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I'm having sort of flashbacks of some very special Easters past; often at a sunrise service. Like the Easter in Miami, with the sun rising over Biscayne Bay as I spoke about Jesus rising from the dead. Or celebrating Jesus with Native Americans in a public park. And the... Oh, yeah, there was the one on the mountaintop near New York City.
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The land is flat around Joplin, Missouri. And then after the great tornado that hit there, much of the town was leveled by that F-5. It was just heartbreaking devastation as far as the eye could see. But you know what? In the midst of all that devastation, there was still one thing still standing. A reporter commented on it as the camera scanned across this sea of wreckage, and you couldn't miss it. It was a cross, and his words went right to my heart, "The church is gone, but the cross is still standing."
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When our daughter was just a baby we had a pretty small house where you could look in all the rooms from the kitchen. During the summer we had this big old exhaust fan on the floor in the kitchen, which was really the only way to suck some air through the house. Well, our daughter thought this fan was kind of intriguing, she thought it would be neat to explore. I walked into the kitchen one day and here she is toddling toward that fan with her hand fully extended. She wanted to put her fingers in the fan! Guess what? I didn't say, "Oh go ahead honey, I love you." No, I said, "No!" She tried again a few minutes later. She really wanted to do this. So I kind of spatted her on the bottom and said, "No, no! Don't do that." Now if I tried to explain it to this little toddler, she wouldn't have understood at all. I just had to stop her. Can't you imagine what she would have said, if she could've said, "Haven't you heard of love? If you love me, you'll let me do what I really want to do." No, not in this case. Today I think she's pretty glad that I didn't think that was love.
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I know you've experienced it. Let's call it customer frustration. Maybe it's all about a bill you think there's a mistake on, or a problem with your phone or some other service, or maybe it's a store policy that seems like it's got you going in circles just trying to get an answer. You've talked yourself blue in the face, trying to get some resolution from this salesperson or this customer rep. Then it dawns on you...this person doesn't have any authority to make any difference in this situation. They're just reading from the company script. So what do you do? You ask for the boss, the manager, the owner. That's where I usually get an answer, because they've got the authority to do something!
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My son really likes to read. In fact, he had this spot by his office window where he liked to sit in the morning and read as the sunshine came streaming in. The one book he read there every morning was his Bible. He wanted to make sure that he got his time with Jesus right at the top of the day. He still does that. But this particular day was particularly unforgettable because as he opened his eyes from praying, there was a little chair next to his big chair and our then two-year-old granddaughter (precious girl) was there reading (well, excuse me, she was reading as much as a two-year-old can) a book. It was her toddler's Bible. Oh yeah, and next to her was one melted daddy all over the floor.
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We had rented this nice cabin in the mountains, and we really didn't want to leave it much. The view across the valley was like a painting. It would change as the sun changed and the weather changed; all kinds of moods, you know, like you see in the mountains.
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Years ago there was a cowboy hero, and a young boy who thought he was a big deal. The boy was me. And my parents bought me this plate with my hero's picture on it and an inscription that said, "That a boy! You cleaned your plate." I wanted his approval very much, so I just kept cleaning my plate...and filling it so I could clean it again. By the time I was in high school, I weighed 210 pounds. And whose fault was it that I was so heavy? I've told many people - it was the fault of that cowboy hero, of course. Well, at least I wish I could have blamed him.
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They were very exciting years; those days when God launched our radio outreach to young people. The Lord used that youth program to present Jesus to young people in almost 400 areas of this country and about 60 countries of the world. And the early ones; the first ones we did, they were especially exciting because it was like a new kind of Christian program in the country. We were living in New Jersey. The program originated from Chicago, and it was neat to have two or three children with me for those pioneer broadcasts. We kind of shared the excitement.
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There's this island on the New Jersey Shore that our family loved to go to when we had a holiday weekend. After you cross the causeway from the mainland, you enter an island that's long and it's really narrow. In fact, at many points, you can drive right along that long street that runs through the center of that island and you see the bay just to one side and the ocean right there on the other side. I've driven that long street many times. Because it's flat, you can see the traffic lights way ahead of you. Often, I would start off with a green light in front of me and I'd be looking at some red lights up ahead; maybe a long line of red lights. But as I approached them, those reds would turn green, and I kept going. You'll be happy to know that when I came to a red light, I stopped - like the good boy I always am. You knew that!
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Yeah, when it came time for them to choose teams for softball, I felt a little rejected. Last one chosen. Poor me. And how about the time when I was the only one on the hayride without a date? Poor me.
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It was a super-hot summer day and my wife and I were on vacation. Everything was going great until the electrical power went out at our cabin. No lights, no air conditioner, no TV. We decided to go to a nearby restaurant for dinner. Just as we pulled up, they put the closed sign in the window. It's a good thing I'm secure. I might take it personally otherwise. The owner said the power was out there, too, and they decided to close because they really couldn't cook. It turned out that lots of places were closed. The locals told us that the power company had actually recently replaced the old lines with a much newer line that was supposed to be failsafe as far as blackouts. Right. Well, the demands were great that day, and the power...it was just inadequate to meet them.
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"Shun piking"! Yeah, our kids learned that at a very early age. That expression actually goes back to Colonial days when people would leave or "shun" the pike, the main road, and take side roads. Today, it's just a good word for describing getting intentionally lost - just exploring some of those side roads you've never been on to see things you've never seen. Apparently, this shun piking thing has been inherited by the next generation. Yeah, there was the day that our daughter took our then three-year-old grandson on one of those crazy adventures on some unexplored back roads. And he saw lots of things he never saw before. When she asked him if he was ready to go home, he told her he wanted to keep going. His reason? "I liked exploring."
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It was about noon when I heard the news. Fortunately, I was safe in my office. All the power was out at Newark Airport. Now, I had used that airport so many times I could very well have been one of those poor travelers who I saw on the evening news groping their way through a totally darkened terminal. There was no electricity to the terminal for an entire day. What a mess! No lights, no computers, no baggage equipment. It was a good day to be in my office. And the reason there were no lights? A pile driver that was being used on an airport construction project somehow punched right through the main power line. Nice shot! With the power and lights out, it was just a very dark day.
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I was on this early morning flight to Pittsburgh. It's the kind where most of the passengers are real veteran flyers, you know, business people. And wouldn't you know, we got one of those two-for-the-price-of-one landings. Yeah, one of those bumpy, bouncy ones. I mean, even with the seasoned flyers aboard, that landing got everyone's heads out of their papers and their briefcases...including mine. I couldn't wait to hear what the flight attendant was going to say. And, fortunately, we got one of the few that had a sense of humor. He came on and he said, "Ladies and gentlemen, now that I have your attention, I'd like to make a few announcements!" That's great! Believe me, after a landing like that, he had our attention!
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So, I had gone out that night and I saw this beautiful moon rising in the Eastern sky. I ran inside and said, "Honey, you need to come outside. The moon is shining so brightly tonight." Actually, to be more accurate, I should say, "Half the moon is shining brightly tonight." Because, see, there's one side of the moon that enjoys the sun's rays and reflects them back to earth, and there's another side that the sun doesn't touch. Of course, that's the dark side of the moon.
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If you had seen that three-month-old baby, you'd say, "Man, he looks like the picture of health." He was a handsome baby, full of dark hair, doubled his weight since he was born, strong, taking in everything going on around him, and a smile that could melt your heart. But inside, it was a different story. He'd already had two major heart surgeries in his short life and the prospect of more in his future.
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I'm told that new babies actually lose a little weight between the time they're born and the checkup they have two weeks later. Oh, not when our little granddaughter was new! No! No! And we know why. She was extremely dedicated to eating often and eating a lot. Her mother's milk obviously agreed with her. She had been one happy little girl, until it was time to eat again. At which point she would crank it up and let us know in no uncertain terms "I'm hungry! I will not be delayed! I will not be denied!" I think that's what she said.
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Our family actually attended a movie premier together! Uh-huh! Well, it was actually in our living room. I don't think it will ever win an Oscar. But it was the premier of the Hutchcraft family movies transferred to DVD! What a breakthrough! Now we can watch them with the benefit of modern technology. We watched this one movie of our oldest son learning to walk. He started out by holding onto things like the coffee table, and then he'd move from there and reach over so he could hold onto the couch. And the next thing you see, he's holding his sister's hand. Here's this little guy toddling around with his big sister trying to help him. And now he was walking!
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It's one of life's great treats - pumpkin pie with some Cool Whip on it. Yeah, that's what I was after when I went to my son's refrigerator that day. I had cut my piece of pie, and all it was missing was that little white topping of Cool Whip. I foraged around in the fridge until I saw that familiar plastic container with a picture of exactly what I wanted my pumpkin pie to look like. Somewhat mindlessly, I opened that container, stuck my spoon in there, and pulled out the contents. I was just about to decorate my pie with it when I looked at what was on my spoon. It wasn't Cool Whip. It was gravy, which doesn't do much for pumpkin pie.
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Our friends were expecting their baby in about six weeks. But the baby didn't get the message. No. They had flown in from Denver to attend a convention in Chicago and we were all at the same convention. Since I was living in Chicago at the time, I said, "Hey, baby happens, call me. I'll get you to the hospital in plenty of time. It's my city. You don't have anything to worry about." We were all laughing. I wasn't laughing at 6:00 A.M. the next morning when I got a phone call in my hotel room saying, "She's in labor!" Of course, I'm going crazy. I've got to get them to the hospital.
