Wednesday, October 1, 2014

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In high school our teenage son had a very, very busy life, which just might go with having the same last name as I do. And sometimes I would just find him kind of collapsed on the couch. And he deserved a rest. He'd set up his own little personal universe there, a little comfort zone. So, he'd have his New York Giants mug, and his school books, and what was going to be on TV, and of course he had his phone. Now, don't think cell phone, because we're talking before cell phones. This is like the old fashioned land line phone. Unfortunately, the phone plugged in two rooms away, which means that the cord was stretched to the max to get to his little zone with the couch, and I could tell when he had the phone there, because I kept hearing people muttering all through the house after they tripped over the cord. See, it was right where all of us had to walk to get to the living room or to the kitchen. And I'd just say, "Hey, you've got to do something about this thing that people keep tripping over!" Well, so do you and I.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

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Every once in a while my wife and I would get to choose what we wanted to do with an evening. You notice I said, "Every once in a while." It was pretty rare when the kids were still at home. They had such busy schedules that kept us running, and we, of course, have always had a lot of ministry responsibilities. Well, there was this one evening where we were actually able to decide what we wanted to do - with each other! We talked about being with friends. Someone had said, "Oh, there's a movie you ought to see." We finally decided we'd stay home and talk. You say, "Oh, boring." We said, "Great!"

Friday, September 12, 2014

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My friend, Lance, has played a lot of parts on stage, and he has a lot of acting ability. Naturally he was interested when he heard that his church was going to do an outreach drama. It was to be held in a public auditorium and they developed this powerful, original presentation of The Life of Christ. And Lance was stunned by the casting choice they made. They wanted to cast him as Jesus. Well, Lance had been in enough productions to know that you've got to get into the person you're playing. You have to stay in that character all day long if possible. And Lance said he really tried. And he told me, "You know what I discovered? I couldn't play Jesus." Neither can you.

Monday, September 8, 2014

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Life on the road is so glamorous! Yeah, I can pack, unpack and repack my suitcase blindfolded. I have learned the survival skills of living in airports. And one of the most important things to remember, although it is hard sometimes, remember what time zone you're in. You can really get that messed up if you forget that. A lot of things are going to be wrong. I know! You miss planes, you miss meals, you miss appointments, you miss sleep. So I must faithfully reset my watch as I cross in and out of time zones or everything else is going to get messed up.

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

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Back in the day when our kids were in school, you didn't really need to pay to go to a circus. You just could come to our house around 7:00 or 8:00 o'clock in the morning; any time before the school bus came. The boys were trying to find their socks and their shoes, or car keys, homework, contact lenses, glasses - mayhem. So many times they get home from school and things kind of landed wherever they landed, and they had to figure out where that was the next morning. The problem is, the next morning you can't remember where you left it, so you panic to find your stuff in those moments that you have to leave for school, because that's pretty unforgiving when school begins when the bus comes. So it was not unusual to hear in our house an old question ringing through the halls, "Mom, Dad, book?" And finding it? Well, everything depended on it.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

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I remember the summer that I trained two teams of young people for ministry. I went as a speaker with the South Team. The other team was the North Team.
Now, both teams had been sleeping on the floor at training camp-these are tough kids. But things changed when they got on the road. Our team stayed in
private homes with real beds. They were happy campers...or happy not-campers I guess.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

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Sports is such an emotional thing! It's a lot of thrills, but then there's an occasional tragedy. This happened some years ago, but I still remember the death of the captain of the Boston Celtics basketball team, Reggie Lewis. He collapsed in a basketball playoff game. A team of doctors said that he had a potentially deadly heart condition and he couldn't play any more. Well, they went for a second opinion and those doctors said it wasn't so serious and he could gradually return to play. He died doing practice shooting in a gym a few months later, maybe trying to make a come back. One newscaster I heard reported it this way, "He heard what he wanted to hear."

Thursday, August 7, 2014

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There's one sure way to gather a crowd at our house. In fact it just happened last night. You just walk slowly through the house with a flat, white, large, square box – "Pizza!" And you will get that Pied Piper feeling. We've noticed that these pizza boxes all say the same thing. I don't know if you've noticed that. You can go to 10 different pizza places, and they all seem to have the same slogan. "You've tried the rest; now try the best." Somebody's got to be wrong about that.

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

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I don't know whether or not your town has a big water tank. But if it does, I bet I can guess what it says. It probably has the name of your town on it, right? I don't have some kind of gift. I've just seen a lot of water tanks, and they all look basically the same, you know, with the name of the town or something on them.

But I saw a particular water tank on one trip that really got my attention. Actually, I saw two of them. We were driving through Virginia, and all of a sudden I looked up and here are two water tanks on a mountain overlooking this town. You can't miss them. Two tanks; each one has one word on it. One says "HOT." I'll bet you can guess what the other one says – "COLD."

Monday, August 4, 2014

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We have three children. My wife has had four pregnancies. At the end of the third month of her first pregnancy, she had a miscarriage. It was tough but God gave us grace to deal with it. That might be an experience you've had. We were all geared up for this new life to come, and suddenly there wasn't going to be one. When people heard that we'd experienced a miscarriage, it seemed like women came from every direction basically saying, "Me too."