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Friday, July 14, 2006

I was speaking for an Easter Sunrise Service in the Ozarks, and I saw something that seemed strangely out of place. In front of this church, there's a ten-foot section of a brick wall with a sign in front of it that says, "Berlin Wall." I was thousands of miles from Berlin, but there was a chunk of what used to be the most famous - or most infamous - wall in the world. Many of us remember how the Berlin Wall represented for decades the Cold War division of our world into Communist and free. The Communists built it on the border between East Berlin and free West Berlin. In spite of that wall, many people still risked everything to scale that wall and escape to freedom. A few made it. Many died trying. Then came that amazing day - a day few of us could have ever imagined - when the revolution taking place against Communist rule allowed Berliners to start tearing down that wall. All night long, they went after that wall with everything from sledge hammers to bare hands. And then there were 100,000 Berliners, celebrating in the square, chanting four incredible words over and over again, "The wall is gone! The wall is gone!"

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Maybe it's a guy thing. Or maybe it's just a Ron thing. But I hate to waste time or waste effort. Here's what that looks like when I've just returned from the grocery store to restock our empty refrigerator and shelves. I look like a mule basically - with bags all over my body, carried on almost every appendage. I don't want to make any more trips to the car than absolutely necessary, OK? So I'm willing to try whatever calisthenics, to tolerate whatever overload will enable me to get everything in the house in one trip. This approach has been known to have its problems. Sometimes I drop a bag or two or one of them rips open; thus, making more work. And I've got this bad shoulder that may well be traceable to carrying too much too many times.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

We had stopped for gas next to an Interstate that takes you at 75 MPH across long miles of desert. 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.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Ellis Island - that was the first piece of America that millions of immigrants ever touched. It's a little island in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. When you visit the island, there's a long, granite wall with thousands of names of immigrants who passed through there. This was the point of entry for all the immigrants coming through New York. They would book passage and get the cheapest price they could often down below decks. Finally, the boat would reach America, they would step off the boat and enter this long, red brick building on Ellis Island. It's cavernous; it echoes on the inside. But this is where they went through the steps that eventually permitted them to move from the island and on to their real destination, which was New York City and the rest of America. The tour guide says the people carried all their belongings in a basket. That was okay. They knew the island wasn't where they would live, so out of all those thousands who came there, not one ever set up a house there. They weren't going to be there very long.

Monday, April 3, 2006

Scotty was only four years old, and he was lost in Brooklyn. A police officer spotted this little guy standing on a street corner in this huge city, crying. Of course, he tried to help the boy by asking him his address, and Scotty didn't know. The officer asked him his phone number, and he answered through his tears, "I can't remember." The officer was running out of options. He was just about to take the little guy down to the station when he thought of one last question: "Little boy, is there anything near your house that I might recognize?" That was the moment that little guy discovered the one thing that really helped him finally get home.

Monday, February 27, 2006

This may come as quite a surprise to you, but there were a lot of rumors in college that I was behind many of the practical jokes and pranks that happened while I was there. That's hard to imagine, isn't it? It wouldn't come as a total surprise to some of those folks that I finally ended up in the penitentiary; Alcatraz, in fact. Fortunately, my sentence was only about four hours. Actually, we had taken some young people out to that famous prison in the middle of San Francisco Bay to do a special radio program. Of course, it's been some years since any prisoners were held there on what they called The Rock, but it is still quite a place to see. While we were there, we experienced the awful claustrophobia of being locked in one of those little cells and the isolation of being in solitary confinement. For the closing segment of the program, we walked out of one of the prison gates and down to the rocks outside that overlook the bay. One of the young people with us was walking out with me, and he made quite an observation. "Just think," he said, "there was only a wall between them and all this beauty."

Thursday, February 23, 2006

You've probably never heard of the "Pig War" between the United States and Great Britain because it's a war that almost happened. That war almost started in 1859 on the disputed San Juan Island between Canada and the State of Washington. In the midst of that tension between England and the U. S., an American settler named Lyman Cutler shot a pig who was rooting through his potato patch. Unfortunately, that pig belonged to Englishman Charles Griffin. That incident was like a match to a powder keg in this already inflamed situation. For 12 years, there was serious hostility and tension between the U.S. and British authorities - over a pig. Finally, General Winfield Scott brokered a peace deal. So, fortunately, the only fatality in this conflict was a pig.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

We were just beginning the process of building our Ministry Headquarters. At that point, all that was on the field was the footings for the building and a barn that was on the property. Volunteers were in the process of renovating and weatherproofing that old barn for storage when some friends donated a truckload of office furniture to our ministry. It would be a few days before we could bring that furniture into the barn, so we had to leave it next to the barn, which meant it had to be covered to protect it, of course.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

If you're looking for a great real estate deal, don't go looking in the metropolitan New York area. Housing in the metro New York area is just really expensive. When people from another part of the country start looking at home prices there, they usually get a paralyzing case of sticker shock. When our friend Rachel and her husband moved to the New York area to serve the Lord, they went through that cost-of-living trauma. Rachel was talking one day to my wife about this and it led her to tell about a minor, but particularly irritating, frustration she had with their house. It was about that pipe in the corner of the dining room! Rachel said, "I have wallpapered the room. I have tried everything to get that dumb pipe to blend in, but nothing works! It's ugly!" Then she paused for a moment and she said, "You know, I told God I'd live in a grass hut in Africa if He called me to, and I meant it! Why can't I live in a house with an ugly pipe in New Jersey?" Then Rachel answered her own question. "I know why." The diagnosis that followed might provide an x-ray of what's going on in you!

Wednesday, January 4, 2006

My friend John has a sick little boy on his hands. His son was only about three and he was having some serious respiratory problems. The little guy often woke up in the middle of the night gurgling and finding it hard to breathe. That's scary at any age and even scarier at three. During that siege, John stepped up to serious "daddying." Unbeknownst to little David, he set up a camp just outside the boy's door. Whenever David would cry out, John was there in a moment to help. Night after night, those frightened cries came out of the dark. And night after night, a father was there by the side of his frightened son. Well, little David was no dummy. He finally figured out how his Dad was getting there so quickly. He was right outside the door. So David just got out of bed, went out in the hall, and snuggled up next to his father. That was the end of the fearful cries in the night. He had found the best place to be when you're scared.

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