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Tuesday, May 27, 2008

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I usually ask for a window seat on an airplane. Usually aisle seats are more popular because you can stretch your legs a little more. Mine are so short they have plenty of room, no matter where I sit! And you can get up when you want to, and when you don't want to because the two guys on the inside want to get out. Actually, I always have so much to get done during the flight I like to just set up my little nest there by the window where I can work without getting up or passing food. Unfortunately, I'm so busy sometimes I miss those things worth looking at out my window, which is right there in front of me. I was flying recently with one of our team members and I was really missing the beautiful scenery of the Rocky Mountains below me; I didn't even think about them being there. Well, my colleague got my attention, not by reaching over and pointing and shouting, "Hey, look at those mountains, man!" No, he did it with a simple little observation. He said, "You know, mountains sure look a lot smaller from this perspective don't they?" I got the message.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

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Hanna lives in coal country so she's been around miners a lot. Being in youth ministry for years I've been around miners a lot too. Oh wait, that's a different kind - spelled differently. But Hanna and a friend of mine were talking recently about the mines and the miners and a surprising fact came out. Hanna said the most common cause of death among those coal miners was electrocution. They live in a real remote area and the mining operation there is pretty old and relatively primitive. So there are sometimes problems with the wiring in the mine, and miners actually get electrocuted. What compounds the problems is that the nearest doctor is many miles away, which led Hanna to ask the doctor one time if there was anything the local folks could do to help while they're waiting for the doctor to arrive. She was surprised by the doctor's answer. "Well," he said, "there is one thing, hug the injured miner." Well, obviously Hanna wanted to know why. He said, "When people are about to go into shock, I think there is something about a hug, about human touch - about human tenderness.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

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Now I am not much for playing board games. That's B-O-A-R-D games, because I usually end up bored like the other spelling. But there's this one game we have played over the years - it's called "Acquire" and I like it. We don't play it often, but my wife usually wins. (Maybe that's why we don't play too often.) Now in this game there are seven hotel corporations and you win a game by having the most valuable stock at the end. Now I think I know why my wife always wins. She doesn't make the mistake of buying a few stocks in a lot of companies which a lot of us do. You don't know which ones are going to take off, so you get a little in each one. She is very good at anticipating which company is going to grow, so she invests heavily in that company. She ends up with the majority in it. She gets this big bonus at the end of the game. Meanwhile I'm sitting there with lots of stock, but it's in several different companies and it just isn't worth as much as a lot of stock in a few companies.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

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I read once that Benjamin Franklin had nominated the turkey to be America's national bird. Now, with all due respect to our wonderful founding father, I'm glad Ben got outvoted on that one, aren't you? I'm glad they picked the American eagle. What a majestic bird it is! They're even a good example for us humans! They mate for life, they build a family home called a nest to last for life, and they do a good job raising their kids. Veteran eagle watchers tell us that Mom and Pop eagle cover the floor of their nest with feathers and fur and, you know, soft stuff for their little babies. And then one day that little eaglet ventures outside the nest for a little walk on the cliff. And that's when the renovations start. Mr. and Mrs. Eagle start removing the fur and the feathers from the nest. When the eaglet returns from his little stroll, he returns to a nest that doesn't feel as good as it did before. Oooh, ouch! He's resting on sticks and stones now. Suddenly the comfy nest isn't comfortable anymore. Actually, this is the first step in getting that eagle to do what he otherwise might never do. What he was born to do - fly!

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

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Every once in a while we think someone left the floodlight on in the backyard, so I look outside the window to discover the floodlight isn't on - the moonlight is! It's one of those really impressive full-moon nights. The most beautiful one, for my wife and me I think, was when we were on vacation in the mountains. Our cabin was nestled in this quiet valley next to this gentle little stream. Not long after dark, I noticed that the valley was like ablaze with light! The full moon was rising in the eastern sky and it was casting this celestial glow over everything. It was perfectly positioned in the sky to just totally illuminate the valley we were in. But then, something made me realize what I was really looking at, and I said as we stood on the porch in admiration, "You know, that moon really isn't producing any light at all. It's only reflecting the light of the sun."

Monday, March 24, 2008

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Our three-year-old grandson was turning out to be quite an engineer. He loved to figure out how things work and loved to build things that do. When he was at Grandma and Granddad's house, he would play with our Lincoln Logs. One day he had built a couple of cabins in the middle of our living room and we noticed he'd stopped and he was just lying on his tummy with his head cradled in his hands, studying the pictures on the Lincoln Logs container. When his mom asked him what he was doing just staring at that container, he said, "There are some pieces missing here." And he began to point out exactly what pieces were pictured on the can but missing in front of him.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

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Ronald Reagan led one of the most extraordinary lives of the 20th Century - a life which he sadly and progressively forgot in the last years of his life. His long battle with Alzheimer's Disease acted like a cruel eraser. It removed recollections of what he had done and even who he was. After Ronald Reagan's death, we learned a lot more about what happened during his long journey into darkness. Memory of his years in Hollywood just disappeared, and then of being Governor of California, and ultimately he lost all that happened even in his years as President of the United States. But one memory stayed alive almost until the end. In the office Nancy Reagan set up for him, there was a picture on the wall; it was a picture of the Rock River in Illinois. When visitors would ask him about it, after most of his life was there no more, he would brighten and say, "Oh, that's where I was a lifeguard when I was 17. That's where I saved 77 lives!"

Friday, February 22, 2008

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Beslan - that Russian town will now join the ranks of places known for the terror that happened there. Some have called the three-day terrorist takeover of a school in Beslan, and the violent deaths of hundreds of school children and adults there, Russia's equivalent to America's September 11. In the midst of Beslan's horror, there emerged a photo that embodied hope in the middle of death. It showed a girl's bloodied hand clutching a golden cross. Viktoria was hospitalized with shrapnel in her brain, but she was still a survivor. The 14-year-old said that she prayed every day while she was being held captive, always clinging to her cross even after being wounded in the violent ending of that siege that killed more than 330 hostages. Even as she lost consciousness, she never let go of the cross. In Viktoria's own words, "I felt that if I had that cross in my hand, then everything would be fine."

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

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Birds had moved into the vent in the exhaust fan of our kitchen range while we were on vacation. They set up their little nest and made themselves at home. And, man, were they noisy neighbors! The nest was so huge it made the fan unworkable. And some lovely spiders were hanging down from the hood on the stove. Our problem was that trying to remove that nest might have killed that nest full of baby birds. Well, we couldn't see them, but we could sure hear them when they were hungry! So, we waited until Mom and Dad bird took the babies out. A couple of weeks later, after we were sure they were gone, I got a long stick and I proceeded to rake out the rest. But when we removed the nest, we discovered a little surprise; actually, a big, fat surprise. There was the fattest bird we'd ever seen, sitting in the nest. As my wife went to get gloves and a box, he got away. But it took a major earthquake to get that bird out of his nest!

Thursday, January 3, 2008

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Usually a total eclipse of the moon seems to happen when I'm counting sheep in the middle of the night. But this one started about 9:00 at night, and this one I got a chance to see. It's a pretty amazing sight to watch that shadow slowly move across the moon until it eventually covers it completely. I said to the friend who was assisting us with ministry that weekend, "I just wish we had binoculars." "Me, too," he said. Then it dawned on him, "Hey, I do have binoculars in my truck!" All of a sudden we moved from seats near the back to something like front row seats on the eclipse. Those binoculars revealed the craters and all the fascinating details of that disappearing moon. What a difference it made to see it up close!

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