Wallenda. That's a name that is synonymous with tightrope artistry, high wire drama. The Great Wallendas! The patriarch of the Wallenda clan was Karl Wallenda, and at the age of 73 he was still doing tightrope work. He went to South America several years ago and strung a tight rope between two 20-story buildings. For him that was not an unusual feat, but tragically that day Karl Wallenda fell to his death.
I remember my son's first football game in high school. He was all decked out in his football armor and looking appropriately intimidating like you're supposed to look. And he came on the field with the rest of the team, but as macho as he was (or was trying to be), as soon as he came out he just glanced up at the stands, and I knew why. He wanted to be sure his Father was there watching him.
Our family, and probably yours, can be divided into two functional groups: the morning people and the night people. Which, by the way, are dysfunctional the other part of the day. You have those at your house? Well, often they marry each other. I don't know why that happens. And then they drive each other nuts at the beginning and at the end of the day. Now, my daughter, for example, oh, she was the slow freight train in the morning. She was almost a no freight train in the morning. It was hard to get her up; it took a long time to get her going, not much spark there, not too many smiles. She was not really like that the rest of the day. But morning was just not her time.
Okay, we're going to do a little experiment right now. If you're near something printed (and you're not driving), let's say a book, a newspaper, magazine, would you just like hold it in front of your eyes? Okay, now wait, wait, if you're driving, remember you're excused from this. But otherwise...you got that in front of your eyes alright? Now, hold it a foot or so from your eyes.
We have five members of the Hutchcraft family. Actually at one time, there was a sixth unofficial member of the family - our parrot, Pierre. Now, my 14-year-old son took care of him, and he had a problem. See, Pierre needed a bath. He really needed a bath. And our method of giving him a bath is to put him in the tub. Now, I don't know if this is conventional or not, but we put him in the tub and he would really love the shower...sort of like the Amazon jungle where his roots are - a rain forest I guess.
Now, we've driven some pretty desolate stretches of the U.S. For a guy who used to wait 'til the last minute to get gas, those stretches were life-changing. A couple of bad experiences and you become mister "fill up at half a tank." But America's desert and wilderness stretches take a back seat to some of the wilderness of the Middle East; especially some of the desert traversed by God's ancient people as they went from Egypt to the Promised Land. Recently, a writer named Bruce Feiler decided to physically retrace some of the geography of the first five books of the Bible. Including the still-challenging Sinai wilderness where God's people wandered for 40 years. He spent time with the nomadic Bedouins who make that wilderness their home. He walked the hot sands, the daunting mountains of that wilderness. And, in the process, he found himself on an unanticipated journey of spiritual discovery. And he learned something about why God led His children through the desert - and why He still does. Here's what this author said: "In the desert, there's no such thing as independence - only dependence."
We'd stopped for gas next to an Interstate that takes you at 75 MPH across long miles of desert. I love the west. That's where I saw the sign: "Dead End - 3 Miles Ahead." I thought, "I wonder if anyone ever said, 'I'm not sure that's true of that old dirt road. I think I'll drive that way and check it out for myself.'" We got back on the Interstate, and of course, I had to see where that other road went. Sure enough, that bumpy road ended three miles later in the middle of nothing in the desert...right next to a road that speeds you to a lot of great destinations.
Isn't it amazing how different your second child can be from your first child? Just when you think you've got this parent thing all figured out, God sends you a totally different kid. For example, food has always been sort of a necessary evil for our son's oldest, our granddaughter. She can take it or leave it. Since infancy, she hasn't cared much about whether or not she had food. Not her brother! Oh no! This kid is an eating machine. He's only about a year old, but he was Food King for much of his little life. When he was still supposed to be only having milk, he was following every bite any of us put into our mouth as if to say, "So when do I get some of that stuff?" How did he graduate to crawling? One thing that helped was putting some food across the room. He just needed incentive. He took off on all fours like a firecracker had gone off behind him. One day, his mom was mixing up his next meal, and he was watching and complaining. As she continued to get it ready, he continued to escalate his expressions of impatience and displeasure. By the time his food was ready, we were dealing with a very loud, very insistent protest.
Our local high school band worked hard to put on some great performances at our football games. I know. Our daughter was one of the trumpet players. I also remember going to band competitions at different schools. We have some precious memories of sitting on the top bleacher with a wind chill that would have made a polar bear go inside. My teeth were chattering loud enough to be in the percussion section! Our band also got to perform in several local parades. But, there's just a handful of high school bands that get invited to play in one of America's really big parades, like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. Recently, the Mountain Home, Arkansas, band had that thrill.
If we did a word association game with the words "San Francisco," well, two things that might come up very quickly would be Golden Gate Bridge and earthquakes. Actually, both of those subjects came up a lot when we were in San Francisco for some youth outreaches and to tape some special editions of a youth broadcast. We didn't arrange for a quake while we were there, but we did do a program based on them. And we actually did originate parts of other programs from near the Golden Gate Bridge and even on it. According to some local friends of mine there, and they could just be Californians pulling the leg of an East Coast boy, but they said that the bridge might be one of the safer places to be during an earthquake. No, it's not the one that folded during the last big quake. They say one reason the Golden Gate could withstand a quake is this surprising fact - it's built in such a way, that it's flexible. In other words, when the earth under it starts moving, it doesn't just stand there rigid and break. It's built to flex when things are shaking. So, apparently a quake might shake it, but probably not break it.
