It's the Christmas season, and everywhere you go these days you see those brown trucks - it's UPS running everywhere, delivering Christmas surprises to people. Those UPS drivers work really hard this time of year - lots of long hours to get everything where it's supposed to be in time for Christmas. I expect they sleep pretty well at night. Even though they have a big job, at least they don't have to go out and buy all those packages that they're bringing to people's doors. Their job is just to deliver what someone else has paid for.
If you were the baby of the family, you may be able to relate to the occasional complaint filed by our youngest who's now all grown up. He kiddingly talks about how many pictures were taken of his older sister, then his older brother, and how we seemed to run out of film by the time he came along. You know, the last-in-line complex. When reflecting on another sibling comparison it led him to a happier conclusion. He said, "You built this big dollhouse as a gift for my sister. Then you built this big, fully loaded barn for my brother. Then you built a general store for me - about half the size of the dollhouse and the barn." At first, he thought, "Here we go again. They'll run out of gas by the time they get to me." But then, he said, he noticed that his store had something neither of his siblings' gifts had - a sign on the store with his name, identifying him as the proprietor. Our son said, "You know, I felt really good when I realized that what you gave me had my name on it!" Let's hear one for the baby!
I was visiting Rome, and I encountered this archway along the Via Appia. It's one of the many such structures that are still there 2,000 years after they were built. But what caught my eye about this one was the three-word Latin question carved in the archway as an inscription. It simply says, "Domine, quo vadis?" At last, those two years of high school Latin were going to be useful! It means, "Lord, where are You going?" It goes back to a legend about the Apostle Peter as he was feeling led by God to go to Rome. Knowing it was going to be dangerous, even life-threatening to go there, Peter needed to be sure that's where God wanted Him. The legend says that he encountered the risen Christ there on the Via Appia, and he wanted to know only one thing from his Lord, "Domine, quo vadis? Lord, where are You going?" Jesus was going to Rome. Then that's where Peter was going!
I haven't bought a baseball bat for a while, but I know you can buy one that's cheap and may not last long or one that costs a little more. I seem to remember the old Louisville Slugger bats. But a million-dollar baseball bat? That's a little out of my price range. And lest you think I've lost it, not long ago a massive 46-ounce Louisville Slugger bat sold at auction for $1.26 million dollars! What in the world could possibly make a simple baseball bat worth that much to anyone? Who used it. It was the bat used by Babe Ruth in the first baseball game in the new Yankee Stadium in 1923. In the third inning, the Babe blasted a home run right into the right field bleachers, and somebody just laid down over a million for the bat he used.
It used to be that people thought workers were demonstrating loyalty and nobility if they showed up for their job even when they felt sicker than a dog. More and more, people think you're not very smart if you do that! Now you may be one of those who drags yourself into work no matter how sick you are. You're there, all right, but so are your coughs, your sneezes, and your "cooties." Strangely, over the next few days, one co-worker after another comes down with symptoms that look suspiciously like what you brought to work with you. The poet was right, "no man is an island!" You're contagious!
"Please help us." That's what the people stranded on the roof of their house had written on the sign that they waved over their heads. They represented so many thousands of New Orleans residents who were left stranded and in deadly danger by the floods of Hurricane Katrina. The wind and the rain of that category four hurricane were bad enough - but it was when the levees broke that suddenly major parts of the city were underwater, literally up to the rooftops. Harrowing stories began to unfold of how people had moved from a first floor to a second floor to escape the toxic waters. Then, as the second floor filled with water, how they moved to their last point of refuge - the roof. And many were stranded there, without food, without water, and increasingly without hope. And then hope showed up - in the shape of a Coast Guard helicopter, hovering over their rooftop refuge. Hope was a man coming down a cable to where they were; a man who secured their rescue and saved their lives.
It started out as an unimpressive ripple in the weather off the coast of Africa. By the time it was over, it had become Hurricane Katrina, pummeling Florida as a category one storm, and then surprising most observers by becoming a category five monster over the Gulf of Mexico. Katrina's last-minute shift to the east nearly destroyed the city of New Orleans. Yes, we saw some of the darkest side of human nature as people looted beyond things they might have really needed, and some even tried to shoot some of the very people who were coming to help. But on a much greater scale, the aftermath to Hurricane Katrina was a massive outpouring of heroism in many flavors.
As Americans learned of the desperation of the victims of the storm, thousands mobilized to give them a chance to live. We won't soon forget the military helicopters, launching and re-launching every fifteen minutes to look for more people stranded in the toxic floodwaters that buried parts of the city. There were those memorable scenes of the rescuers coming down the rope from those choppers to save people trapped on their roofs. Doctors and nurses came from all over the country. So many came and did what they knew how to do - from cooking, to counseling, to contributing, to caring enough to take in whole families - because lives were at stake.
On a visit to her home area in the Ozarks, my wife took me to a picturesque spot along the Buffalo River. When she was a little girl, she and her whole family went swimming there with the pastor of their church and his wife. That little patch of river became the scene of a dramatic rescue that afternoon. That pastor almost drowned and my father-in-law jumped in and literally saved his life. I learned recently that that pastor was one of four people my father-in-law saved from drowning in his life. He got very serious when he told me the reason why. He told me about a time when he was a boy, and he watched two young girls drown in a river before he even knew how to swim. Immediately after that he learned to swim - and to rescue drowning people. You know what motivated him? In his own words, "I saw someone I couldn't rescue and I decided right then that would never happen again."
"Daddy, would you play with me?" I can still hear those echoes from when our kids were little. I can still remember how preoccupied I was a lot of times when they asked that. So I can relate to the man who was reading his Sunday newspaper - you know, one of the big ones that comes in volumes. His little guy kept tapping on the newspaper and asking his Daddy to play with him. Dad kept giving him little things to do to keep him occupied. Finally, he tried another way to be able to finish his paper. He tore out a page that had a map of the world on it and he ripped it into pieces. He said, "Scotty, put this puzzle together. As soon as you've got it finished, I promise I'll come and play." Two minutes later, Scotty was tapping on Dad's newspaper again. "I'm finished," he said. And there it was - the whole map of the world, together on the floor. Dad said, "Son, how did you ever put that together so fast?" His little guy replied: "It was easy, Daddy. There was a picture of a man on the other side. If you put the man together right, the world goes together just fine!
Over the years, I've had the privilege of meeting a lot of men and women who work in law enforcement and I really appreciate them. Some of them have helped out with security at events where I've spoken. In one city, I met some pretty impressive guys who worked on a SWAT team; those guys who are sent in as rapid assault teams in those particularly dangerous situations. Bobby was one of them. They called him "The Slammer." Sounds like someone from the World Wrestling Federation. But they call Bobby that because he's the one who takes out the door when they're raiding a residence. And looking at how he's built (I mean, I think his arm is bigger than my waist) you can see they picked the right man for the job. If you want to door removed, "he da man!"
