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Wednesday, September 1, 2004

I was talking with a young man who's a student in a missionary aviation course the other day. So far, he's mostly had classroom training, although he did have a little experience when he visited the Flight Training facility. On the second day they said, "Okay, go for it!" And he was flying! Now he was carrying his notepad with him on the day I saw him, and I noticed this sentence that he had written at the top of his notes. It was obviously something he thought he would be tested on, either in the classroom or maybe in the cockpit someday. It could be life or death information some day. Here's what it said. "Attitude - The relationship of the nose to the horizon." Now he told me, that simple discipline is what keeps an aircraft stable - and maybe you, too.

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Many of the world's greatest dramas are not on a stage, not on a screen. They are played out in that quadrennial spectacle we call "The Olympics." Maybe you remember the year that there was this image that many of us will never forget. Britain's representative in the 400-meter race was Derek Redmond, and he began to falter. He went down in the backstretch with a torn right hamstring, and as the medical attendants were approaching, Derek Redmond fought his way to his feet and then he started out again in anguish - he was hopping. He was desperately trying to finish the race. He knew he wouldn't win. He was just trying to finish.

Wednesday, August 18, 2004

The idea of teamwork in marriage isn't really that tough. For example, my wife prepares a meal and I clear the table and rinse the dishes. Now, I'm known as the mad cleaning man around our house. I might clean your plate while you're still in mid-bite, you know? I like to get my job done. Now, I've had some people say to me over the years, "Oh, leave the dishes. Don't worry about them now. Come on into the living room with us. The dishes will wait." I have never known the dishes to rinse themselves or put themselves away. In fact, it is a wise discipline to rinse a dirty dish immediately.

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Becky was my first serious crush. "Serious" meant I thought she was beautiful. At least, that's what my 13-year-old eyes told me, and that's why I was so surprised when she said she'd been in a violent automobile accident not long before that. I just moved into town, and I didn't know anything about the accident. She said it had done very serious damage to her face and there were all kinds of scars. Well, I didn't see any trace of it. I know that 13-year-old love is blind, but obviously, something had happened to those scars. Actually, a plastic surgeon had taken care of those scars, and he must have been good. He had very skillfully taken scars and recreated something beautiful.

Friday, July 23, 2004

As a musical composition, Frederick Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus," stands in a category by itself. Few pieces of music have the power to stir our hearts like that majestic chorus that even brought the King of England to his feet the first time he heard it. But before Frederick Handel wrote the "Hallelujah Chorus" and "The Messiah" oratorio of which it's a part, he wasn't having much of a hallelujah time. He was basically broke, depressed, and against a wall. Then someone asked him to write an oratorio to be performed at this benefit concert on behalf of people who were in debtors prison - locked up because they were too poor to pay their bills. There were 700 people who contributed to be at that premiere performance of "The Messiah" and the "Hallelujah Chorus" - and 128 prisoners went free as a result!

Thursday, June 24, 2004

When you have young grandchildren, you're back in the toy business again. And sure enough, we've got a closet full of toys that, contrary to some vicious rumors, are not mine. They are there for those grandchildren, who quickly relocate those toys from the closet to our living room every time they visit. One of them (the toys - not the grandchildren) is a furry blue puppet with bulging eyes - it's good old Cookie Monster of Sesame Street fame. And he's got this string in his back. When you pull it, he starts chewing and moving his arms and uttering his trademark phrase: "Cookie. Me want cookie!" Pull the string again and he'll say the same thing again. No matter how many times you pull that string, he will do the "cookie" thing every time.

Tuesday, June 8, 2004

Now, I'm not a deer hunter. I think I was brainwashed by "Bambi" a long time ago, but I tell you, something incredible happens in a lot of parts of the country when deer season opens. Some places they close school for a few days because of the deer, and in many places, it's just understood that workers aren't going to show up for work. They're going to be somewhere in the woods on Operation Buck. Unfortunately, sometimes the hunt can end in tragedy - for the hunter, I mean, not the deer.

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Now, I grew up in Illinois, so, well, I'm impressed by the mountains in the eastern United States. I mean the highest are around, you know, like 3,000 feet. That's pretty good for Illinois, but my friends from the Rockies think the eastern mountains are like, well, glorified hills. In Colorado, they brag about the mountains they call the 14ers - those that are over 14,000 feet. That's impressive, but when I was in Ecuador, I was awed by the volcanoes that ring the capital city of Quito, and they rule much of the countryside - like Anasana for example - 18,000 feet. It dwarfed the tallest peaks I had ever seen. And then my host really amazed me. He said, "You know, Ron, some experts believe that Anasana used to be even higher." They think it was as much as 28,000 feet high. Well, so much for Colorado's 14ers. I said, "What happened?" Well, the volcano blew its top one day, and though the eruption lasted only a short time, the damage has lasted ever since.

Friday, February 20, 2004

Part of our ministry team works on a remote Indian reservation in the Southwest. In fact, our sons launched this ground-breaking outreach to Native young people a decade ago and named it "The Path." In the past couple of years, that ministry has become a part of ours. Together, we've had the opportunity of launching, by the miracle working of God, a low-power FM radio station on this reservation. A reservation that's hard to reach - spiritually, as well as geographically. Now the light of Christ is going out 24 hours a day across the reservation in an original format that is really making a difference. Part of the adventure was just getting the station on the air - including setting up the tower. That required some special climbing abilities. And one of the Native young men who God sent to help with the station just happens to have that experience - illegally, in the years before he was following Christ. He used to love to climb towers that the law actually forbids people to climb. Now, all of a sudden, those abilities - practiced in a way that did not honor God - were suddenly being used by God to glorify Him. Don't you just love it!

Wednesday, February 11, 2004

It may have been the most memorable - maybe even the most defining moment in the history of our generation - the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Most of us were marked indelibly by just watching it on television. My friend Nathan lived it. It was his first visit to New York, and his business took him high up in one of the Twin Towers. After the attacks, while there was still great confusion as to whether to evacuate or to stay in the building, Nathan disregarded the announcement to "return to your offices." That decision saved his life. He made his way down the long stairwell until he neared the bottom. There rescuers guided him and many others with him to a safe exit, not long before the tower collapsed in those few horrific seconds. I'll never forget when Nathan told me about the firefighters he saw as he neared the main floor: he said, "I looked in their eyes and thought, 'They must be as frightened as I am.' Except I was going down, and they were going up." Is it any wonder we call them heroes?

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