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Friday, September 14, 2018
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There are some decent, often values-oriented things on television for children. But, as you know very well, there's a lot of garbage, too. And in between those two extremes, there are shows that are mostly good but have some words scattered in them that little ears shouldn't be hearing – or big ears, for that matter. And then there was this service, you know, called the TV Guardian – which automatically replaces a naughty word with a nice word, thus removing what could be bad for your child. Occasionally, the replacements are actually a little amusing. Like the word "sex" for example. The new word is "hugs." Which gets a little interesting when someone asks, "So what will be the hugs of your baby?" But I do think the idea of a TV Guardian is a pretty good idea.
Tuesday, September 4, 2018
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I was teaching at a training school for people entering youth ministry when I learned about a call home that must have been heartbreaking for the dad who made it. The school was three weeks long, and dad had already been gone for over two weeks. He was seriously missing his wife and a two-year-old son, and they were missing him. Well, he waited patiently in this long line that formed every day after classes in the lobby to get to the pay phone. (Let's hear it for cell phones today!) He finally got to talk to his wife. When he asked how his son was doing, she said, "Not too well, honey. Yesterday he came up to me and said, ‘Mommy, is Daddy dead?'" Ouch!
Thursday, August 30, 2018
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You never know what your kid's memories are going to be. You know? Our son was like 20 years old, he was in college, and they asked him to write about a childhood memory. You know that's when they are in these family classes and you get to pay for them analyzing you and their family relationships. Great! Well he picked the day that he and I played wiffle ball together for the first time. He couldn't have been more than 4 or 5 years old. You know wiffle ball, it's that little plastic ball. It's got enough holes in it to keep it from going far, and he had this little plastic yellow bat, and I was pitching to him from a few feet away in the backyard. The first time he ever tried to hit a ball, and strike 1 - he chopped it instead of hitting right and he missed it. I threw it again real gently - strike 2. So I stopped and I went over and I reviewed with him, you know, keep your eye on the ball - don't chop - swing evenly. And then I said one more thing that I hadn't said the first two times. I said, "I really believe you can do it." The next time, BAM! He hit that thing way over Daddy's head.
Monday, July 23, 2018
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Now, I'm not a deer hunter. I think I was brainwashed by "Bambi" a long time ago, but I tell you, something incredible happens in a lot of parts of the country when deer season opens. Some places they close school for a few days because of the deer, and in many places it's just understood. I mean, workers aren't going to show up for work that day; they're going to be somewhere in the woods on Operation Buck. Unfortunately, sometimes the hunt can end in tragedy-for the hunter, I mean, not the deer.
Thursday, July 5, 2018
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The passengers were there and the plane was there, but our plane wasn't taking off that day. Oh, it was time, but we were still sitting in the flight lounge, and there were not many smiles that day. Then we finally found out what we were waiting for - our pilot wasn't there. See, his earlier flight was delayed and he hadn't landed yet. So even though we all had to get somewhere, our pilot was flying somewhere else when we needed him.
Tuesday, July 3, 2018
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One thing television has done for us, it's made us all more self conscious about our breath. The commercials keep coming. Years ago it was - Don't broadcast bad breath. To our recent commercials like: Your wake up breath. You run from people who want to kiss you because you have to gargle first. You’ve got to get rid of that morning mouth. Well these kinds of commercials sell a lot of mouthwash, toothpaste and breath mints and breath drops. I just wish there was a mouthwash for the really gross mouth problem.
Thursday, June 21, 2018
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Somewhere on cable or late night TV you might run into my old hero. He's a masked man who rides on a white horse, who shoots silver bullets and always brings in the bad guys. Every episode ends with someone asking, "Who was that Masked Man?" And as the exciting William Tell Overture crescendos in the background, someone will say, "It's the Lone Ranger!" I'm getting all emotional here. Now there was one other thing about the Lone Ranger. He had a faithful sidekick, that Indian man in buckskins, Tonto. He's the one who got famous calling the Lone Ranger "Kemo Sabe." I never did know what that meant. Maybe the Lone Ranger didn't know either, and maybe that's a good thing. But there is one thing about the Lone Ranger that seemed a little hard to understanding. He's the Lone Ranger, but he wasn't alone.
Tuesday, June 19, 2018
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There's an Indian reservation in the Southwest where it can be pretty expensive to become a follower of Jesus Christ. Historically, this tribe has forced Christians to actually move outside the village. That actually happened to Amy's great-grandmother. She had been a tribal priestess. But when she gave her heart to Christ, she and her family were suddenly outcasts. But there's this little stone house outside the village where she and her husband ended up living – where Amy's grandmother actually grew up. The house looks, well, and I don't mean this in a bad way, but I want you to be able to picture it, sort of like the stone houses you might have seen on "The Flintstones." But it wasn't easy to build. Great-grandpa would go to work each day and he'd pick up a big rock on his way home. And one-by-one, rock-by-rock, he carried those rocks back to the site where he was slowly building a home for his family. And it's still there, three generations later – built one building block at a time.
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
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I hope I don't have to be an expert on a subject to talk about it-in this case, weaving a tapestry. Actually, a lady who served as our receptionist was a very "crafty" type woman, and that includes making some beautiful tapestries. She taught me something about this kind of artwork-that it likes to unravel. All those threads that she so skillfully weaves into a creative pattern have this natural tendency to unravel, thus destroying the design she's worked so hard on. But how do you keep it together? Well, she says you put this frame around the tapestry, and with everything held together by the frame, you can keep weaving the tapestry without it unraveling.
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
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I was sitting on our front porch, and I saw our son-in-law suddenly running full speed across the front yard, headed for the back yard with his camera in his hand. With my incredible detective mind, I surmised that he had seen something that would make a great photo; something that apparently wasn't going to be there for long. Actually, he had seen our horse running across the pasture with her mane flowing and beautifully illuminated by the setting sun. Well, having a wife who's taken some pretty amazing photos over the years, I understood this. I guess you'd call it the "seize the moment" thing. Photographers know about this, and you'd better not get in their way.