Tuesday, January 1, 2008

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One little light. That's all it took to render our car totally unusable. The little light in the rear of our vehicle was left on one night after we unloaded some things, and it stayed on for several days while we were gone. When we got back, everything in that car said, "I'm not starting, pal!" because that one little light totally drained our battery, of course. But then came the hero - our friend in his pickup truck with his trusty jumper cables. And those cables delivered the energy that my flat old battery needed to run again!

Thursday, December 27, 2007

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When Queen Elizabeth was growing up - then Princess Elizabeth - she always knew that one day she would be queen. It wasn't that way with Queen Victoria. When she was young, she actually was shielded from the fact that she would be the next ruling monarch of England. They didn't want her to grow up spoiled. But finally her teacher did let her discover for herself that she would one day be Queen of England - the most powerful monarch in the world at that time. Victoria's response was simple: "Well, then I will be good!" She understood that she needed to live her life based on her royal position.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

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Our grandson is loving kindergarten. He loves learning and he loves the friends he's making there. In fact, there've been very, very few bad moments since he started school. But a couple of weeks ago, there was one. His teacher had to leave early that day, so for the afternoon she put him in an art class with older students. He was the only "little kid," you know, in the room. That was okay as long as the art teacher was there, but it suddenly wasn't okay when she left the room for a short time. The older kids started to pick on him verbally and say the mean kinds of things that school kids are all too good at saying. That night, our grandson was in bed and mom was there to sing and pray with him. As he debriefed his day, he talked about the mean things the older kids had said. But amazingly, he didn't seem angry with them. He said, "Mommy, I know why those kids are mean. It's because they don't have Jesus in their heart." The next day he took action on that insight. He took little bags of candy to those kids with a little Gospel booklet inside.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

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When I travel - which seems to be most of the time - I always try to carry some quarters. I think it started when the kids were growing up. It says in the Dad's Job Description, "must have quarters at all times." Now I carry them partially because you never know when you're going to be needing a vending machine - actually, you're going to want a vending machine. I'm in a hotel, I'm working late, and I want a snack, I want a cold drink, I want today's newspaper. I go through the familiar ritual: put the quarters in, hit the selection button, something good comes out. At least it better. It's pretty annoying if you put your money in and don't get anything back. Why, I probably won't put any more money in that machine!

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

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Okay, here's a quick sports quiz. How many men on a football team? Eleven? Yes, well, if it's the visiting team. If it's the home team with the support of their fans on their field, there are twelve players on the team. You won't find the twelfth man anywhere on the field, of course. He's all those noisy fans cheering for the home team and trying to demoralize the opponents. In sports, those fans are literally known as the twelfth man. They are one big reason why teams play to have the best season record, so they can play at home during the playoffs. The twelfth man is a big part of that home field advantage. Those supporters never go on the field, but their influence is felt by every man there.

Friday, October 26, 2007

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It used to be a lot simpler. These days, it can really be embarrassing - helping your kids with their homework, that is. First of all, most of us have forgotten more than we remember from school - you know, if you don't use it, you lose it. Second of all, they're studying things we probably have no clue about! And they're learning things a lot sooner than we did. So here comes Junior, looking for answers. You can't just tell him you don't know - you're a parent! You're supposed to know everything, right? So you find some diversion - a sudden coughing seizure, a call you forgot to make, the business trip you forgot to leave for. I found - especially in some areas of learning like science or the humanities - you don't need to know all the answers. You do need to own a set of encyclopedias. No, you may not have the answers, but you have the source of the answers!

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

The Ozark Mountains of Arkansas and Missouri are known for their rocks. I mean they make for some hard farming, some beautiful views, and some challenging road building. There's this one stretch of highway from Branson, Missouri, to Springfield, Missouri, that they widened. As you slowed down through those construction zones, there were some pretty impressive changes that were taking place. Some places were nothing but solid-rock mountain, but somehow they managed to blast away at those mountains and literally make a road where a mountain used to be!

Thursday, May 17, 2007

When astronaut Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the surface of the moon for his "one small step for man," he really didn't look like himself. He was totally wrapped up in that modern-day armor that we call a space suit. Well, there's a reason. The moon is an environment hostile to humans. An unequipped, unprotected astronaut would have died in an instant of lunar exposure. Why? No oxygen. That big pack on his back - that was the margin of survival.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Isn't it amazing how different your second child can be from your first child? Just when you think you've got this parent thing figured out, God sends you a totally different kid. For example, food has always been sort of a necessary evil for our son's oldest, our granddaughter. She can take it or leave it. Since infancy, she hasn't cared much about whether or not she had food. Not her brother! Oh no! This kid is an eating machine. He's only about a year old, but he's been Food King much of his little life. When he was still supposed to be only having milk, he was following every bite any of us put into our mouth as if to say, "So when do I get some of that stuff?" How did he graduate to crawling? One thing that helped was putting some food across the room. He took off on all fours like a firecracker had gone off behind him. The other day, his mom was mixing up his next meal, and he was watching and complaining. As she continued to get it ready, he continued to escalate his expressions of impatience and displeasure. By the time his food was ready, we were dealing with a very loud, very insistent protest.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Okay, I don't mind winter. It's a good thing since God seems to have assigned me to the North most of my life. I also don't mind snow. It's beautiful! It's even driveable if you know how to handle it. But ice - now I can't think of anything nice to say about ice. And, after the winter of '98, neither could the folks in New England and Canada. They got walloped with a mega ice-storm that left two inches of ice on everything. In Montreal, for example, power lines and poles and trees just collapsed under the weight of the ice, and thousands of people were without power for days; which means many were without heat in the middle of a Montreal winter. In one neighborhood, one man got pretty resourceful after shivering for five days. He marched across the street with a lot of orange extension cord and asked his neighbor if he could plug into their outdoor outlet. The people on one side of the street were without power and very cold. The people on the other side of the street had power and were very cozy.

That power from across the street was enough to start that man's furnace. And within a few hours, from one end of the block to the other, you could see long orange extension cords crisscrossing the street from the cold side to the warm side. Those who had no power were supplied by those who did and then everybody was warm!