Last Christmas, our two-year-old grandson heard us talking about Jesus, and suddenly he tried to get our attention so we’d see him pointing stubbornly toward the other end of the house. He stood there like a pointing statue until we finally got up and followed him. He marched us through the house; this little guy with a small parade of adults following him, and he marched us right to the manger, he bent down and he pointed right to baby Jesus. He had one thing on his mind; he was determined to lead us to Jesus.
This time of year my wife has a Nativity scene in every room of the house I think. I’ve checked them all, and except for Mary and Joseph, I can’t find any religious folks at the manger. Oh yeah, shepherds and strangers, but no Bible folks. They’re like strangely missing; they’re in the Christmas story, but they’re missing at the manger.
My friend was picked to play an angel in the huge Christmas musicale that our college put on every year. Thousands came from all over Chicago. His job was to step out of a dark backdrop onto a small platform above the heads of the shepherds and the chorale was singing “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks”. His opening line: “Fear not.” And right on cue, the bright light from heaven startled the shepherds, they looked up into the darkness, and out popped my angel friend who promptly overshot the platform and fell on the shepherds! Great–a fallen angel in the Christmas story! But my friend managed to still deliver his message as he fell, “Fear noootttt!”
I just love this time of year to drive through towns and see Christmas lights. We were on a very long drive on an Indian reservation that we visit each year where Christ has been rejected for centuries. You can drive for miles at Christmastime and you see no Christmas lights. So at Christmas, you drive through just like long stretches of darkness until you get to this one village. Suddenly you see this one spot in the darkness that’s a blaze of Christmas lights! The missionary wife who serves in that village is like psycho Christmas. On November 1, she starts outlining their house, their church and the cross on top with Christmas lights. You can’t miss it.
There’s a road sign that gets my attention every time I’m driving through the mountains. It says,
Runaway Truck Ramp. My first reaction, of course, is to check my rear view mirror just in case there’s a runaway truck bearing down on me. Those ramps that they call the runaway truck ramp, they’re king of sloped upward and they cover them with deep sand that will stop a truck that’s in trouble. You usually can catch the scent of hot brakes in the mountains, especially on those trucks that are depending on them to keep them from hurtling down the mountain. Brakes are good!
Well, it started out as a Merry Christmas; ended up in the hospital. I gave my boys a brand new NFL football. It was 60 degrees, so we went out and passed that thing back and forth until I caught it where you’re not supposed to catch it—on the end of my little finger. So forget the eggnog, Ron, and the cozy fire. Let’s go to the emergency room. I’ll tell you, it’s no fun having something broken at Christmas.
There are more Subway shops now than McDonalds because of Jared. He’s still doing commercials for them. That’s the guy who lost 300 pounds eating turkey sandwiches at Subway. He lost a whole person out of his pants! Can you believe it? Some people are going, ”Oh, if I eat there, maybe I’ll lose a person out of my pants.” It illustrates what a lot of commercials do to sell you their product; they tell you what difference it will make if you’ll buy it.
There have been a few times in my life…OK, more than a few when I’ve thought I was driving full speed toward the destination I wanted, only to find out that I was hopelessly lost on the wrong road. Now as stupid as those mistakes might have been, there were no lasting consequences. That’s why I’m so glad that someone told me how to get to the one destination I do not want to miss called heaven. Because if I miss the right road on that one, I’ll be lost forever.
My wife doesn’t drink milk, but don’t blame her. Blame the cow. Or blame what the cow ate. Her Daddy told her she had to drink her milk, and she just couldn’t. What he didn’t know was it tasted awful, because the cow it came from had been munching something called bitterweed. And when you feed on bitterweed, guess what happens to the milk you produce? You’ve heard of buttermilk? How about bittermilk? Of course, we humans have been known to feed on bitterweed, too.
Every year about this time, some of us boys had to go out in public in our bathrobes to play shepherds in the church Christmas pageant. What I didn’t know when I was playing a shepherd was how, in some ways, I’m supposed to be like one even now. Not the wardrobe—the mission.
I love to watch a sunrise or a sunset, except the sun doesn’t rise or set. It doesn’t go anywhere. It just looks like we’re the center of everything and the sun revolves around us. The American Scientific Affiliation actually did a survey and found that 21% of Americans said they think the sun revolves around the earth, and 7% don’t know. Well, here’s the results of God’s survey in the Bible. One hundred percent of the human race thinks the world revolves around them. Maybe that’s why the middle letter of sin is “I”.
The other day a friend of mine was reflecting on these crazy times we’re in financially. She said, “Nobody’s really sure where we should put our money.” That’s a question worth thinking about.
When I was a kid in Chicago, I used to love to go to Riverview Park; the amusement park on the north side. Somebody conned me into going on The Rotor, this big cylindrical thing where you go in like into a washing machine, and you stand along the edge and it starts spinning. And you go, “This is dumb.” And then suddenly you’re looking down as the floor disappears, you’re looking down into this yawning black hole. You say, “I’m going to die!” Well, that’s the day I learned the reality of something called centrifugal force. See, the faster an object is spinning, the more things get thrown to the edge—like I did that day on The Rotor.
Maybe it’s because we lived in the New York area so many years. Maybe it’s because our whole family is just a little psycho about Christmas. But I love to watch the annual lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in Manhattan; that’s this week. They’ll build up to it with lots of Christmas music, too many commercials, and a big countdown. And suddenly as they pull the magic switch, America’s most famous Christmas tree will light up the night. Now, ours won’t be that big, but it will be covered with some beautiful decorations and bright lights. But none of that can mask the dirty little secret of every Christmas tree in the world.
It’s one of those stories that’s especially disturbing this time of year. A Michigan mother drove 12 hours to Omaha, Nebraska so she could abandon her 13-year-old son at a hospital. Apparently, Nebraska has a new, unique Safe-Haven Law that was meant to protect endangered children. But it’s been used several times just to dump children. I can only imagine how devastating it’s got to be for a child to be totally abandoned by someone they thought loved them.
I’m not sure I understand it, but it’s happening again…people lining up in the middle of the night to be there when some discount store opens on the Friday after Thanksgiving—Black Friday. People have even been trampled as shoppers crush through the door to get those limited, deep-cut bargains. Once the doors open, which might be one of the most dangerous jobs in America by the way, people race around the store, trying to scoop up every bargain they can.
It’s probably a pride thing, but I really didn’t want to get glasses. Well, that is until my arms shrank and I couldn’t hold things far enough way to read them anymore. And once I put the glasses on and could actually see what I was reading, it opened up a whole new world. Which brings us to Thanksgiving.
Have you ever eaten a Thanksgiving turkey that was cooked by someone who never cooked one before? Oh, “Proceed with caution.” I have. Did you know there’s an 800 number you can call for what to do with your turkey? Yeah. In fact, Paul Harvey reported a few years ago about a lady who called and said she had a turkey in her freezer for about 20 years and she wanted to know if it was still good to eat. Well, the guy said, “You know what? It won’t hurt you. It’s probably not going to taste very good.” She said, “Oh, good! I’ll give it to the church.” That’s messed up!
Thanksgiving! Turkey! Pumpkin pie! Five pounds! And an opportunity you might not have thought about. You might call it, “The Power of Saying Thanks.” There’s a thanks you could write this Thanksgiving that could help change the eternal address of someone you care about.
Well, “24” is back! It’s that hit series where each gripping adventure takes place in one 24-hour day. Kiefer Sutherland plays hero Jack Bauer, who routinely has to save the world. While ramping up to the new season, they ran a special 2-hour TV movie called “Redemption”. It’s a title more appropriate than they may know.
Poor Roy Riegels! His name is immortal in football history for all the wrong reasons. In the 1929 Rose Bowl, Riegels played center, and he suddenly found himself with the ball. So he took off frantically for the end zone. Strange thing though. His own team was chasing him. One of them tackled him just shy of a touchdown. It was only then he realized he’d been running toward the other team's goal post. So he's known forever as Wrong Way Riegels. But that's only half the story. See, the other half is encouraging for any of us who've ever realized that we've been running in the wrong direction.
I was the speaker at the conference, but the Lord spoke to me through an elderly woman who barely speaks a word these days. She’s in the later stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Her daughter brought her to the conference with her. There’s not much expression, not much communication, most of the memory of her life has been erased by the darkness in her mind. But there are a few things that darkness has not been able to steal from her.
I’ve been in a couple of hurricanes, and I’ve heard a lot of hurricane warnings and evacuation orders before in the media. I never heard them say this before, “If you don’t leave, you will face certain death.” Well, that got my attention! That’s what they told the residents of Galveston Island as Hurricane Ike was bearing down a few weeks ago. Gail Ettenger was one who decided to stay. She moved from New Jersey to Galveston and she bought a house she loved with birds-of-paradise as pets (of all things). Well, her house had weathered Hurricane Rita in ’05, and so she thought she’d make it through this storm, too. The neighbors pleaded with her to leave; she refused. In her last phone call to a friend she said, “I really messed up this time.” She was one of 33 people who died that day.
We’ve been hearing the words every night on the news; you have recession, foreclosures, unemployment, bankruptcies. But for millions of people, maybe you or someone you care about, those are more than just words. They’re living the scary reality of not knowing where the money’s going to come from. There’s a story that might be a little encouragement at a time like this.
Well, if you grew up on “The Brady Bunch,” you might want to cover your ears. You see, sweet, perfect Marcia Brady wasn’t so perfect after all. Maureen McCormick, the actress who played Marcia, just dropped a reality bombshell in her new book. She writes there about her off-camera cocaine binges, her drug addiction, her unwanted pregnancy, even trading sex for drugs. Here’s what she said, ”As a teenager, I had no idea that few people are everything they present to the outside world. Yet there I was, hiding the reality of my life behind the unreal perfection of Marcia Brady” Well, she’s not alone.
Just like all recent Olympics, the ones in Beijing delivered a lot of exciting victories and some heartbreaks as well. Rau’ Shee Warren was one of those heartbreaks. He lost at the last Olympics, and so he declined the money of pro boxing just because he wanted to win the gold in Beijing to give to his mother. He had thirty-five seconds left in his bout. He was waiting in his corner while his opponent gets his glove fixed. People are shouting all kinds of advice from the stands. He was sure someone said, “Move,” which meant he had the lead and should simply avoid getting punched to win, but his coaches were screaming the opposite message. He was actually behind 9-8. He needed to attack, he didn’t, he lost because he listened to the wrong voices. So have I.
Well Hurricane Ike wasn’t in the headlines anymore, but I ran into some of his effects a long way from where he hit in the mountains of North Carolina; couldn’t find a station with any gas. Hurricane issues had disrupted gas distribution to a big chunk of the southeast and I was hitting what the locals had been living with for two weeks; long lines and limited quantities and flaring tempers, even some physical violence.
I spent a few vigorous minutes on my treadmill. I think I’m ready to be in a Bowflex commercial. Then, I watch something like those women running the marathon at the Beijing Olympics and I need a lot more time on the treadmill, I think. But I can almost feel the pain of those marathoners as you saw them pushing to finish those last grueling miles.
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, we almost always see in Arlington Cemetery when the President goes there on Veteran’s Day to lay a wreath. You know, that ceremony of the changing of the guard has been going on for sixty years? I got close enough once to hear what they say to each other. The guard going off duty says, “Orders remain unchanged.” The guard coming on says, “Orders acknowledged.” That thing has been going on because of an unbroken chain of obeying the original orders.
My wife got baptized the old-fashioned way; in the creek. She was nine years old. Almost didn’t go in though, because some poisonous water moccasins were floating on the surface. She finally decided if she could trust Jesus with her soul, she could trust Him to keep her safe from a couple of snakes. I heard about some guys who had much bigger issues when they were baptized.
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