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Wednesday, July 19, 2006

When I get sick, it's a rare event in our family. I feel blessed with a pretty healthy life. Once when I was hit with the flu, though, it's enough to say I was not moving except in the direction of the bathroom. I was too weak to talk or turn over for about 24 hours, and then I finally started to improve. When I began to feel better, I desperately wanted a shower, and that was my first physical triumph after the battle with the flu. And I very happily piled in a corner the symbol of that long, dark day I'd had - those blue, flannel pajamas I'd worn the whole time. They'd been sweated out several times, and they did not smell very nice. They probably should have been burned. Here I was, showered with fresh clean clothes on. I wouldn't have put those rotten, old pajamas back on for anything.

Monday, June 12, 2006

It's usually the most watched event of the Winter Olympics every four years: the women's figure skating competition. At the 2006 Games in Turin, Italy, a lot of America's hopes for a gold medal were riding on Sasha Cohen; especially after she managed a thin, first-place edge after the initial short program. Then came the decisive long skating program. Suddenly, all hopes of any medal seemed to disappear with a major fall early in her program. The TV commentators actually said, "Now it's going to a fight just be on the podium." With a major deficit in her score from her fall, Sasha Cohen could have easily lost heart. She didn't. She fought back with a strong and impressive showing in the rest of her performance. When the rest of the world's best had all skated, the young woman who had fallen - who seemed to have forfeited any hope of being a champion - stood on that podium with a coveted silver medal.

Thursday, June 1, 2006

My wife and I were out for a Sunday afternoon drive and we saw a very strange contradiction. It was this church, and there were long stairs leading up to the entrance and one lone lady at the door. She was trying every door to get into that church, and they were all locked. She looked very frustrated. Now what was the contradiction? It was the name on the church, "Our Lady of Perpetual Help." Well, my wife said, "You know, this reminds me of a scene I saw when I was in Haiti." She said, "I was right near a church, and there was this very gaunt woman, probably almost starving to death and weeping at the door of this church. She looked like she was desperate to get in and every door was locked." That lady was literally beating her fists bloody on the door and there was no response.

Monday, May 15, 2006

Our son brought a playful little Shih Tzu puppy into our house years ago. She loved to play with bubbles. Yeah, she would chase those bubbles that we would blow on the floor, and it was crazy to watch. And she also loved bottles. You know, the plastic bottles? She would enjoy a good battle with any two-liter plastic soda pop bottle, and we'd throw it on the floor. She'd attack that thing! You could hear it all through the house! Here's this plastic bottle being thrown into the air, she forces it up against the wall, it thuds along the floor (oh, this is great when you're trying to sleep, believe me). Finally she would fight that thing until she was totally exhausted. And then you'd hear nothing. You'd go in and she was totally flopped on the kitchen floor. There she was, almost out cold. She had literally worked herself totally out of energy in combat with a dumb, plastic bottle.

Tuesday, May 2, 2006

The man in the Disney movie was an inventor. One of his inventions was a shrinking machine. Some have suggested that's what happened to me - a shrinking machine. It did happen to his kids' baseball. It crashed through the window of his laboratory and it landed in dad's shrinking machine, turning it on as it landed, and the kids were amazed to see how their ball suddenly shrank. Thinking this machine was really cool, they started playing with it - until the machine suddenly shrank them to an almost invisible size. And the anguished cry of the father is the title of the movie: "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids!"

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Apparently, the drunk driver liked our side of the road better than his side of the road. With our whole family aboard, our car was suddenly hit head-on. By God's grace, none of us was seriously injured, but our car went to car heaven, or wherever totaled cars go. I had a busy ministry schedule during the next few weeks, and our only car was gone. Then a friend called and offered to lend us his car while he was in Florida for the next six weeks. That was awesome! An hour later, he drove into our driveway with his brand new Cadillac Coupe DeVille. That was good news and bad news. The good news was that for the next six weeks I'd be driving my friend's brand new Cadillac. The bad news was that for the next six weeks I'd be driving my friend's brand new Cadillac! I've never driven so carefully in my life! I stayed well under the speed limit, I got the oil changed about three times a week, I didn't allow one scrap of food or drink in that vehicle. Hey, this was somebody else's treasure I was driving!

Thursday, April 13, 2006

My wife and I kept two special remembrances of our wedding: a tape of the ceremony and a piece of wedding cake. The tape was a much better idea. We froze the cake and then we ate some of it on our first anniversary. You've heard about chocolate cake? This was more like chalk cake. But the tape was a great idea. Often, even now on our on anniversary, we replay it. We relive that wonderful day that our marriage began. And we are there! Some couples go way beyond a tape - they actually dust off the old wedding dress, reconvene the wedding party, and do it all again for their 25th. You know, it's good for a couple to remember their wedding day. A trip back to the beginning can rekindle that spark.

Friday, April 7, 2006

As Lenny left our headquarters a few days ago, I said, "Man, you have really made a difference around here!" He really had. A company that was getting rid of a lot of office furniture donated about a dozen desks to our ministry, and we were thrilled to get them! They're good desks, but well, not exactly beautiful desks. They were all scarred and beat up, and on the surface they didn't look particularly useful. In fact, the company that donated them actually was getting ready to discard them before they learned about our need. So here, in a storage area, were all these ugly desks - until Lenny got his hands on them. One by one, he went to work with his magic touch and he slowly restored their original beauty. By the time he was done, it looked almost like we had just gotten a shipment of expensive new desks.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

We were staying one time at, well, as the camp song says, "a little cabin in the woods." As soon as we got unpacked, our seven- or eight-year-old son went for an exploratory bike ride up the trail. When he returned he got going a little fast, and then he hit a patch of gravel right near the cabin. The bike spun out from under him and he hit the ground pretty hard. When he got up, there was a lot of blood around his mouth. He had broken a tooth and it had punctured his lip. We raced him to a hospital emergency room where they fixed him up with a few stitches. Now, he took the second bike ride that day. That was the tough part; especially after what had happened on the first bike ride. But his Mother and I encouraged him to get right back on his bike. We knew if he didn't, it might take him a long time to get the confidence back to ride again. Well, sure enough, the boy bounced back. In spite of his fall, he decided to ride again and he kept riding for many years after that.

Friday, March 3, 2006

For the most part, spring is a season we really look forward to; everything's blooming and colorful. Unfortunately, though, spring isn't just flowers - it's floods! Some folks who live by rivers and streams must hold their breath a little each spring. Every year we see vivid pictures of whole areas submerged under flood waters, and we hear interviews with victims who have lost many of their possessions. But invariably, you will hear those victims say, "But we're thankful that at least all of us are safe." You know it's true - things can be replaced - people can't. In the spring of '97, it was Kentucky's turn to get hit by major flooding. On the news they showed a list on the wall - a list that was pretty moving to see. At the top were these words: "Missing people," then the names of loved ones who were missing in the flood. But some of those names had a beautiful five-letter word scrawled over them: "Found."

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