The train left Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, at 7:30 in the morning, headed for a popular resort area along the Indian Ocean. The train never made it. It was suddenly hit by this massive wall of water - that killer tsunami, you remember, that devastated so much of South Asia. The force of the waves tore the wheels off of some cars and leveled the train in this grove of palm trees. In one of those countless heart-wrenching scenes that came out of the tsunami aftermath, one young man at the train site wept in the arms of his friends as the body of his girlfriend was buried. He spoke out to this sweetheart who had died on that train: "We met in university. Is this the fate we hoped for?" Then, as he began to sob even more, he said, "My darling, you were the only hope for me."
It was the moment the young man had waited for and had prepared for over many months. It was his premiere appearance as a concert pianist. The audience had heard a lot about his amazing talent, and they packed out this prestigious concert hall to hear him. They weren't disappointed. In fact, his masterful playing brought them to their feet for a thunderous standing ovation at the end of the concert. Backstage, the young man's manager said, "They want an encore, man! Get out there!" The pianist looked strangely dejected, and he said, "No, I'm not going back out there." His manager said, "But they love you, man! Look at them! They're all on their feet!" "Not all," was all the young man could say. "Look in the balcony." The manager peeked around the curtain and he saw one white-haired old man in the balcony who wasn't standing or applauding. "Hey, come on! That's one old man! So what?" The pianist looked down at the floor and he said, "That's not one old man. That's my teacher."
Hooper Bay, Alaska, isn't the first remote place we've gone with our outreach teams of Native American young people, but it's a tough one. Each Summer of Hope, it's our privilege to take teams of Indian and Eskimo spiritual warriors to the reservations and the villages where America's most devastated young people live and die too young. The suicide rate among young Native Americans is four times that of the rest of America's young. In some places in Alaska, it's twenty times greater. Hooper Bay, Alaska, is one of the hardest places in this country to grow up. We had to take our team there.
Our friend commuted in his private plane hundreds of times, flying from a little airfield near his house to the community where his office was. Well, not too long ago, knowing that he wanted to get home before the weather set in, he left his office earlier than usual and he headed for his plane. As he was boarding, he told a friend, "I'm going home!" Those may have been his last words. As he landed a few minutes later, the plane went into a skid and it slammed into a tree. He probably died instantly, but he still made it home.
I was in a Board Meeting in a hotel conference room. It was in the 90s outside, but I was ready to put gloves on so I could write without shaking. The air conditioner in our conference room was set one notch past high. It was on arctic! We wandered over to the control box on the wall, and all we did was discover that the controls were locked up. Great! So, we called the desk and they had a hard time understanding us because our teeth were chattering. They finally got the message, and the maintenance man came and he turned down that ice machine. At that moment, he had the power in his hands. Summer or winter, he is the man who decides what the temperature will be. You know, that's a pretty significant position.
Sometimes being a Christian comes with a pretty high price tag, especially if you're a believer on some of America's Indian reservations. My friend, who I'll call John, lives on a reservation where there are very few Jesus-followers and where some of the tribe is bitterly opposed to anything Christian. They were especially unhappy when John began a youth ministry there, of course. He literally had telephoned death threats; he had slashed tires, dirty tricks, even attacks on his property. One day, he was making the five-hour drive from his reservation to a Native American conference where I was speaking. He got there a little late. His car engine started sputtering and missing - he lost power. Thankfully, it started as he approached the only gas station in the middle of a very long stretch. After a few minutes, the mechanic diagnosed the problem - someone had put sugar in his gas tank. Again, thankfully, they were able to correct the situation. And nothing has been able to stop John's ministry among his people, but impurities in his tank almost stopped his car that day!
There's a lot of sheep-talk in the Bible, which puts city boy here at a distinct disadvantage. I grew up in Chicago, we didn't have them. Now if the Bible used cockroaches as an example, I'd be all set. But I've had to learn about sheep from friends who have been around them a lot. One of our ministry team has worked with ranchers a lot with their sheep. And he told me the other day about how the shepherd gets his sheep to go where he wants them to go! There's a way that works and a way that doesn't work. My co-worker said he has seen people get behind sheep and try to push them along. Notice I said, try! It doesn't work, no matter how much noise he makes or how he waves his arms. When they are pushed by a shepherd, sheep just scatter. But when he gets out in front of them; when he leads them the way he wants them to go, the sheep follow after him.
Some people can skip a meal and barely notice. I am not some people. Like for example, it's been four or five hours since breakfast, my body very convincingly says to me, "Feed me now!" When I don't eat regularly, I feel it and I take action. The doctor says there's nothing wrong with me, but my metabolism just seems to demand some regular maintenance. It's not like I'm alone in this. Most of us know when it's time to eat again, right? And we usually stop what we're involved in to do something about it. Hunger isn't exactly passive, you know. It goes after something to satisfy it!
For a lot of my life I don't even think I'd even heard the word. Now it's one of the most talked-about words in our health and fitness vocabularies - cholesterol. We have awakened to cholesterol and to the damage it can do. Getting a reading on our cholesterol levels is like basic to any physical these days. My doctor has given me a brief, personal seminar on things like LDL and HDL. LDL is your bad cholesterol that clogs your arteries. You want to be low in that. But then there's your good cholesterol (this is starting to sound like an old Western with the good guys and the bad guys!). Your good cholesterol is called your HDL, and you want lots of that HDL. That's the good stuff. Now, my doctor says, "I'm not just concerned when a patient's bad cholesterol is high. I get concerned when you don't have enough good cholesterol." See, it isn't enough just to get rid of the bad stuff. You have to load up on the good stuff.
A couple of times this week I ordered out for lunch and it came on a paper plate. Guess what I did with the paper plate when I finished my lunch? No, I didn't wash it; I didn't save it for later. Now, look we've never had a lot of money, but I've never in my whole life saved a paper plate. I throw it away, of course, like you probably do. And I don't feel any great sense of loss or regret, "Oh, I can't believe I lost my paper plate." No, it doesn't bother me. But we have these other plates at our house, we keep them in a cabinet in our dining room and we save them for special occasions. We wash those when we use them, because it says "fine china" on those. At least that's what my wife wrote with a magic marker on the back. It's the best we've got. And when we're done, we put those plates away very carefully. In fact, if you drop one of them, you're out of the family. What's the difference? Paper plates are cheap, practically worthless, right? You throw them away. Now, fine china on the other hand is expensive; it's too valuable to throw away. Do you know which one most people feel like today?
Our former offices were on this long hall, and each night the last one got to walk that long hall and make sure all the doors were locked and the lights were turned out. And with the amount of work the team had to get done each day, it was pretty close to "beddy-bye" time when some of them left. Of course, Daylight Saving Time meant that you could leave well into the evening and it would still be light. Maybe that's why the lights in some of our closets were accidentally left on sometimes. When it's still bright outside, it's easy to miss a light that's on. But in the winter, when it's dark, you can't miss the light!
