He's not the youngest motorcycle rider in the pack, but he's got to be one of the most devoted. Take that away from him and you'd be taking away one of the great joys of his life. Problem: he's been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. And as that condition progresses, he can expect to begin to experience some disorientation, among other things. That's not a good thing for a fellow running around on his motorcycle. So he has installed a global positioning system on his bike which will always show him where he is and where home is. That way, if one day he's out on his bike and forgets his way home, he'll be able to find his way home no matter where he goes.
We didn't have much of a car in the first place. It was less of a car by the end of the day. We hadn't been married very long, and our used car was pretty humble - but it was ours. We were in heavy traffic in downtown Chicago about five o'clock one afternoon, sitting in the middle of one of those Rush Hour blood clots they call a "traffic jam." I'd stopped for a red light not far from the Art Institute on Michigan Boulevard. I still can picture this. To our right, was a city bus that pretty much blocked my view of the traffic on the intersecting street. The light turned green, and I drove out into the intersection. Bam! Suddenly we were hit hard, stopped cold, and left with a crumpled hood with smoke coming from underneath. A delivery truck had run the red light and right into us. Thankfully, we weren't hurt, but our little car was! It wouldn't move. So we just went to the curb and stood on the sidewalk, waiting for help to come and watching as one driver after another pulled up to this car of ours that was obviously wrecked and unoccupied - and honked. Weird!
Four boys in a house on fire; that's what happened to my friend's nephews. Thankfully, the Fire Department got the call early and they were there in minutes. It was clear there was no way they could go into that blaze to bring the boys out. But all four of them were huddled around a second floor window, which meant they could be saved. The firefighters quickly prepared to catch the boys. Then they yelled to them to jump into the waiting net below. The oldest boy jumped; he was safe. A second, then a third brother jumped to their rescue below. Their ten-year-old brother was the last one left at that upstairs window. He hesitated. The firefighters begged him to jump again and again. And every time, he refused. And sadly, it cost him his life.
In the movie Saving Private Ryan, Tom Hanks portrays an Army captain whose unit is assigned to find a private named Ryan in the dangerous aftermath of the D-Day Invasion. Ryan's brothers have both been killed in combat, and, unbeknownst to him, he is his mother's only surviving son. The mission involves the captain's unit in brutal battles with the Germans. But Private Ryan is located and his life is saved by his captain who dies in the process. As Private Ryan attends to his mortally wounded rescuer, the captain speaks his last words in a hoarse whisper - "Earn this." The camera merges from the young private's face to the face of an old man, standing by a white cross in the cemetery at Normandy. It is Ryan many years later, near the end of his life. He kneels by his captain's grave and says: "Every day of my life, I've thought about what you said to me that day on the bridge. I've done my best. I hope at least in your eyes that I've lived up to all you gave for me."
The Blob. Yep! That's what they call this huge inflated pillow-like thing they have at a camp we use in our ministry. The Blob is in the water at the camp beach, sitting there, daring someone to jump off the platform above onto its bouncy launch pad. It's - well, shall we say - a leap of faith. One person jumps onto the Blob and then they clumsily scoot out to the end that extends into the lake. Then a second person makes the jump. When they hit the Blob, the force of their landing literally launches the person on the end into the air and ultimately into the lake with a loud splash. For the launch to work, there can't be more than 30 pounds difference in the weights of the two Blobbers. Well, since our son is a pretty big hunk of a guy, he went most of the week without getting Blob-launched...until the campers convinced Frank, our other generous-sized leader, to try it with our son. Every person in the camp was at the beach at two o'clock to see this one, and we weren't disappointed. Our son made the jump and crawled to the end of the Blob. Then his counterweight friend made the jump. The camp erupted in cheers and gales of laughter as the force of Frank's landing sent our son into the air like a Cape Canaveral rocket!
I had the joy of participating in the baptism of some young people not long ago - in the waters of a beautiful lake. It was a sacred moment for all of us - in spite of the speedboat. You see, at one point, it went blazing across the lake behind us. It was there and gone in a flash. But its wake wasn't. For some time after the boat had disappeared, the waves it had created kept rolling in on us. And, for a time, it actually interrupted the proceedings. Mr. BoatGuy probably never thought about the wake he was leaving - long after he left. He was just passing through.
Our grandson's been on a very limited diet - just mother's milk or baby formula for his first six months. But something's been happening in the last couple of weeks. He has suddenly become fascinated with what the rest of us are eating. Fascinated, you know, as in staring at the food on our plate, the fork going down to get that food, the fork coming up to put that food in our mouth, and our mouth as it's chewing that food. Then repeat the exercise as the fork goes down for another bite. You can tell by the longing look in his eyes, he's not content with that milk or formula anymore. He wants some of that good stuff. If he could talk, I think he might be saying, "Hey! I've been made for more than what I've been getting!"
Summer heat time is not when you want your car air conditioner to go out on you - especially when you're driving a long trip. Tough - that's when the a/c decided to die on us. Now I know that brave people survived without air conditioning for centuries. You know, somehow that philosophical observation didn't make me feel any better as we sped along with our windows open and hot air slowly putting the driver to sleep. Oh, but there's more. More than once, belching black exhaust smoke came blowing in our open windows. Then there was the discarded cigarette butt that bounced off the window, narrowly missing the driver. We really enjoyed the spider that came in, of course, and the clumps of pollen; they were great. Probably our favorite thing of all was what came flying at us from two tractor trailers that passed us. Now, I'm not going to give you all the gory details but I will tell you that those trucks were carrying cattle. Open window: kind of a nasty trip.
The other night, as I was "remoting" my way across our TV channels, I came to a quick stop when I saw that one particular movie was on - "Chariots of Fire." Years ago, it won the Oscar for "Best Movie," but that's not why I stopped to watch it - it was because of how that movie impacted me the first time I saw it. It's the story of Eric Liddell, a famous Scottish Olympic runner. He had reached his dream of representing the United Kingdom as a 100-meter runner in the 1924 Olympics. Then, en route to the Games, he learned that his event would be on Sunday - the day Eric Liddell believed was reserved for God. A day on which his deep convictions would not allow him to participate.
It may happen to a community once in a lifetime, or even once in a century. But sometimes there are those disasters that define and redefine a town for years to come. The Johnstown, PA flood would be one famous historic example. You've probably never heard of the flood that swept into my wife's hometown years ago, but it was a major defining event for that town. She was a teenager when, with just a brief warning from upstream, the local creek burst out of its banks into a massive flash flood. While there was major damage done to the community, thankfully, only a few lives were lost. There were some older folks who lived on the south side of town. Rescuers came by their creekside house before that wall of water hit. They offered them a place in the lifeboat. They refused to get in. They said, "We've lived a long time, we've seen a whole lot. We've been fine this far. We'll be fine this time." They weren't. They died in that flood.
Busy highway - heavy traffic - including those crazies who suddenly cross three lanes at once. You need your wits about you at all times. You need to be looking at what's going on all around you, you're looking ahead, you're looking out the rear window, you're checking your mirror on the left and the right, trying to locate all the cars around you and even anticipate what some of them may do next. But even with all that, you're not seeing everything. Because there's one spot you can't see out the front window, the rear window, or the mirrors. It's that dangerous spot somewhere on the back right side of your car. They call it your blind spot. And seeing what's there could be the difference between getting home safely and not getting home at all!
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