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December 10, 2019

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A family on vacation. Nobody feels especially like doing the usual chores, like picking up the mess. Besides, there's that "room fairy" who comes while you're out and magically makes it all better, right? Unfortunately, "room fairies" only work when you're away from home. They don't do your house for you. Have you noticed that? My friend, Mike Silva, was staying with his family at a hotel in Nigeria, he told me, and they heard a knock at the door. Mike opened it and found a smiling Nigerian gentleman standing there ready to clean the room. That was no small order. Actually, they were pretty embarrassed because of all the travel bags and curling irons and crumpled clothing sprawled all across their unmade beds. And the bathroom floor was carpeted with beautiful wet towels. Mike apologized profusely. The young man, though, just put him at ease. He said, "No problem, sir. For this reason I have come, to put your things in order."

December 9, 2019

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It was one of those disasters that years ago riveted the attention of the nation. Nine Pennsylvania coal miners had been excavating when they apparently broke through a flooded shaft. An estimated 50 to 60 million gallons of water rushed in, trapping the men in this underground chamber. When the water rose over their heads, they had to swim to higher ground - still 240 feet underground. For two and a half days, rescuers didn't know if the miners were dead or alive. Once they made contact through a phone line they lowered into the flooded shaft, they established a line that would deliver compressed air and they began pumping out water. Seventy-seven hours after the ordeal began, rescuers brought the miners, one at a time, up to the surface in this cramped yellow rescue cage. As the last man was pulled to the surface, the Governor of the state simply said, "All nine. All nine."

December 5, 2019

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Amy Biehl was 26 years old, and she really wanted to make a difference. Her graduate studies took her to South Africa in the turbulent days when the repressive system of apartheid was coming down and that nation's first all-race elections were approaching. She actually helped develop voter registration programs to help black South Africans participate in a system that up until then had always shut them out. She was driving three black coworkers back to the township where they lived. Suddenly a group of youths pelted her car with stones and forced it to stop. Dozens of young men surrounded the car and they started chanting, "One settler - one bullet! One settler - one bullet!" They pulled Amy from the car, hit her with a brick, beat her, and stabbed her in the heart. During that attack her black friends were yelling that she was a friend to black South Africans, all to no avail. Amy died from her wounds.

December 3, 2019

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It was one of those nightmare days, trying to get a flight out of Chicago's O'Hare Airport. Some thunderstorms actually sent flight schedules into chaos for about 24 hours. You know what that means. Two hundred flights were cancelled that day, a lot more were delayed, and thousands of people were scrambling to find a way to get to where they needed to go...including me. Finally, I just gave up on trying to get out that day and I reserved one of the last seats available the next morning for the city where I was supposed to be speaking. Well, 7:00 A.M. the next morning my coworker and I were in our seats for a full flight. The engine was running - it seemed like we were ready to go. Until the cockpit came on and made this announcement, "Uh, folks, we've encountered one problem this morning. We can't find a captain for this flight." What? Oh, great! No captain! We're not going anywhere, folks! Well, thankfully, a captain finally came, and we finally got there!

November 29, 2019

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Amy Carmichael was one of India's most heroic missionaries, and a woman whose life continues to inspire a lot of people today. She has written some inspiring words, but none more inspiring than her account of a scene she saw in her mind one sleepless night as she agonized over the people around her who didn't have a relationship with Jesus. She saw herself standing on the edge of a sheer cliff that dropped off into this dark and seemingly bottomless space. She described the people who were moving steadily toward that edge. She saw a blind woman plunge over the cliff with a baby in her arms and a child holding onto her dress. Streams of people began to come from all directions; all of them blind.

November 26, 2019

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Some of our most memorable vacation moments as a family have been spent on the beautiful Outer Banks of North Carolina. It hasn't always been beautiful for ships that were navigating those treacherous shoals that are off the shores of the Outer Banks. It's estimated that over 2,000 ships have gone down there over the centuries. But a lot more lives could have been lost if it hadn't been for the Cape Hatteras Light, one of the most famous lighthouses in America. Its octagonal tower rises massively above the beach and the sand hills, and it's been the guiding light that's kept many ships from going aground. It's stood there for nearly two centuries. Imagine the storms that she's weathered; including more than a hundred hurricanes! Storms that blew away so many other structures, but the lighthouse still stands.

November 22, 2019

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Yeah, my wife was always this way, I'm this way. We're some of those psychos called marathon drivers. Now I know long-haul truckers have to do it for a living. But sometimes, you know, I've been known to choose to do it, just because, well, we wanted to get somewhere quickly. Of course, like most men, I like to be the one driving, sometimes for longer than I should. My wife would always tell me that our lives start to be in danger from the time I would start rubbing my right leg while I'm driving. Now, what does that have to do with it? Apparently, that's the first tip-off I'm going to sleep soon. So she would gently offer to drive and I would, of course, refuse. She'd offer several other times to drive, and then I would start doing a workout at the wheel. And then I would turn on some obnoxious radio station at full volume. Then I would open the window to let in the 20-below wind chill. Finally, just before we're just about to become a National Safety Council statistic, I would grudgingly pull over to the side of the road. We would change seats, and I would be out before we could start the car again.

November 19, 2019

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You may not remember much of your World History class, but you probably at least remember the nations of Europe fought it out for a long time to see who was going to be Number One. For many years, their biggest way to fight it out was with their big navies. So, if a ship from England saw a ship from France, you could expect some fireworks. Of course, the way you knew what country a ship was from was that flag they flew from the top of the mast - their colors. When they would see a ship approaching on the horizon, they usually lowered their colors until they could see whether that other guy was a friend or an enemy. But occasionally there was a ship that approached those encounters in a radically different way. There were a few courageous captains who would give a simple six-word order to their crew, "Nail our colors to the mast!" But you could just hear the first mate saying, "Captain, that means we can't lower our colors, no matter what." To which the captain would say something like this. "That's right."

November 18, 2019

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My friend Margaret had just been to a family gathering in the Midwest, and she saw many loved ones there, including her deputy sheriff nephew. Now, as she started heading home, her foot got, shall we say, a little heavy. Or at least that's what the officer who pulled her over seemed to think. As he turned to go back to his car with her license and registration in hand, Margaret said, "Do you know Deputy _________?" and she mentioned her nephew's name. The officer did know him. After a few minutes of record checking and paperwork in his squad car, the officer returned to Margaret's car and said, "I'm just going to give you a warning," followed by, "I checked with your nephew."

November 14, 2019

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Hollywood really missed this one. It was a movie no one was willing to distribute; a movie most thought would have a limited audience. But from its midweek opening, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" a few years ago took off like a rocket. Soon it became apparent this movie portraying the agonizing last twelve hours of Jesus' life was going to be a blockbuster, whose box office numbers were up there with the record-breakers. But according to Director, Mel Gibson, this movie ultimately wasn't about commercial success. It was, for him, a deeply personal project, portraying what he described as "Christ's wounds that healed my wounds." The personalness of Jesus' death to him surfaced vividly on the day they were filming the driving of the nails into Christ's hands. It's a not-to-be forgotten moment. The director himself grabbed the mallet and spikes from the actor who was supposed to be nailing Jesus to the cross. The cameras kept rolling, and in the movie it is Mel Gibson's hands we see, wielding the hammer and driving the nails into Jesus' hands.

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