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I've got to confess; sometimes the Bible actually makes me laugh out loud. I mean, I was reading the Easter Story, and it happened again. They're about to bury Jesus in a borrowed tomb. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, issues this command to his soldiers: "Make it as secure as you know how" (Matthew 27:65).
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Before videos and DVDs there was a primitive form of media known as Super 8 movies. And that was the medium on which we were able to capture many memories as our kids were growing up, which was a great improvement over what my parents had to record memories when I was growing up. They had a chisel and a stone tablet. Well, our three children all enjoyed being in the movies, but one of them enjoyed it a little too much. And, no, I'm not about to tell you which one. But this child loved the camera, so much that it didn't matter whose birthday we were filming or what activity, this same little face kept popping up right in front of the camera, effectively blocking out anyone else that might be in the picture.
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I've been to South Africa multiple times, and so when I heard about the death of Nelson Mandela, it caught my attention. He, of course, was the first black President in South Africa, where the 90% black majority had never had the right to vote. Or many other basic human rights for that matter.
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It's an English-speaking church. The visiting pastor was Hispanic. He spoke in Spanish, using an interpreter to help his audience understand. I've spoken through an interpreter. So, you either have to say half as much or it takes twice as long. Well. the pastor chose the latter. Yeah. It took quite a while to get through his message. And to be honest, I know some minds started to wander at times. Well, at the end of his message, the pastor surprised everybody. He spoke to them completely in English. And he made a promise - the next time he would definitely speak in English. Of course, some folks were just a little frustrated. He could have spoken in the language of the people he was talking to; he just chose to speak in his own.
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French beaches! You say that and most people might think about like a vacation that would be nice. Well, not when the Western world remembered a major anniversary that happened on French beaches on D-Day. I remember, for example, the 50th anniversary. For several days American media bombarded us, and we couldn't forget it. Something else happened on French beaches - the heroic battle to establish an allied beachhead in France and to push back the darkness of Hitler's madness.
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If the firstborn in a family is a girl, the younger children often end up with a bonus feature; they get two mothers instead of one! Big sisters are often happy to be another mother for her younger siblings, whether they're happy about it or not! But the instinctive motherly concern of a big sister came out loud and clear. It was in our three-year-old granddaughter some years ago. She had gotten a brand new baby brother whose life was pretty much eating and sleeping; mostly sleeping...until he needed something. And some friends were visiting our son and daughter-in-law, and there was a lot of talking and laughing going on. Suddenly, our little granddaughter said, "Shhhh. Shhhh, hear my brother crying." He was. And she was the only one who heard it.
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My wife and I were enjoying a wonderful few days of rest on the Gulf Coast of Florida. And one of our favorite things to do is to walk the beach, even though we can't seem to agree on how fast to walk. See, I've always been Mr. Aerobics and she was always Mrs. Aesthetics. Yeah. Loved to walk slowly enough to appreciate the beautiful sea shells that the tide deposited on the beach. Well, she finally slowed me down long enough to enjoy some of the color and the design that God put into those shells. I'm glad she did.
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Our son can usually tell when the weather's about to change. His knee is his own personal "weather channel." Now I know he seems like he might be young to have pain like that, but it actually goes back to one day on a football field in high school. When one hit tore his anterior cruciate ligament - that infamous "ACL" injury so many athletes dread. Since he was five, his dream had been to play football, and he did and he was good, but then the injury. I was with him in the office of a sports medicine specialist when the doctor said, "You will never play football again." That was the day his dream died. And, as he says now as part of his life testimony, it was the day his god died. His sports dream was dead. But that began a series of events that led to a time of tearful repentance, then the redirecting of his life goals, and ultimately to the incredible ways God has used him among Native American young people and in our whole ministry. And lest he forget who's in charge, he's got this alarm in his knee.
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An upscale restaurant in Manhattan's iconic Rockefeller Plaza, filled with Wall Street "movers and shakers." A dusty reservation basketball court, surrounded by impoverished, hope-starved Native American young people. I've ministered in both worlds, within weeks of one another. Worlds that - at first glance - seem to be really far apart. But when it comes to what God is doing, these divergent worlds share some striking - and instructive - similarities.
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They had the mightiest armies ever seen up until that time. And yet the seemingly invincible legions of the Roman Empire eventually fell to ransacking hordes who were once confined to Rome's far borders. What happened? Actually, many things happened that led to their defeat, but one of them was clearly spelled out by one Fourth Century Roman General. Here's what he said: "When, because of negligence and laziness, parade ground drills were abandoned, the customary armor began to feel heavy since the soldiers rarely, if ever, wore it. Therefore, they asked the emperor to set aside the breastplates and mail and then the helmets. So our soldiers fought the Goths without any protection for the heart and head, and they were often beaten by archers. Although there were many disasters, which led to the loss of great cities, no one tried to restore the armor to the infantry. They took the armor off, and when the armor came off - so, too, came their integrity."
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Facebook and other social media have afforded us the wonderful privilege of knowing more about our friends than we ever really wanted to. "I just blew my nose. Thought you all should know." Best of all, we can share our "selfies"; pictures of me, taken by me. Because it's all about me, right? No! Well, at least it's not supposed to be.
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It's an old Asian parable with a lot of "right now" wisdom. A little boy had been trying for many days to capture one of the little birds that snacked in the family fields. And he'd tried over and over again to hide in the bushes and surprise one of those birds enough to get his hands on it. Finally, after many failed attempts, he captured his prize. And he couldn't wait to show his mommy. He wrapped his hands around that little bird and he ran all the way to his house. As soon as the little guy saw his mother, he proudly extended his cupped hands and said, "Mommy, I got a bird! He's really cute!" But his joy didn't last long. As he slowly opened his hands for his mother to see, he noticed the bird wasn't moving - or breathing. It was one heartbroken boy who cried, "Mommy, I was afraid I'd lose him. But I held him so tight, I crushed him."
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I've got this card in my wallet that has bailed me out on several occasions. It has the simple word "Treasurer" on it. No, it has nothing to do with any offices that I hold; it's my bank card. Okay, so I go to the money machine at my bank, the ATM. You can just stick your card in it and you get the money you need, provided there are some resources in your account to cover it. I guess the faster paced our lives get the more we need these quick fixes. I mean, we need instant access to the resources we need.
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Nancy Reagan called it "the long goodbye." Her beloved husband's slow slide into the black hole of Alzheimer's Disease. America said goodbye to Nancy Reagan too, and we remember her as a great First Lady and a wife forever in love with her "Ronnie." Her boundless devotion to him became almost legendary. And at her funeral service, more people talked about that than anything else. See, when he was the famous Hollywood star and when he was a transformative leader of the Western World, Nancy stood by his side, but especially through his long, ten-year goodbye.
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As an airline passenger, those video images from the Los Angeles airport that day were just plain disturbing: a human stampede, terrified passengers, fleeing from a gunman on the loose in the terminal.
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I was on the road again so it had to be a fast food lunch. You know, I keep the nutrition guides from several of those fast food places, even if "fast food nutrition guide" sounds like an oxymoron. I try to think calories before I order because my food too often goes from a moment on the lips to forever on the hips. Interesting thing about the food we eat, the same meal can turn into fat or turn into energy. It depends on what you do after you eat it!
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It was November, and we were thinking turkey, not tornadoes. Right before Thanksgiving there were some 68 tornadoes that didn't consult the calendar. From EF-2s to EF-4s, they left a swath of erased homes and devastated communities across the middle of America. Washington, Illinois was clearly one of the epicenters of the violence in the skies. And the pictures from there are all too familiar; splintered neighborhoods, and residents trying to figure out which pile of rubble used to be their home, and what one reporter called "the good stuff." Like Steve Bucher, who had no home address as of the night the tornado hit. He told CNN that his attitude was "in the next minute and a half, we're either gonna be in heaven or we're going to be in the hospital, or we're going to walk out of here." Thankfully, they walked out safe, but minus pretty much everything else they had.
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When our sons were playing football, the varsity guys let them know an important factor in impressing the coach. He'll be looking for you in the weight room, not just at practice. Coaches know serious athletes serve their time in the weight room, concentrating on becoming stronger. They're not there because it's fun, it's not. But because it's important to winning the battle. One measure of your growing strength is what the lifters call your bench press. That's not lifting a bench of course, but it's how much you can lift over your head as you lie on a weight bench. I've worked with a lot of football players and weight lifters, but I've seldom met one who's content to keep that amount that they can lift where it is. No, they're always adding a little more weight to that bar. So, if your bench press is 170 pounds, you want to go to 180, 190. If you've been lifting 200, you want to work to get it to 210, 220. You know, you're always pressing more.
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Ashley Smith was just getting her life back together. A 26-year-old single mom, she had had a pretty rough journey. A Christian upbringing but a youthful rebellion - brushes with the law, some drug issues, jobs found and lost - and finally marriage and a little girl. Four years earlier, her husband had died in her arms from stab wounds in a violent attack. On that night in March of 2005, she was just getting settled in the apartment she had moved into two days earlier. When she returned from her 2:00 A.M. run to the store, accused killer, Brian Nichols, forced his way into her apartment at gunpoint.
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It's hard to believe there was a time when you had to be carried by someone in order to get anywhere, right? You know, there was a time when it was a major, major breakthrough for you to finally figure out how to move yourself places. Well, years ago, I had a chance to see our six-month-old granddaughter in that milestone struggle to figure out how to crawl. We stopped the presses when she had learned how to sit up by herself. Now, that's a good start. I mean, I'd been sitting on the living room carpet with her. (In fact, I recently learned to sit up by myself too!) Well, I lay down a few feet from her, I held a favorite toy on the rug in front of me, and I started drumming my fingers rhythmically on the carpet. She was definitely intrigued. And you could tell she really wanted to get to my fingers and to that toy. She finally figured out there was no easy way to get what she wanted. She managed to fall forward from her sitting position, get up on all fours, and then rock back and forth in neutral. She reached my direction with one hand. She was risking her delicate balance. Didn't quite make it. But I knew she would soo, because I knew she would eventually do whatever she had to do to get where she wanted to be.
