The passengers were there, the plane was there, but our plane wasn't taking off that day. It was time, but we were still sitting in the flight lounge, and there weren't many smiles in that flight lounge. Then we finally found out what we were waiting for. Our pilot wasn't there. His earlier flight was delayed and he hadn't landed yet. So, even though we all had to get somewhere, our pilot was flying something else when we needed him.
A boy from the south side of Chicago meets a girl from the Ozarks of Arkansas and they live happily ever after. That's my life story. As my honey and I approached our wedding day, a week after our college graduation, we had a lot of love. We didn't have much money to match, so we prayed for our own little wedding miracle. We were also heading into full-time Christian ministry, and there was not going to be much income from that. So, we prayed that God would lead people in buying gifts for our wedding, so we'd have what we needed to set up housekeeping. We didn't need a lot. We couldn't even afford the basics, though. We prayed that there wouldn't be much duplication in the gifts. Well, you know what? There was hardly any. It was amazing! We received one of each of the things we needed, except we got four whistling teakettles. Don't ask me to explain that. Maybe you could do a Gospel quartet with them.
As we opened the gifts, it was clear that God had answered our prayer, and it looked as if He had shopped for our wedding gifts Himself. We got all the basics. We didn't know how we would meet our start-up needs, but one wedding guest made all the difference.
The best time to go to Long Beach Island is off-season. It's this beautiful stretch of land off the New Jersey coast. It's about 12 miles long and not very wide. You can see the ocean and the bay, actually, on either side of you. It's got this one long main street, and when you're there off-season you see this long string of traffic lights as far as the eye can see. Oh, but listen, during the season - like the summer - it is slow going on that street. I mean it's bumper to bumper people, cars, and red lights. I hope you're not in a hurry to get to the beach or get back to your house, cause it is going to take a while in the summer. Off-season, though, you can drive and you can hit this string of green lights and never stop.
Several years ago, I had the privilege of visiting Old Jerusalem. And as I walked through the city, I saw this curious sight. I saw some Israeli soldiers who appeared to be on a holiday because they had their arm around their girls and they were laughing and shopping. The curious part was that they each had a gun strapped over their shoulder, an UZI, with a full clip of ammunition. Those Israeli soldiers know they always need to be prepared for war, even when they're taking a day off. So, they always carry their weapon.
Single parenting is no longer the exception in America. There are millions of families where it's just a mom or just a dad. You know, there's been a lot of conversation and a lot of articles written, a lot of commentary about the impact of not having a dad that is really being a father to you. In fact, one of the leading health officers in the United States said this: "The greatest issue facing us is fatherlessness." Time Magazine commented on women who choose to have a fatherless family. Here's what they said: "They are bringing a child into the world with a hole at the center of his life where a father should be."
Joey's story really touched me. Joey was a boy who ran in the handicapped Olympics that were held in conjunction with the Seoul Olympics a few years ago, and as it turned out, there were only two in Joey's event. As their track event began, Joey took the lead, leaving his only competitor way behind him. Then Joey suddenly stopped in his tracks. What happened next basically melted the event announcer's heart. Well, and really mine, when I heard about it from someone who was there. When you hear about it, maybe you'll feel like I do. You'll want to be like Joey.
I checked the bread drawer again the other morning. It's still there - not the bread drawer - I mean, the smell! See, our daughter was visiting, and she put a bagel order in with her aunt. She said, "I want an onion bagel!" See, somehow that onion bagel spent a few days in that bread drawer before it finally disappeared. Oh, the bagel's gone, but the smell is not! No, no, in fact, the taste isn't even gone. That little round stinker flavored every bagel in the drawer. They all taste like onion bagels now. I even had a bag of Starburst candies in the bread drawer. Even they taste like the onion bagel. Who would have guessed that one thing could stink up and flavor everything.
Twice in a little over a decade, Saddam Hussein's Iraq has been the focus of a war involving American and other Coalition forces. Operation Iraqi Freedom, the second Gulf War, turned out to be much quicker than anyone could have imagined. Saddam Hussein was toppled from power and ultimately captured. But that didn't stop critics from calling into question the intelligence that led to the decision to send troops to Iraq. The absence of the expected stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction brought a widespread outcry for an investigation into how American intelligence missed what appeared to be the real situation. Well, you know, this is nothing new. It's always been important for a country to have reliable intelligence information before they venture into battle. A lot of important decisions are made based upon the reports from intelligence.
It was a crazy Christmas at our house! Everybody in our family - three generations now - is so excited about giving gifts to the others. Oh yeah, about getting them, too. That sometimes our festivities are not quite like "peace on earth." Such was our last Christmas. The chatter was loud, the laughter was hearty, and the buzz was intense. Or, in the case of a two-year-old, confusing. My wife, with her finely-tuned grandma's radar, noticed that our little grandson seemed a little dazed by all this happy Christmas crossfire. So she just quietly slipped to the floor where he was and began working patiently with him on assembling a toy he had just opened. This precious scene had been going on for a few minutes before any of us even noticed in the chaos. But there was Grandma, quietly creating an island of sanity in a sea of craziness.
If you ask our kids about the four or five most indelible memories from their childhood, at least one is bound to bring up the night of the hurricane. Some friends had offered their home on Eastern Long Island to us for our vacation. I wonder if they had advance word that Hurricane Belle would make it all the way up the East Coast that week and smack Long Island right on the chin? Thankfully, the home we were in was on a cliff above the ocean so we didn't have to evacuate. But we made all the appropriate preparations. We loaded up on batteries and candles, stored water in the bathtub, lined the freezer with newspaper in case the power went out. Well, the leading winds of the hurricane started blowing in about bedtime that night, and you could really hear it howling around our bedrooms upstairs. The kids were pretty unnerved. So, we all moved out of our rooms to the downstairs living room. We laid out some sleeping bags, and slept side by side together in the living room. I'll tell you, the kids loved it. They actually said, "Hey, hurricanes are fun, Dad!"
