two free throws. Now, that's one time when nobody's bothering you. Well, there are not all these guys trying to stop you from getting your shot, and you get to shoot for an extra point or two, but there is someone trying to bother you - especially if you're the visiting team. When you're facing the basket, you are also facing all these local fans who want you to miss. So, they jump up and down, they make noise, they wave their arms, they wave signs, and they have this one sign that says "Brick, brick, brick." So, if you're trying to score some points, you really need to concentrate.

Tuesday, October 5, 2004

I was on a mission in England and Ireland, and I actually had a day to spend in the historic English city of York. What a place! It's surrounded by a medieval wall actually and it's dominated by a cathedral that might be second only to Westminster Abbey in London. There was an unusual scene out in front, because there was an artist on his knees, painstakingly working on a chalk drawing on the sidewalk in front of the cathedral. When I was closer and I looked at it, it was the Mona Lisa. It was immediately recognizable. He must have been working on it all day, and it was beautifully done. As I went inside a restaurant, I saw that the artist had left. Within minutes, a little boy came up, and he intentionally ran over the artwork, stomped back and forth and made footprints all over it. Other kids followed him. They did the same thing. They had just trampled all over the work of an artist who had worked very hard on it. It hurts to see someone doing that.

Monday, October 4, 2004

A boy from the south side of Chicago meets a girl from the Ozarks of Arkansas and they live happily ever after. That's my life story. As my honey and I approached our wedding day, a week after our college graduation, we had a lot of love. We didn't have much money to match, so we prayed for our own little wedding miracle. We were also heading into full-time Christian ministry, and there was not going to be much income from that. So, we prayed that God would lead people in buying gifts for our wedding, so we'd have what we needed to set up housekeeping. We didn't need a lot. We couldn't even afford the basics, though. We prayed that there wouldn't be much duplication in the gifts. Well, you know what? There was hardly any. It was amazing! We received one of each of the things we needed, except we got four whistling teakettles. Don't ask me to explain that. Maybe you could do a Gospel quartet with them.

As we opened the gifts, it was clear that God had answered our prayer, and it looked as if He had shopped for our wedding gifts Himself. We got all the basics. We didn't know how we would meet our start-up needs, but one wedding guest made all the difference.

Friday, October 1, 2004

The best time to go to Long Beach Island is off-season. It's this beautiful stretch of land off the New Jersey coast. It's about 12 miles long and not very wide. You can see the ocean and the bay, actually, on either side of you. It's got this one long main street, and when you're there off-season you see this long string of traffic lights as far as the eye can see. Oh, but listen, during the season - like the summer - it is slow going on that street. I mean it's bumper to bumper people, cars, and red lights. I hope you're not in a hurry to get to the beach or get back to your house, cause it is going to take a while in the summer. Off-season, though, you can drive and you can hit this string of green lights and never stop.

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

My friend Bob is a pastor and a jogger. One day about a year ago, he went jogging and he came home and he started to do some work at his desk. He started to write his address, except his wife noticed it wasn't his address. That was his wife's first clue. It turned out that Bob had suffered a mild stroke while he was running. Now jogging really is good for you, but in this case, he had had a stroke and he didn't even realize it. He ended up losing a lot of speech and thought functions, and thankfully he pretty much recovered from that. But some of the sermon preparation he said, that used to take hours, can now take all week. It's amazing that in the middle of all this, Bob felt no pain when he was having a stroke. The doctor said, "You probably experienced a runner's high." It's a mysterious euphoria that takes over and it actually covers up the pain. It's kind of scary. You can run so hard that you can't feel the damage being done.

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

My flight was scheduled to leave Newark airport at 3:30, but there was bad weather at my destination, so they said we were postponed until 4:30. Then they said, "We have no idea when we'll be able to leave." Then they said, "We think we'll go at 5:30." We left at 6:00. Of course, that gave us lots of time to memorize the menu in the little restaurant, to check out the restroom several times, buy lots of magazines, and count the designs in the carpet. Well, they had to cancel another flight, so this was a very full plane. As passengers were lumbering aboard with all their luggage, the word came from the cockpit. The pilot said, "Ladies and gentlemen, we are number two for take off. We've been assigned that position, but we only have twenty minutes to load this plane and take off, so would you please be seated as quickly as you can, wherever you can go." They knew we couldn't take off until everybody was seated, and it was chaotic. People were still trying to board the plane while the captain was pushing them verbally, the flight attendants pushing them physically. "Sit anywhere, we have to go. We're going to lose our spot and wait longer." The pilot came on again and said, "This is interesting folks. I know we said, 'Wait, wait, wait,' and then suddenly it's a rush." Well, we had waited for hours, and then suddenly, we had immediate clearance.

Monday, September 27, 2004

Several years ago, I had the privilege of visiting Old Jerusalem. And as I walked through the city, I saw this curious sight. I saw some Israeli soldiers who appeared to be on a holiday because they had their arm around their girls and they were laughing and shopping. The curious part was that they each had a gun strapped over their shoulder, an UZI, with a full clip of ammunition. Those Israeli soldiers know they always need to be prepared for war, even when they're taking a day off. So, they always carry their weapon.

Friday, September 3, 2004

Someday I might just be banned from restaurants. I mean, I've been known to give the help a hard time. That's not really what I'm trying to do. I figure sometimes it just gets so humdrum and boring, waiting on people, and too often customers treat you like you're part of the menu, or a vending machine. So, it's fun to inject some laughs into their day. For example, I've been known to walk into a restaurant, and the lady will ask, "Table for two?" I'll say, "Well, yes, but we have a busload of thirty-eight junior high students waiting. Should we bring them in now?" You should see the priceless look on her face. I immediately let her know I'm kidding, though. I always ask for the server's name by telling him or her that, "My mother told me to never talk to strangers." And when I'm ordering one of my favorite hamburger and cheese sandwiches, I have been known to ask, "Is Patty in?" "Patty who?" the waitress asks innocently. "Patty Melt," I tell her, as her eyes disappear to the top of her head.

I'm just trying to lighten up their lives. We also try to encourage them and compliment them. Sometimes I'll tell the server, "Hey, you're a great cook." They look a little unsure about how to react to that. They'll say, "Oh, I didn't cook it. I just serve it." I knew that.

Wednesday, September 1, 2004

I was talking with a young man who's a student in a missionary aviation course the other day. So far, he's mostly had classroom training, although he did have a little experience when he visited the Flight Training facility. On the second day they said, "Okay, go for it!" And he was flying! Now he was carrying his notepad with him on the day I saw him, and I noticed this sentence that he had written at the top of his notes. It was obviously something he thought he would be tested on, either in the classroom or maybe in the cockpit someday. It could be life or death information some day. Here's what it said. "Attitude - The relationship of the nose to the horizon." Now he told me, that simple discipline is what keeps an aircraft stable - and maybe you, too.

Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Our Native American ministry team has been to reservations all over the country, and we have some special memories from all of them. I'm thinking of one from Arizona and New Mexico, a time we were there. We're always very busy while we're there, but we did have one day off, so we all packed into a van to go see this spectacular canyon. It was approaching dark as we were returning, and we thought, "Let's see, there are two ways back, and we have to get up early tomorrow morning for a meeting." One way was long but it was paved, the other was short but it was unpaved across the mountain. We decided we'd take the short road, even though it was a little bumpy. I started driving, then my wife took over and all of a sudden we felt the van lurching. And she said, "Oh, no! I think we're out of gas. I can't believe it!" Well, someone had mentioned briefly that there was a problem with the fuel gauge before we left, so I glanced at it before we left town, and it said three quarters of a tank. It would have been a good idea to fill up before we left civilization, and as a result, here we sat in the dark because I didn't, on a lonely back road, forty miles from the nearest town and praying like crazy. Thank God, He sent us a Good Samaritan who went forty miles for gas. So Ron, did you learn anything?

Friday, August 27, 2004

Our friends were kind enough to loan my wife and me their second home where we could get away for a couple of days. When you're in somebody else's home, you have to be on your good behavior, like make sure you don't break anything, leave it as you found it. I was having a little difficulty getting the front door unjammed, uh, unlocked I guess, and my wife said, "What are you doing?" And I jokingly said, "Well, I couldn't get it unlocked, so I'm just forcing it open." She said, "No, no, no, no, don't do that." Now there's a reason we had that little dialogue. She panicked right away because, well, she knows my history.

If I was trying to force it open, I would probably break it. Oh, I did get out okay, but she knows I have this tendency to try to make things work if they don't want to work. I sometimes get impatient with things that don't work quickly. In fact, I've been known to force a door handle and break it. There have been a couple of occasions where I have forced a tool, and I broke it. You will probably never lend me anything. I've tried to force a lock, and I broke it. I've tried to force other things, and they broke too.

Thursday, August 26, 2004

If you live on the East Coast, there's one word that's probably sure to get your attention - hurricane! Now I'll tell you, Hurricane Hugo was one of those mega storms that really got our attention. You could watch the news for several nights before Hugo arrived, and they'd show you this cyclonic circle inching across that weather map toward an uncertain destination. Half a million people were evacuated from Florida to the Carolinas, not knowing where that destructive little circle on the map was going to land. Finally, it became clear that Hugo's 130-mile-an-hour winds were going to slam ashore at Charleston, South Carolina. The challenge for public officials was to convince everyone that it was time to move. The mayor at the time gave a very solemn warning to the people there. He was quoted as saying, "Hugo is a killer. If you stay, you may very well die." Well, that was true then. It's true now.

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Many of the world's greatest dramas are not on a stage, not on a screen. They are played out in that quadrennial spectacle we call "The Olympics." Maybe you remember the year that there was this image that many of us will never forget. Britain's representative in the 400-meter race was Derek Redmond, and he began to falter. He went down in the backstretch with a torn right hamstring, and as the medical attendants were approaching, Derek Redmond fought his way to his feet and then he started out again in anguish - he was hopping. He was desperately trying to finish the race. He knew he wouldn't win. He was just trying to finish.