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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!

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

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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.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

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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!

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

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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!

Monday, November 19, 2007

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"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.

Thursday, November 1, 2007

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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."

Monday, October 22, 2007

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"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!

Thursday, October 4, 2007

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Few people captured the American imagination like America's first astronauts. That's why, for many of us, names like John Glenn are on a list of 20th Century heroes. John Glenn was, of course, one of the first men to ride a rocket into space. Then, years later, as a "senior citizen" he amazed the world by doing it again. So when John Glenn gives advice to today's space shuttle astronauts, he's got credentials! I love what he is reported to have told the Columbia astronauts before what turned out to be their last flight. He said, "Hey, don't forget to look out the window!"

Thursday, July 19, 2007

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I’ve flown into the Anchorage, Alaska, airport before, but I’ve never driven around that airport before. I was returning my rental car, which had to go to one terminal, and I had to race to make my plane at the other terminal. It was still dark, which didn’t help in reading the signs at an unfamiliar airport, and somebody else must have my sense of direction. I thought I was heading for the rental car return until suddenly it looked like I was heading out into nothing that looked like an airport at all. As soon as I realized I was going the wrong direction, I knew what I had to do. I turned around as fast as I could and drove very quickly in the right direction. And I made it!

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