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Some years ago I saw that movie "Twister." It was hair-raising! Even for a guy with not much hair to raise. But I kept telling myself, "It's just a story. It's just special effects."
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I knew about lighthouses. I never knew about lightships though, until I visited Nantucket, that charming old island that's about 30 miles off the coast of Cape Cod. In the harbor there. You now can tour the retired Lightship Nantucket. But before the development of modern navigational technology, the work of that ship actually saved a lot of lives. See, there are deadly shoals that extend south of Nantucket, and the main shipping lanes to New York City run right along the outer edge in what's called the Ambrose Channel. Now, for many decades, the Lightship Nantucket was stationed at the eastern approach to the channel - at what was called the "Times Square of the Atlantic." Well, she dared not leave her position there - because all ship navigation was fixed on that lightship. If the lightship moved, every ship would follow her - possibly to disaster.
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The first time I ever flew into New York City, the man who picked me up said, "Well, you just landed on the garbage of New York." I said, "What do you mean by that?" He said, "Well, you see, LaGuardia Airport is built on landfill. Years ago all these garbage trucks hauled all this garbage from New York out here and built a place where there's now an airport." I was impressed. I thought, "You know, it's amazing what engineers can do. I mean, they made something very useful out of garbage." Did you know there's a cosmic engineer who put the galaxies together, and He's a genius at making something useful out of garbage.
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We know well all about the World Trade Center and what happened on that September 11th. But there's those personal stories that put a face on it even to this day. I saw a particularly moving first-person story of one woman who miraculously survived the collapse of the North Tower that awful day. She tried to make her way down the long stairwell from her office on the 64th floor. She got to the 13th floor. That's when the entire tower began to crumble. She fell to the ground as the building continued to literally collapse around her. She dropped 13 floors and ended up with her head pinned between two concrete pillars and her legs trapped in a staircase. She said, "I saw that no one came, and I wasn't hearing any noises around me. So I thought, 'I'm going to die here. I'm going to see myself slowly die here.'"
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Even the reporters choked up. That monster tornado tore up in Moore, Oklahoma, tore at our hearts: houses gone, neighborhoods gone, schools gone, children - gone.
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If you're into college sports, it's always a big day. If you're into professional sports, it's always a big day. Some call it Alumni Day or Old Timers' Day. Whatever you call it, it's the time a lot of those who played on that very same field come back to cheer on the men and women who are today's players. If you're a player and the game is tough, glance up there in the stands. You'll see some people up there who know how you feel, who've played the game you're playing, who've gone against that same opponent, and who are up there right now, screaming their lungs out for you. They just really want you to win!
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Our sons were - and are - crazy about baseball, and then followed the grandsons. They know the players, the standings, the stats. Did I mention they're crazy about baseball? Yeah, it's true; it runs in the family. But dark clouds again rolled in over America's baseball stadiums, because, well, there were suddenly more reports that some stars, who are a lot of kids' heroes, cheated to be great. You remember all that.
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Our three-year-old grandson had been around long enough to show us that he's gonna be the one who lived on the edge. You know, trying daring things, and basically a physical kind of guy. Consequently, he might be on a first name basis with the folks in the emergency room. We hope not, but you know, he's already visited there more than once in his short career. The first time he got a bad cut on his lip from a fall - lots of bleeding, run to the emergency room, stitches. This medical stuff was all new to him. Oh, listen he fought it. It took four people to hold down this tiger while the stitches were put in. It was traumatic for everybody involved - including my wife who was one of those E. R. wrestlers that night trying to hold him down. The second time was when another fall caused a big cut in his chin. Lots of bleeding, run to the emergency room, stitches. Get a pattern here? Less fighting this time. Oh, it wasn't easy, but it wasn't as bad as the first time. Who knows, maybe pretty soon he'll be helping them put the stitches in!
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Our oldest son and his wife, who became our wonderful daughter, were living on an Indian reservation and had ministered there for several years. And then it was time to expect their first baby. It was wonderful that this baby girl was going to come. They lived pretty far from the hospital, so of course, you needed to "get in gear" when it was time. Right? And those were the words our daughter-in-law spoke that fateful night, "I think it's time!" Well, they had gone to the classes. They knew what to do. Oh, but my son? Well, he simply started (this is what I've been told) walking around in circles in his living room going, "Okay! Okay!" Meanwhile his wife's gently going, "It's time." "Okay! Okay!" Well, listen, when you know what time it is, you need to know what action to take.
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We met Gal on an Indian reservation. She wasn't very easy to get to know. Gal was a cute black and white dog owned by a missionary couple that our On Eagles' Wings Team was working with on a remote reservation. Most dogs run up to you when you come to the door, even if you're a stranger, and they're usually all over you. Not Gal. She ran the other way and cowered in the corner, no matter how gentle, how friendly you were to her. She didn't want to come out of her corner for anybody. "Strange dog," I thought. Until her owners explained that Gal had been terribly abused by her first owners. When she saw people, she saw pain.
