Well “Happy Birthday, America!” A long time ago, on a Fourth of July, American patriots birthed a nation by declaring the independence of this new country. That really is something to celebrate and I think I will.
Years ago we were driving along the Hudson River side of New York City when the traffic totally stopped and it didn’t move for an hour. I’m like, “What’s going on here?” Well they had stopped to watch the Fourth of July fireworks display across the river. Of course what’s the Fourth without fireworks, right?
I always thought it was a cool way to ramp up to the Olympics—you know, having different people carry the torch in different countries of the world. Now one stretch of the torch run this year was really moving. Rick Doran was a firefighter at Ground Zero on September 11, and he won the contest to carry the torch through the streets of San Francisco—except he was a man on a mission. He committed to running 343 steps. That’s one for each firefighter who died on September 11.
When he visited the U.S. recently, the Pope said that there was something he felt shame over. It was the priests who abuse their position by abusing children. He said that harms not only the church, but of course it harms the name of Christ, too. Well I was thinking, they’re not the only ones who’ve made people disillusioned spiritually.
You know you’ve gotta feel bad for Bruce Banner. He’s the guy in the comic books and in the new summer movie now, too, who’s got a real problem when he gets mad. He turns into this scary, green guy called the Incredible Hulk and his anger actually turns him into something pretty ugly; of course, he’s not the only one.
It’s not often you see a President of the United States choking back tears, but President Bush was pretty emotional recently when he presented the Medal of Honor posthumously to a true battlefield hero. Michael Monsoor was his name. He was part of the force fighting for the Iraqi city of Ramadi. He and some other Navy Seals were fighting from their sniper position on a rooftop when a grenade landed right near him.
If you’re like me and you travel a lot, you’re not so thrilled when the news is about the latest problem they’ve discovered in commercial aircraft. But I love the story that a veteran traveler friend of mine told me. He had been told to avoid this one airline in this one foreign country. Well, he couldn’t do it; he had to get on this one flight. He got on and he noticed that the seatbelt was already buckled in the seat and he thought, “Well that’s a little different,” but he sat down, unbuckled it, buckled it again, only to learn it wasn’t attached to the seat. He said, “I wasn’t about to tell anybody because I had to go on that flight.” He even tried to let down the tray table for his computer and it just kept going, it wasn’t attached either. So he’s sitting there with the seatbelt that doesn’t really attach, looking secure. Of course it was the illusion of security.
A lot of life’s important conversations have the same problem; it’s hard to know how to get started. Like, trying to tell a girl you love her, explaining the facts of life to your child maybe, delivering some bad news to somebody, or giving someone you care about the good news that could change their life and their eternity. There’s no greater way to have a life that matters than that.
Every once in a while, I’ll see a headline in the newspaper I think I would call shocking. Like one in USA Today recently. It said, “IS SIN DEAD?” Well, the basic conclusion…No. But we all define the word our own way.
I have never heard so many stories about cars being washed away in floods as I have recently. Maybe it’s because our part of the country has had like one huge storm after another, but there have also been some stories that really inspire me.
Boy, everybody thought Heath Ledger was going to be around impressing Hollywood for many years, and then one night he was gone. A much praised star found dead in his room surrounded by pills. The authorities called it an accidental overdose. Now, apparently he’d been having a hard time sleeping, and some said he’d had a hard time coping with the darkness of the character—the Joker that he played in the new Batman movie. He was haunted by the role he played.
Every time my little two-year-old granddaughter does this, it just steals my heart away. Actually, her mother likes to quote this Bible verse to her every day, “This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24 ). And I mean, Mom doesn’t even get through it and my little granddaughter starts laughing out loud, she puts her hands in the air, and she starts waving them around like a miniature cheerleader. She loves this!
Man, it just keeps happening; one prominent person after another is brought down by some dark secret in their closet. USA Today had an article about this, and it talks about the fall of a mayor, a governor, a president, respected religious leaders all from thinking that they could get away with things that they were doing wrong. That proves again, of course, the truth of the Bible’s warning which says, “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23 ).
Our six-year-old grandson amazed us all the other day. He’d been praying for one of our family members to give his heart to Jesus. And when his mom told him that his prayers had been answered, he said, “That’s incomprehensible!” What’s incomprehensible is how he even knows that word! Then he went on to pray like this, “Dear Lord, please do incomprehensible things in lots of other people’s lives, too.” Well, I’ll say amen to that!
It has been just one storm after another dumping rain in a lot of parts of the country, including ours. We’ve had rivers going where no one remembers them ever going before. We had some people who were trapped in homes; homes that were rapidly filling up with water. And then the rescue helicopter came. Like one reporter said, “The only way out was up.”
I had the privilege recently of being on a mission in Romania. I was blown away by the story of the 1989 Revolution that toppled communism and gave them freedom. There was some incredible heroism there. I heard the story, for example, of a young man named Daniel. As people began to gather in the city square, they were defying the police, they were standing for freedom, and Daniel smuggled candles in under his coat. He lit one, and then he handed the others out. And pretty soon, the square was ablaze with the symbolism of all these candles in the night. Well, his fiancé was shot to death next to him as the police opened fire, and then he was shot and paralyzed for life—not able to walk. But man, you should hear his testimony! He says he has no regrets. He says, “I lit the first candle.” Man, that rocked me.
Well, Americans are in their every four years spectacle of electing a President. And it’s a pretty historic and unpredictable campaign. Former Arkansas Governor and former pastor, Mike Huckabee, who has wanted his party’s nomination, was asked in a debate, “What would Jesus do on this particular issue?” I loved his answer. He said, “Jesus was too smart to run for political office!” That’s the truth.
Our friend, Christy, said she’ll never eat at Burger King again—it has nothing to do with the food. That’s where the bombshell hit! That’s where her parents took her when she was twelve years old to tell her they were getting a divorce. Man, that is a bombshell! We felt those shockwaves in our own extended family.
It’s that time again when just one bolt of lightning or just a careless act can start one of those blazing wild fires we see in the news all the time. And you’re going to see those heroic fire fighters battling to save forests, and towns, and homes, and lives. And sometimes even losing their own life. I think one of the most heartbreaking stories I read about. This came from Washington State when a small brush fire suddenly exploded into this uncontrollable inferno and four young fire fighters died that day. They tried to escape by a nearby road. It turned out to be a dead end road.
It’s pretty exciting watching our five-year-old granddaughter playing her first games of soccer. We are already those like “nutso” family fans that I used to laugh at. Well, she’s good!
It rained in our area a few days ago like I thought it would never stop, and we’ve got a lot of low spots in our area. And they’re just not ready for like nearly a foot of rain in a day. I kept hearing news of vehicles that had been swept away on low water bridges. The weather man kept coming up with that saying, “Turn around—don’t drown.” Still, you know, people got in and they didn’t realize how deep it was and suddenly they were swept away.
I walked into my hotel room and turned on my television, and there was the news of another one of those horrible campus shootings. That’s really an all too-familiar scene. There were the students sobbing, there was a swarm of law enforcement people all over the place, and, you know, people carrying out stretchers with students on them.
Well, Oprah Winfrey’s online teaching spirituality now. More than 700,000 people have registered for her ten-week web seminar. It’s based on her fastest selling book she’s ever offered in her book club. It’s a spiritual self-help guide called A New Earth.
Well, Indiana Jones is back in one of the seasons big movies. He’s a little older, a little stiffer, a little slower like I am. But he’s doing what he always does—searching. It started with looking for the Ark of the Covenant, and he was younger then. And then there’s been other things he’s looked for as he got older, and he’s still looking for something with supernatural power. But then…aren’t we all?
I happened to be listening to XM Radio when the news broke, and every reporter who talked about it said how stunned they were. The governor of one of the largest states in the country had just been exposed as being involved with a prostitution ring. And it shocked us because this governor has come to prominence as a highly ethical crime fighter. In his press conference here’s what he said, “I have disappointed and I’ve failed to live up the standard I expected for myself.” Yeah, well who hasn’t?
I was watching the financial channel on TV, and it was one of those roller coaster days on Wall Street. I mean, the swing in the Dow Jones was incredible. And one guy—an old grizzled veteran—said, “Find something to hang onto, man!” Well, that’s actually good advice, because the ride is pretty fierce right now. I mean, gas prices are out of the roof, and there’s more people in danger of losing their homes than there has been in a long time, and it’s getting tough to get a loan, people are losing jobs.
OK, so I’m talking to somebody, I lose my train of thought, and I go, “What was I saying?” It’s so funny to look at their expression! They get this baffled look on their face—this embarrassed look—and they go, “I have no idea what you were talking about.” So you could count on one hand the number of times anyone knew what you were talking about.
Our teenage son had just been on his first date, and the next day he ran into his friends at the mall. And those guys wanted to know only one thing, “How much did you get off her?” That reveals the kind of manhood too many of us have bought. What makes you a man is conquest, buddy; conquering a woman, conquering in sports, conquering in business, or conquering in a relationship.
Man, I still remember the agony on my twelve-year-old son’s face when he came to me in a football practice holding his very badly broken arm. And I will never forget the excruciating pain as the doctor set that multiple break. Of course, he could have avoided that pain; just leave it broken…which would have left it dysfunctional for the rest of his life.
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