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February 9, 2023

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OK, I'm a history buff. So my kids had opportunity to visit many houses and villages that are historic preservations or restorations. They might put that a little differently. "We got dragged to all this history stuff!" Our two sons especially got to dreading that word "tour." In fact, you know what? They made it a much longer word. It went something like this: "Oh, we're not going on another toooooo-urrrrr?" Well, one thing that made the tours a little more interesting, were the craftsmen working their crafts. Like the potter, for example. Even the kids enjoyed stopping to watch him do his work. He'd start with this worthless lump of clay and slowly, painstakingly, he would transform it into something really beautiful and valuable. I could tell that by the prices in the gift shop for that pottery.

January 23, 2023

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I was speaking at a Christian conference center in the Midwest; actually, speaking at least three times a day there! Don't feel bad for me. No, feel bad for the people who had to listen to me all those times! After about three days, I decided to grab some break time to do something I had wanted to do since I arrived. I wanted to climb this monster sand dune that's not far from the conference center. It was just sitting there all week saying, "Climb me, Ron! Climb me!" So I grabbed a couple of friends and we started trudging up this huge mountain of sand. At first, we were charging up that dune, all full of energy. But if you've ever climbed a sand dune, you know it gets pretty exhausting pretty fast. After a while, you could hear the huffing and the puffing and you could feel the steps slowing down. My climbing partners were starting to lose their enthusiasm for the rest of the climb - especially when they looked up and saw how far we still had to go. So I encouraged them to stop for a minute and rest, and to look down. We needed to look at how far we had come - not just how far we still had to go.

January 13, 2023

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I think it had something to do with moving a piano. I've been part of moving one of those monsters, and I know what a bear it is to do. Fortunately, we had plenty of guys to share the load. I guess my Dad didn't. Ultimately, he said moving a piano was a major reason he had to have one of those difficult surgeries - actually to repair a hernia. I'd never even heard the word before until my Dad helped move a piano. There weren't enough men to bear the load of that piano that they moved at church. Well, for at least one man - my Dad - the load was too much to bear without major damage.

December 21, 2022

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Buttermilk Falls is a beautiful spot! That's what I had been told, and I was always open for a great new spot to go for a Sunday afternoon drive with the kids. So we drove out to the country and set out to discover the beauty of Buttermilk Falls. I did have to stop and ask directions a couple of times; I guess a lot of people didn't know where this great spot was.

December 9, 2022

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If you've ever had to make a marathon drive over a long distance, or if you just wanted to squeeze every possible hour out of your vacation, you know what it's like to drive all night probably. If you're a long-haul truck driver, pushing through the night, that could well be a way of life for you. For me, that last hour or two before dawn, oh, man, that's tough. That's when you turn on the most obnoxious radio station you can find and you blast it. That's when you start doing aerobic workouts behind the wheel. It's when you roll down the window in spite of the 30-below wind chill and the hurricane force winds. What makes the last hours of the night particularly challenging is the truth of that old cliché, "It's always darkest before the dawn." It usually is the darkest time, right when the night is seeming to be the very longest. Then suddenly, you start to see that glow on the horizon. The glow gets steadily brighter, and it starts radiating light across more and more of the dark sky. And then, there it is - the sunrise! Hallelujah, the long night is over! Just when it felt like it was never going to end!

December 5, 2022

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Antiques and young children - not a good combination. It is, in fact, an invitation to disaster. Like that lovely antique teapot my wife had out years ago when the kids were little. You know what happened, right? One moment a teapot, the next moment pieces of a teapot. But my wife quickly rallied to remedy the situation. No, she did not disown one of our children. She sent me out for a tube of some sort of super glue. And amazingly, she put those pieces together and recreated that old teapot. And that glue? It's held it together to this very day!

November 30, 2022

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There's one vacation spot our family has always wanted to go back to - Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. As you walk through this bustling, restored Colonial capital, suddenly you say, "Whoa, it's not "now" anymore." You feel like you're in the 1770s again. I mean the buildings, the gardens, and the elegant rooms carry this charm that even children can sense. But it wasn't always that way.

November 29, 2022

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I've been privileged to have a lot of friends in law enforcement over the years. Not because I was in their custody. Let me make that clear. Some of them have the intriguing, and harrowing, assignment of being involved with both a SWAT team and a Hostage Negotiating Team. Needless to say, they're specialists who are called in when there's an especially dangerous situation; often involving people who are being held hostage by a felon. Their mission, one way or another, is to do whatever it takes to bring out those who have been taken captive.

November 25, 2022

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They take more abuse than anyone in professional baseball. More than the managers who make some dumb decisions. More than the players who mess up. No, it's those umpires that so many fans love to hate. Oh sure, they make some calls the fans don't like or agree with, but I'd hate to think of a ball game without some objective official deciding whether the pitch is a ball or a strike, or whether a hit is foul or fair. Let the players decide? I don't think so. It would be chaos without the umpire. Perhaps the place he's needed the most - and sometimes appreciated the least - is those close judgment calls when the runner and the ball arrive at the base at the same time. Everyone holds their breath as the umpire signals his verdict "Safe!" or "Out!"

November 21, 2022

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When my wife would get her hands on the TV's remote control, which was seldom, she'd usually choose something educational. One night she was watching a feature on what the host called "good things hurricanes do." Well, I've seen some of the bad things hurricanes do, I was intrigued to hear about this. The feature told about these Australian pine trees that somehow had taken root in a place in Florida that hosted attractive plants which, in turn, attracted many beautiful birds and small animals. Well, as those pines grew and got tall, they literally created a canopy over those plants, and blocked out the sun. What had once been an area thriving with plant and animal life became this stretch of sterile underbrush - until the hurricane hit. The storm literally snapped those trees in two and I'm sure did a lot of terrible things. But the sun was back. For this little area, well, it had become a beautiful park with pools, greenery, flowers, herons, and lots of interesting wildlife. But it took a hurricane.

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