Wednesday, December 11, 2002

Marathon man! That's me when we're driving a long trip. I want to get there, and I like to drive, so we just keep barreling. Just ask my kids about when they were little. They knew we only stopped when the gas tank was nearly empty. They might say, "No, he wasn't marathon man. He was psycho man!" Well, I have to wonder if I would stop at all if the car didn't have to. You know, cars are like that. They just have to stop for refueling. Cars don't run forever. Neither do we.

Tuesday, December 10, 2002

If there was one symbol of the Cold War years and a world divided between Communist and free, it had to be the Berlin Wall. Some of the most dramatic images of the last half of the 20th Century involve that wall - the wall that the Communists built to divide East Berlin from democratic West Berlin. There are pictures of the barbed wire along the top of the wall, the armed guards, the people who risked everything to escape from behind the wall, and the people who died trying. I think I was like most of the people on this planet to be honest. I mean, we pretty much expected the Berlin Wall to always be there. We couldn't imagine how it would ever be taken down. But go to Berlin today - the wall is gone. And it came down almost overnight. The wall we thought would always be there is gone.

Monday, December 9, 2002

It was a scene that was re-enacted a number of times when our daughter was a little girl. Okay, here's Daddy, in his chair in the living room, immersed in his newspaper. In comes my little girl, asking for a little attention from Dad. Dad says, "Oh, in a while, honey." The request is repeated, and the same response. Then, after a few minutes, a little girl comes crashing through the newspaper onto her father's lap. Before I could say anything, she would wrap her arms around my neck and just say, "Daddy, it's cuddle time!" Melted Daddy, all over the floor.

Friday, December 6, 2002

My childhood church has shown their love for our family in some very special ways, including sending a work crew to help make some repairs on our house - totally unsolicited. Joe was one of those "angels" that God sent. The first challenge for Joe came long before he got to our house. In fact, it was on the drive out from Chicago. He was sleeping behind the driver's seat in the truck while someone else was driving, and suddenly he was hit with one of his recurring asthma attacks. Now, usually, he's able to get through that real quickly, but this one got a little scary for a while because he had trouble using his inhaler which he carries all the time. Here's what Joe told me. He said, "When you panic, you can't breathe, and I panicked. And you have to breathe to use the inhaler! The only way I can get what will stabilize me is to relax!"

Wednesday, December 4, 2002

There were seasons in the life of our family when I thought we were running our own personal emergency room. Like the time our youngest son dislocated his ankle in football. The doctor put this air cast on his ankle for about two weeks, and then I guess they, uh, located it. At about that same time, our oldest son had surgery for a knee injury he got in sports, so they recommended that he wear a knee brace whenever he played a game where he had to pivot very much. An ankle cast, a knee brace - it's a good idea to support the weak spot so you can prevent further injury.

Tuesday, December 3, 2002

Probably the most exciting American auto race of the year is the Indianapolis 500. Several have suggested that I should drive in it, but I think I'll hold off on that. Now, on the days before the race, anticipation grows as the drivers compete in the time trials and qualifying events that lead up to the big race. Then on the day itself, those powerful engines start revving, the fans and promoters are cheering, and the cars make their first drive around that legendary track. But there's no race that first lap. In fact, all the cars are going the same speed, led by some guy with flags flying out his window. Who is this guy? Well, he's the driver of the pace car, and everyone starts the race at the pace he sets!

Friday, November 29, 2002

Years ago when I went on my first international ministry trip, I went just about as far as you can go - 10,000 miles to Singapore, Australia, New Zealand. I was going to be away for three weeks, which was the longest I had ever left my wife and our three young children. My wife mobilized the kids to put little love notes all over and all through my luggage. We had a nice meal together on the way to the airport and then some special hugs and kisses at the airport. But I did have to leave. And I'm not kidding you, it was a sad moment. My wife was trying to look like she was fine. The children were obviously hurting. And I managed to hold myself together until I rounded the bend in the concourse, then I started wiping tears from my eyes. It was really hard, but one thing made it OK. It was only temporary. We would be reunited.

Thursday, November 28, 2002

If I'm ever on an airplane flight where the flight attendant becomes incapacitated, I think I can do the safety instructions. Yep, I've heard them so many times. Actually, these days, they've pretty much videoized the presentation. I like that part where the little yellow oxygen masks drop down from above your seat in the demonstration. In the video, everyone is wonderfully calm in this simulated oxygen problem - very true-to-life, I'm sure! Anyway, the video shows a mother putting the mask on herself, and then on her little girl. The instructions go like this: "If the cabin pressure drops, get the oxygen to your face first, and then to your child's."

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.

Friday, October 25, 2002

June 4, 1944 was a beautiful, starlit night. The commanders of the Allied troops were gathered with General Dwight Eisenhower at Southwick House, their English command post. The issue was when to launch the D-Day invasion that could - and ultimately did - turn the tide of World War II. Colonel Page, the chief Army meteorologist, told them, in contradiction to the weather that they could see, that gale force winds and high tides would be assaulting the Normandy beaches by morning. Should General Eisenhower believe what he saw - or the man who had the whole picture? Ike said "no go" that night - even though his decision would cost the Allied forces the invasion window that was their first choice and it would prolong the wait for 180,000 troops, stuck on their ships, ready to move.

The next day was stormy as predicted. But this time, Colonel Page predicted improved weather the next day with moderate wind and tides and lifting haze. Again, General Eisenhower had to choose between what he could see and the authority he trusted. The general paused for nearly a minute and then he said, "Let's go." The room was clear in seconds. The rest is history.

Monday, October 21, 2002

For many months, our ministry team joined thousands of believers around the world in praying for the release of missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham. Philippine rebels had kidnapped them from a resort where they were celebrating their 18th wedding anniversary and held them for ransom for more than a year. Well, when a Philippine army unit moved in to rescue the hostages, Martin Burnham was killed by a stray bullet and Mrs. Burnham was wounded. For both of them, a terrible ordeal ended in the jungle that night. Gracia went home to America, and Martin went home to heaven. At his memorial service, it was reported that the last thing the couple did before the raid was to pray together. Mr. Burnham told his wife, "We might not leave this jungle alive, but at least we can leave this world serving the Lord with gladness. We can serve Him right here, where we are, and with gladness." Wow!