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Now don't accuse frogs of being dumb. Not that you ever would. I mean, I've been told that if you take a frog and you put him in a pot of boiling water (which, why would you do that?) he'll be smart enough to jump out. He knows he's going to die there.
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When I was little, my bicycle and I spent a lot of time together. You would see this little fat guy chugging all over town; that was my way to get around. There was only one thing that compromised my total enjoyment of biking - the dog on the corner. Yeah, since our street ended right after our house and our house was just beyond the corner, there was just no other way to approach our house. So, often that little dog would sense me coming; I'm sure he had lookouts posted. He would appear out of nowhere, charge my direction with teeth bared, his bark would send chills up my spine. I picked up my speed; boy, I got really fast! I could feel him nipping at my heels. I didn't even know I could pedal that fast! I think I could have qualified for the Olympics.
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When you eat in a hurry you sometimes leave some traces of the meal on your face, and you sort of wear your food. There are some crumbs maybe, or some tomato sauce, or this little spot of chocolate. Of course, you don't know it.
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I was speaking at a youth conference, and we all had breakfast in the cafeteria together. And then when we got together for our morning session I said, "Now, I want you guys to imagine that somebody who was at breakfast with us comes in the room and his cheeks are all puffy and you ask him what's wrong, and he just goes, "uh...uh... uh..." And you go, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Here's a piece of paper to write down what's going on here." And he writes down, "I'm starved." Now I ask him, "Did you eat breakfast?" "Uh-huh." "And you're still hungry?" "Uh-huh." And then I would ask him, "Did you swallow it?" "Huh-uh." "Oh, maybe that's why you're still hungry." See, it isn't enough just to ingest your food; you've got to swallow it for it to do anything for you.
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It took me a while to get up the courage to clean our garage. It might have taken you time to do it too, if you had seen what shape it was in! I mean, there was the general accumulated "mess" that hadn't been touched for awhile. And then there was the mess left from youth ministry stored there. On top of that, different members of our family and staff had been going, and borrowing and returning, and borrowing and returning, and oh my goodness! The mess was there.
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Some years ago, we learned a great way to make our vacation dollars stretch, and that's important these days! We ordered ice water with our meals instead of Coke or something.
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When I was in high school, I was a part of Youth For Christ's very active Bible Quiz program. Now, it was a long time ago, but I still remember a lot that I learned in studying books of the Bible in this highly competitive atmosphere.
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You hear a lot about plea bargaining in court cases these days, but plea bargaining... that's not a new idea. Every child learns the art of negotiating his way out of his disobedience. You might call it the art of "yeah, but." For example, "You don't have your homework" says the teacher. "Oh, yeah, but the dog ate it." Or, "My grandma died." For the sixth time? See, that art is first developed at home. "You didn't call," says dad. "Yeah, but there was no phone." "Yeah, but my watch blew up. I didn't know what time it was." See, children are experts at knowing what they should do and then finding ways to excuse not doing it. Well, father isn't impressed.
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"We were closer when we were poorer." The lady who told me that was speaking about her marriage, and she wasn't poor any more. You could tell that by looking at her. She was very affluent. But she was telling me that she and her husband were closer in the early days of their relationship when they were pinching pennies, and scraping by, and wondering how they were going to pay the rent, and fighting the wolf at the door. But they were at least fighting the wolf together.
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There's a mountain in northern New Jersey that has the most intriguing view in the area. It's called Garrett Mountain - it's right over the city of Paterson, New Jersey. At the time that we lived there, Paterson happened to be the fourth poorest, middle-sized city in America. Now, if you just drove around Paterson - that's all you saw - you would think that that whole area of north Jersey is poor. But just beyond Paterson on the horizon, you can see Bergen County, New Jersey - some of the bedroom communities of New York City - some of the wealthiest communities in America.
