If you live in America the chances are you either are or know someone who’s diabetic. I know I do. Twenty-four million diabetics in this country—people whose life may depend on limiting the sugar they take in, which is something all of us in this sweet-tooth culture need to be careful about.
So how are you feeling about what you see in the mirror each morning? Well apparently lots of folks aren’t happy with what they see, so much so that they’re willing to go under the knife to change some things. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons says that by 2015 they estimate 17% of Americans will be getting cosmetic procedures—more than 55 million cosmetic procedures. That’s a lot of nipping and tucking, huh?
Well, if you’re a jogger you’ll relate. Our son was out jogging, he made a misstep, his ankle popped and he was down. He’d run into an area where he couldn’t see any houses and he tried to get up; he was in such pain he blacked out and when he came around it was getting dark, he’s hurting like crazy, he yelled help for some fifteen minutes. Finally a woman’s voice came from over the hill, “Someone out there?” Well, that led to them calling our daughter-in-law and he got to the hospital and the ankle’s broken and he’ll be okay. But he’s not going to forget the people who came when he cried, “Help!” I’ll tell you that.
I don’t know what you see when you see Christians, but a recent George Barna survey of younger generations shows us clearly what they see. It will not make your day. They described us as too political, as hypocritical, sheltered, and judgmental among other things. Now we can argue it’s not true. We can’t argue that it is what they see.
The kids head back to school, they hang out with friends you didn’t get to pick, they’re facing daily pressures to do the wrong thing in a culture that makes those things look totally cool. If you’re a mom or dad, it’s pretty hard not to be afraid for that child you love a lot.
There’s some fascinating and disturbing conclusions in a recent religious survey of 35,000 Americans. For example, it says, “There’s a stunning lack of alignment between people’s beliefs or practices and their professed faiths.” Now sadly American Christians are no exception.
Well it’s not a headline that could be called good news, but I’m not disagreeing with it. The newspaper said, “Sense of helplessness pervades nation’s psyche.” It talked about flood levees bursting and polar bears adrift, gas prices skyrocketing, home values plummeting, nearly unaffordable airfares and college tuition and health care and wars without end. Man! And then it asks this question of course, “Is everything spinning out of control?” Yes and no.
The USA Today article really grabbed my attention. The headline said, “Believers okay with many paths.” Now seventy percent of Americans surveyed said, “Many religions can lead to eternal life.” Well God obviously did not participate in that survey.
Hollywood is on a roll with superhero movies these days—Superman, Batman, Ironman, and Hancock. In a recent movie, Will Smith plays this not so super superhero named Hancock. Well, to sum it up, he’s got these super powers, but he’s just plain selfish. He just doesn’t get how much good he could do with the powers he has.
I’m a homeowner and I travel a lot. Man, I love to come home to that little piece of this planet that’s ours. I can only imagine the heartache of people who are losing their home to foreclosure. And it’s happening to more people than ever, and that has got to hurt.
A friend of mine was in the World Trade Center when the planes hit that awful September 11th, and tragically most of the people in his office heeded the announcement that the building was safe and they stayed where they were. My friend grabbed his briefcase and headed down those stairs and as he neared the bottom he saw some of those brave firefighters headed where he had just been. They were there to save lives, but my friend said, “I saw the same fear in their eyes that they must have seen in mine except I was going out and they were coming in.” And that’s what heroes do.
September 11, 2001—Ground Zero—Genelle Guzman almost made it out before the towers collapsed—almost. In a matter of moments, most of her body was trapped under debris. She was sealed into this dust-filled tomb with dead victims all around her. She had been there for 28 hours when she said, “God, please don’t let me die. Please, save me.” About an hour later she heard sounds above her in the rubble and then a hand reaching through the rubble and grabbed her hand and said, “I’ve got you.” Genelle Guzman was the last person pulled out alive at Ground Zero.
Like you probably, I will never forget where I was and what I was doing when I learned of the awful events of September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center. I guess we’ve all got vivid memories. I mean the unbelievable sight of airliners crashing into the World Trade Center Towers and then that heart-rending collapse of those towers with all those lives inside. On the two-year anniversary I saw a T.V. special that interviewed survivors about their memories. One lady who worked for an investment company recalled this: She said, “I got out alive, but my friend who worked near me didn’t.” And then these tears welled up in her eyes, and she said, “I only wish I’d asked him to go with me.”
It was about this time of year and I was ten years old—I was in the lake with my friends and I was going under because I didn’t know how to swim and I didn’t want to tell them. Well, a man came from the shore after I’d gone under the second time. He grabbed me and he saved me. That’s why I’m here today to talk to you. It was the second most dramatic rescue of my life.
It starts the day you take your little son or daughter to kindergarten for the first time and leave them there. Oh man, they’re out of your sight, they’re out of your care, they’re beyond what you can control, and as every one of us parents knows, that is only the beginning—and the beginning of the butterflies we feel sending our kids out the door into a fairly scary world.
I was intrigued by this opening line in a recent USA Today article, “Religion today in the USA is a salad bar where people heap on upbeat beliefs they like and often leave the veggies behind,” which basically allows people to believe whatever suits them. Now the scary thing about that is that the Bible says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death” (Proverbs 16:25 ). Now you can be wrong about a lot of things and it won’t cost you everything, but you can’t afford to be wrong about God.
Oh, it has been exciting to fly commercially this summer, hasn’t it? Man, lots of airport adventures, war stories. You know over the years I’ve had some sad moments watching the baggage carousel for my bags—not there. Now sometimes we see a few bags that just keep going around and around. You get pretty tired of seeing the same old baggage going around and around.
Well these days you can buy almost anything imaginable on eBay including a man’s life. Yeah, no kidding, an Australian man has put his life up for internet auction—his house, his job, his friends. It started really with his broken heart after his wife left him a couple of years ago. He said he wants a fresh start. Now you can sell your stuff, but everywhere you go, you take you with you.
Oh there’s nothing like the Olympics! Ten thousand athletes from more than two hundred nations in Beijing for the 2008 Games, but unlike previous games, there’s not a single Christian missionary in the Olympic village. At past Olympics Christian ministries have sent chaplains to serve the athletes, but not this time. Only Chinese chaplains were approved by the government, but Christ has an Olympic voice, even in China.
I was spending the night in a motel where there had just been one of those natural disasters we’ve been seeing so much of. The parking lot was filled with cars from insurance companies I guess. So many homes blown away, flooded out. The property insurance people must be going crazy. It’s been one natural disaster after another. Constant reminders of the things in our life that we always count on, you can’t count on.
I don’t expect to be inspired when I’m in the dentist chair, okay, but last week I was. I saw the dentist last in the winter time and there’d just been a horrible ice storm and it had split and destroyed trees all over our area. And he told me that he’d probably lost all his fruit trees. Well before he started messing with my mouth this time I asked, “How are your fruit trees doing?” He said, “Oh, they’re doing great. I think the storm actually made them stronger. It strengthened their roots.”
Okay, it was my fault my wife had tears in her eyes from reading my anniversary letter to her at our wedding anniversary just a few days ago. She didn’t really realize for a while that our little four-year-old granddaughter was watching, and when she did she put the letter down—my wife did—and her eyes were kind of moist. All of the sudden there’s this little hand on her bigger hand and a little girl saying, “I’m right here.” There’s one melted grandmother.
I am amazed by what those space shuttle astronauts can get done up there in space. Recently, they deployed what looked like a whole new compartment for the space station. It was manufactured on earth, but it hooked up perfectly with the station in space. Now we’re talking precision engineering here. That’s important down here too. A pipefitter friend of mine explained that to me. He said, “We can’t even let there be a one-sixteenth inch tolerance in our work because even a small margin like that will soon become a one-fourth inch.” And depending on what’s going through those pipes, any compromise can cause—and actually has caused—a damaging explosion; even a deadly explosion.
Our adult daughter has taken the plunge and gotten connected with one of those social networking sites on the Internet. There’s Facebook and MySpace, you know. Well, people sign up to be your online friends and all kinds of dialogue and personal info and photos are posted there—telling you more then you may ever want to know about a particular person. Our daughter didn’t want to keep some of what had accumulated on her page. She asked to have some of it removed and the reply from the website came back in four sobering words: “You cannot undo this.”
Well, for political junkies like me this election season has been a dream—hard fought primaries—oh you know, like the nomination battle between Senators Clinton and Obama. That was fascinating and so was their recent move to try to put back together again what got damaged during all of that. They appeared in the Unity Rally in, of all places, Unity, New Hampshire. Now whatever you’re politics, you got to think that’s a smart move. I mean, they know they can’t win if their side’s divided. Of course, neither can we—I mean God’s people.
It has been a year of absolutely crazy weather, and I’m not going to forget the pictures out of Lake Delton, Wisconsin, when the rains caused the lake to burst through the embankment and totally drain out into the Wisconsin River. Now I love my home—you probably love yours—so it was hard to see entire three-story new homes just like collapse into the river. People watched their home float down the river. One home owner just said, “Very devastating!” I mean one minute your home looks like it’s going to be there for a long time, and then it’s gone. But home isn’t just a building—it’s the relationships. So how do we hold our home together when the monster waves hit? It might be financial, it could be medical or conflict or tragedy.
So this guy goes into Wal-Mart to get one of those hot, new flat-panel LCD televisions. He had a pretty creative way of paying for it the news said. He switched the price tag of $500 plus with a UPC tag from a water bottle for $3.17. Unfortunately for Mr. Price Swapper, the cashier got a little suspicious of that low, low price for a TV. Yeah, he got caught.
I cannot believe the number of tornadoes that have ripped across the U.S. this year. It seems like every night when you turn on the news, another neighborhood or town or family’s been devastated. One of the most heart-rending was that Boy Scout Camp in Iowa that got hit by a tornado with 145 mph winds. Four Boy Scouts died. But the governor said he thought that a lot of lives had been saved by the way the Scouts responded while they were waiting for the rescuers to arrive. Some of them gave CPR to the injured, some helped stop the bleeding, some kept people from going into shock. Others carried people out in a way that wouldn’t cause more injury. The Scouts they interviewed just said, “Hey, we were prepared.” Yeah, remember the motto, “Be prepared.”
The last time I filled up with gas, I told the lady I was paying that I had a severe pain in my wallet bone. She said, “Do you want a receipt?” I said, “No, I don’t want to remember this.” See, we Americans are some of the drivingist people on earth, but we’re finally slowing down a little. I mean, I’m thinking twice about starting the old buggy; reconsidering trips based on how expensive it’s going to be now. And I know I’m not alone.
I’ve been to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And that is why it was absolutely stunning to see basically that whole downtown under water. Of course, it didn’t just happen there. It happened in several cities in Iowa, and in Missouri. The 500 year flood they’re calling it. It was really devastating! It was almost inspiring to see people of all ages, though, in some of those communities, just working together desperately trying to pile sandbags to hold back the water. In some places, of course, the levee was just no match for the flood.
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