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!

Friday, October 18, 2002

We met Larry when we went to explore some land that my wife's great-grandfather had homesteaded more than a century ago. That land is now part of a much larger farm that Larry owns - a farm that has been suffering from four years of serious drought conditions. The land is dust, the grass is very brittle, and the corn has stopped growing at about two feet high. Like many farmers in the area, Larry has had to sell half his herd of cows because there will be nothing to feed them in the winter. I didn't know where Larry stood spiritually, but I asked him if we could pray with him, right there in his field, and he said, "Yes." After I finished praying, Larry said quietly, "We've been doing a lot of that lately."

Tuesday, October 15, 2002

There was something particularly memorable about Miss America 1995. Like all Miss Americas, Heather Whitestone was beautiful, poised, and talented. But unlike any Miss America before or since, Heather Whitestone was deaf. Not long ago, she was in the news again - and what she said was as impressive to me as anything she did as Miss America. Now Heather Whitestone McCallum, she had a cochlear implant surgically placed in her right hear. She decided to have the operation when her two-year-old son, John, fell in her back yard. Here's what she told reporters: "I couldn't hear him crying. I need to be the first one to hear him."

Friday, September 20, 2002

Our daughter has always been the most sentimental member of the family, sort of the "keeper of the family memories." A lot of those memories are associated with the two homes we lived in as our kids were growing up. Recently, our daughter had the opportunity to visit both of those houses, thanks to the hospitality of the people who live in them now. Our first home was really small - but, of course, not necessarily to our children. And since our daughter is our oldest, she has the most vivid memories of that house. It had a little porch on the front of it - which apparently didn't seem all that little to her at the time. When she returned from her visit, she said, "You know, that porch on Baywood sure looked a lot bigger to me then than it does now!"

Wednesday, September 18, 2002

My wife rang me on my cell phone with an urgent message to get back across town to our daughter and son-in-law's house. "They've got a fire!" she said. As I approached their house, I could see a grass fire burning in the field near their house and rapidly approaching their house. A neighbor's trash fire had suddenly gotten out of hand and had spread rapidly. The firefighters arrived just before I did and thankfully they quickly got it under control. We were really thankful that our kids had been home and had seen the fire or it might have even burned their house. They were told that the fire did not mean there would be a blackened field in front of their house - there would, in fact, be beautiful grass growing there pretty soon, rooted in soil that would actually be enhanced by the fire. And, sure enough, there's a rich field of green today.

Wednesday, September 11, 2002

"Leave It to Beaver" was a classic 1950s TV show. No, it was not about wildlife - it was about a suburban family with two kids, older brother Wally and a slightly off-beat son affectionately called "Beaver." Recently, a new "Beaver" series surfaced on cable TV. Someone told me about one new show where "Beaver" gets a new bicycle - and he loses a new bicycle. Big brother Wally asks "the Beave" what happened to his bike. Beaver tells him about this kid who asked if he could use his bike to show him some neat tricks. The problem was that, with every trick, the kid went a little farther with the bicycle. You can probably guess what trick he was going to do - he disappeared with the bicycle. Beaver says, "You know, He stole it a little bit at a time."

Thursday, September 5, 2002

It was very cold in our house. I was the first one awake that morning, and as I scampered through our personal Arctic I checked the thermometer. It said 50 degrees. I called Mr. Furnace to come. In the meantime, I turned on the kitchen stove, I opened the door, and I sat in front of it to have some personal spiritual time. My kids told me that with my eyes closed it looked like I was praying to the stove! Well, Mr. Furnace came and finally figured it out. See, the problem was the thermostat, not the thermometer - that just reflected the temperature. It was the thermostat, which, of course, controls the temperature!

Wednesday, September 4, 2002

Our son-in-law loves to ski, even though he doesn't get to do it all that often. And like everything else he does athletically, he really goes for it when he skis. But his last time on the slopes was different from all the other times in his life. See, for the first time, he has a son! And his little baby boy was on his mind when he was on the slopes. When we asked about his ski adventure, I got the distinct feeling that he didn't take the risks he's taken before. Actually, here's the way he put it. Moving his arms in skiing form as he said, "I just kept saying, 'I'm a Daddy. I'm a Daddy. I'm a Daddy.'"