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It was as late as mid-August that year and people in 24 states were watching the water rise. For so many months flash flood warnings or watches, and the rain just kept falling. We were in some of those monsoons. In a nearby community, the water rose a foot every ten minutes. I'd never heard of anything like that. I mean, there was barely time to get out.
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I hate to make extra trips back and forth from the car. So I have a tendency to load up with a little more than I should probably carry. (Is this a guy thing? I don't know.) At the grocery store, I would rather not be hassled with taking a cart out into the parking lot. So, if at all possible, I'll just load up all those grocery bags in my arms and start walking. It's then that I especially appreciate a particular convenience that stores have - those doors that open automatically, without you even having to touch them. I mean, you do have to do something...you have to walk toward those doors. Yeah, see, that's when they open.
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It had been a pretty rough week. Missy lost her mother the day before and Andy's wife filed for divorce that day. And a friend had texted recently, heartbroken over his sister-in-law's cancer verdict. And then we had some reservation friends of ours that were grieving over one young suicide after another.
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Over the years I've been the waste management engineer at our house. Yeah, I get to collect and take out the garbage. Take it from an expert, do not buy cheap garbage bags. No. Maybe don't wait as long as I did to sometimes collect the garbage either. Here's the problem. You've just tied up a brimming bag full of things you really don't want to see any more, you don't want to smell them any more. They're supposed to be in the garbage can. But sometimes they don't make it to the garbage can when a cheap bag rips open and dumps it all over the kitchen floor. Oh I've had it happen. Garbage isn't bad. Garbage dumped in the wrong place - oh, that's bad.
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Yeah, it's been more than a century since the unsinkable ship sank and some 1,500 passengers died. You know, of course, I actually have my boarding pass for the Titanic. I really do! They gave it to me at the entrance to a Titanic artifacts exhibit I went to. (I am not that old that I have an original. No.) Now, it doesn't have my name on it. It says, "J. Pearse, Crew." See, having the name of someone who was really there that night, I guess, made what I saw a whole lot more personal. That was the idea.
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Maybe it's in the testosterone. Guys are just wired to build something; a business, a church, furniture, home improvement projects. Some men build a team, some build financial security for their family, some just build a name for themselves. Even if I've felt motivated to build a few things, I'm the ultimate un-handyman. Like there was this little tree house - well, more like a tree platform - but the kids enjoyed it. The dollhouse for our daughter. The miniature barn for our son. There's a reason that God puts this building thing in guys. Some of us have a really big project to build!
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If you follow baseball, you know what a designated hitter is. When you really need a hit, you put in this guy who's got a really good batting average. Now, we didn't have a designated hitter in our town, but they sort of made me the designated prayer in our town. I'm not sure how I got that assignment, but when they were having some kind of a community function and they needed a prayer, they'd call me.
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There's no way newscasters could tell her story without somehow using the word "miracle." And that was easy to understand. See, Baby Lily had been trapped in a partly submerged car in Utah's Spanish Fork River. She was 18 months old. She was upside down in her car seat for 14 hours, with the cold water of the river running through that car.
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My children love roller coasters. They didn't get that from me. No, when my dad took me on the big "thrills and chills" coaster at our city amusement park, I needed counseling for years to come!
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There's a lot of sheep-talk in the Bible, which puts "city boy" here at a distinct disadvantage. I grew up in Chicago, we didn't have them there. No, if the Bible used like cockroaches as an example, I'd be all set. But I've had to learn about sheep from friends who have been around them a lot. One of our ministry team worked with ranchers a lot with their sheep. And he told me about how the shepherd gets his sheep to go where he wants them to go! There's a way that works and a way that doesn't work. My co-worker said that he has seen people get behind sheep and try to push them along. Notice I said, try! It doesn't work, no matter how much noise he makes or how he waves his arms. When they are pushed by a shepherd, sheep just scatter. But when he gets out in front of them; when he leads them the way he wants them to go, the sheep follow after him. Not a bad idea.
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Okay, I've got to confess that sometimes my attention wanders a little when I'm listening to someone speak in a public meeting. I'm sure someone who's been in a meeting where I was the speaker is saying right now, "Oh, that's pretty funny. That's what happened when I heard you speak."
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Comedian Jerry Lewis actually made a little cinema history years ago when he filmed the movie "The Bellboy." It would be no big deal today, but back then it was a first. Jerry Lewis had each scene of the movie videotaped so he could look at it and see if it had come out like he wanted it. If he didn't like it, they went right back and they got it right. I know, "good old days." But it was actually a smart idea. Kind of sort of is today.
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I used to have another radio program, in addition to this one, just to keep from getting bored. It was called "Alive!" and it was designed to reach young people and it had a pretty high energy format. A lot of that came from having a live studio audience of young people. I loved it! Teenagers like to hear other teenagers, so we involved our audience in doing dramas and discussing the week's issue.
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On a trip to Florida, I had just a little personal time - enough to get over to Epcot Center at Disney World, which was a really cool place. You know, they've set it up so it's actually like being in several of the big countries of the world; some of which I've actually been to for real. And it was just really great to be in touch with the world that way. You know? So, I grabbed a van, actually part of a limo service. And as we were getting near Epcot, I said to the driver, "Man, I'll bet you drive here in your sleep, don't you? I mean, this is something you do all the time. You probably could do it with your eyes closed." He said, "Oh, yeah, man, I could. I've been here so many times." I said, "Well, how many times have you actually been in Epcot?" He said, "Oh, I've never been in." He just brings people there. Well, you know what, it's so often that way isn't it?
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Few times in human history has so much rested on the shoulders of one man. That man was General Dwight Eisenhower, commander of the Allied forces in World War II. The responsibility: planning and leading the massive secret attack against Hitler's hold on Europe; the attack that would come to be known as the D-Day Invasion. It can be said that the fate of the world rested on the outcome of that invasion, launched on five beaches on the northern coast of France. And the ultimate decisions about that invasion rested with Dwight Eisenhower. He had said that they only had a plan for victory, and that's what they expected. But after he gave the final "go" order and committing so many lives to that battle, he must have had some secret doubts about the outcome. In the back of a military vehicle, General Eisenhower drafted a letter that was only revealed years later. In it, he said something like this: "The invasion has failed, and I take full responsibility for that failure. No blame goes to President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, or any other commanders. I am fully responsible." Well, thank God that letter was never needed. The invasion, of course, succeeded. But that letter revealed the heart of a truly great leader.
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Okay, let's use our imagination. I'm going to buy a new car, and I'm going to pay for it with cash in full. That's the imagining part. So I pay Mr. Dealer lots of thousands of dollars for the new car, and he tells me it will be there in two weeks. Those two weeks crawl by like a turtle, but finally the day comes when I can show up for my hot new wheels. So I shake hands with the dealer, and he says, "Hey, I'll be right back!" A few minutes later he comes out, carrying a big box. He sees my bewildered expression. He says, "Here it is. Go ahead. Open the box." I do, and inside I find two new hubcaps, a new carburetor, and a new steering wheel. This dealer and I have a problem!
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A few years back, the stress meters on Wall Street hit some new highs all because one man had been recording his telephone calls. Yeah, one of Wall Street's movers and shakers had been caught in the middle of some very profitable but very illegal stock dealings. And in order to reduce his possible penalty, he agreed to record his calls for a few weeks. Well, when that news broke, oh boy, they found out that he had been caught and that he had been dealing for weeks with the recorder running! Well, a lot of Wall Street lawyers got some very frantic phone calls.
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So the American male seems to be led to believe that "girl-watching" is just part of being a guy. A lot of girls are all too aware that they're being watched, and they're not happy about how they're being watched in a lot of cases. Like the young woman that my wife and I saw at a festival. She was wearing this shirt with an arrow on the front and it pointed up to her head. The shirt said just three little words by the arrow, "I'm up here!"
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I think it all started when the bananas started going bad. That's when our daughter decided to bake them up into four loaves of banana bread. Then she asked their church for some folks who might need a little lift right now. With that cheer-up list in hand and our then four-year-old and two-year-old grandchildren assisting, she proceeded to drop off some banana bread blessing at four homes. She took the boys with her into each house, and they actually are the ones who gave the resident the gift. First house, the man's wife had just died. He was so thrilled over their gift that he gave each boy a dollar which he refused to take back. Second house, a man with a very sick wife. He insisted on thanking the boys by giving them candy. Third house, a lady living alone, very serious, until the boys gave their gift. Big smile! And the fourth house, another lonely woman and a big hug for each boy. As our daughter debriefed her little banana ambassadors, our four-year-old recounted the unexpected gifts they had received in the process of giving, including a big smile and a big hug. Then the little guy summed up his feelings about the day: "Mommy, today was such an adventure."
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Spiders build webs, and a lot of bugs get stuck in them. Well, that's because, see, the spiders know where the sticky spots are, so they don't get trapped in the webs they weave. But humans do.
