Most people want to get wax out of their ears. Well, in the ancient Greek myth of Ulysses, the title character put wax in his sailors’ ears. Why? Sirens! Not the fire truck kind, the beautiful women whose irresistible songs were luring sailors to their deaths on the rocks near their island. Ulysses played defense by having his men put wax in their ears to drown out the alluring tunes, and by having his men strap him to the mast so he couldn’t steer the ship in their direction. It worked!
During my first ski lesson, I fell down on the beginners' slope and I hurt the part of me that God designed for that purpose. Tragically, when actress Natasha Richardson fell on the bunny slope, she sustained a head injury that only hours later ended her life. It was an unlikely death; it was an untimely death. You know, five years ago, she said: "Every morning I wake up and think how lucky I am, probably because of fear, because it can all be gone in a moment." Well, it can for any of us.
We just had a big fire in our yard! Some recent storms did some major damage to our trees and left a trail of branches that looked like a battlefield. What once shaded and beautified our house ended up as a big fire in our yard.
Cindy called all the way from Alaska last night to ask for prayer. She has (called) a number of times (to ask for prayer), but this call brought some painful news. Cindy was the victim of a terrible sexual assault. Thankfully, she’s getting the appropriate counseling, but she, of course, really needs prayer. And as I prayed for her on the phone, I found myself praying this way: “Lord, help Cindy to never let this experience define who she is. ‘Rape victim’ is something awful that happened to her, Lord, but it’s not who she is.”
‘Tis the season for all those ominous red boxes all over the weather map. You know, the ”severe weather watch.” Every year around this time, there are some monster tornadoes that leave sudden death and destruction in their path. And always those survivor stories. like the mother and daughter near Oklahoma City whose whole house was blown away around them. But they walked out unscathed because they had one of those concrete rooms in their house, built to withstand twisters. They call it a safe room.
Apparently, I should be singing “Happy Birthday” several times a day to make sure I’m washing my hands enough. That’s what health experts are suggesting–that when you wash your hands, you do it for as long as it takes you to sing “Happy Birthday.” Whatever! But apparently the single best thing we can do to stay healthy is to wash our hands regularly and thoroughly. So happy birthday!
Baseball season was always a special time for me and my boys. We bonded, actually, playing baseball together, and I remember when I was first teaching my oldest son how to hit a ball. It was just a plastic Wiffle bat and ball in our backyard. And I pitched gently, but he was just chopping at it and missing. He had two strikes. I went over to him, coached him a little, took a few steps back to throw the ball, and said, “Hey, I know you’re going to hit it this time, man!” He whacked that ball into the neighbor’s yard. Do you know, years later, in a college class where they asked students about important memories from their childhood, that’s the day he told them about.
When I first heard about the TV series, “24,” I thought the idea was a non-starter. I mean, the entire season is about one day, with each show being one hour of that day. A dumb idea, I thought. Well, it shows how much I know. They’re several seasons in now, and the show continues to draw a strong audience. And for Jack Bauer, the hero, the entire season is about just one day.
A friend of ours has been watching the price of gold going up and up, and she decided it was time to trade in some gold jewelry for cash. She had some elegant looking pieces, and then one that she described as “really pretty ugly.” But the jeweler saw something different. The beautiful pieces brought some modest cash. The “ugly” one was worth more than any other piece. It didn’t look all that great on the outside, but when the jeweler weighed it, he said it was solid gold all the way through.
Not long ago, we had occasion to pass through Albuquerque, New Mexico. And I was reminded of a dear Native American friend, who is up in years and battling some physical problems. He told me that he views this part of his life as he does driving to Albuquerque. See, there’s this long climb to get to the top of this steep hill, and then suddenly, there it is: the beautiful lights of the city that you’ve wanted to get to.
They call them celebrity endorsements. You know, I see some athlete or celebrity in a commercial, using some product, and I’m supposed to think, “Hey, I like that guy. So I guess I’ll use their product.” Athletes, for example, can make major bucks from these endorsements. Here’s where the problem comes in. What if the guy you’ve associated with your product is suddenly associated with some not-so-nice behavior; like the Olympic star eating a certain cereal who was also allegedly photographed using marijuana? Oops! Or the singer with the chewing gum in his hand who suddenly is accused of not treating his girlfriend very well? Oops! That’s when endorsement turns to like embarrassment.
I heard it first from my baseball card collecting grandson: “Hear about A-Rod? He admitted using steroids.” He’s not the only 10-year-old boy to lock in on that news. And that’s not who you want to hear it from. Alex Rodriguez–three-time American League MVP, baseball’s highest paid player–admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs. And clouds again rolled in over Major League Baseball. He’s not the first, and probably not the last to have a giant question mark over a great career. How much was his ability, and how much was what he injected into his system?
If you’ve got gold fillings, your mouth may be worth more than ever. Yeah, in the crazy financial times we’re in, the value of gold is going through the roof! In recent days, it’s been going for over $1,000 an ounce at times. One bullion dealer says the reason is that “gold will always be there and always pay.” It’s been used as money as long as there’s been money. It resists rust and oxidation, and it can be used as money when paper money is worthless.
San Francisco Bay’s a beautiful place. Suddenly it was much less beautiful with more than 53,000 gallons of fuel oil spilling into the bay near the Bay Bridge. An oil tanker sideswiped one of the bridge’s support towers and that’s all it took to rupture the fuel tanks and create a spill that cost $70 million to clean up. The National Transportation Safety Board now says that one of the main causes was poor communication between the captain and the pilot.
I had just arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia to speak. And much to his surprise, I asked the cabbie to take me to the cemetery. I walked along this line of markers that all had the same date—April 15, 1912. That was the fateful day the Titanic went down. 1500 passengers died, only 700 survived. But most of the people buried in that cemetery did not have to die that night.
The dreaded day is upon us—income tax day—our day of reckoning with Uncle Sam. Many Americans will be burning the midnight oil, and accountants of course, are at the peak of their crazy season. You know, it is best to get this right, because you never know who Uncle is going to audit, right?
He’s an unlikely guy to be talking this way, but the message he delivered is one we need to hear. Penn Jillette is a comedian, a magician, a filmmaker, and he’s an atheist. Someone gave him a Bible recently, and his reaction was pretty unpredictable.
He was known as one of the most respected Indian chiefs of his time; he had this unblemished reputation for being totally loving toward his people, but also totally just when it came to judging those who did wrong. He was troubled that someone from their village had been stealing pelts from his people. He let it be known that the thief would be tied to a stake in the middle of the village when the sun was high and beaten with twenty lashes of the whip. And then he set a trap to catch the thief.
It’s amazing how two words can change everything. I said, “I do”…my life was never the same. How about the two words, “You’re fired.” Or those nice words, “You’re hired.” There’s so much power in two little words; especially when it comes to our eternal future.
It was my first international trip–10,000 miles from home. As I started down the concourse to my plane, I was looking at these three sad-faced little children waving at me and a wife who was doing her best to look brave for them. I managed to hold it together till I got around the bend where they couldn’t see me. Well, as sad as that parting was, we all could be encouraged by one fact, and it made all the difference. This wasn’t the end of our being together, it was just an interruption.
Well, it’s that time when tens of thousands of people repeatedly descend at one time, from all directions on these cylindrical structures with beautiful green grass inside. They’re called Major League baseball stadiums. They’re like these giant magnets, with invisible power to pull in all these people from all over to this one spot.
When we moved in my senior year, I lost my Christian cocoon. I’d had a good youth group, a Bible club, a lot of Christians. And then, man, I had none of the above. I was like the “Lone Christian.” And I was in this one class where the teacher challenged everything I believed, and now I was questioning things that I never really questioned before. What if we’d been raised in another culture? Would I have believed something else? Well, I really started digging into the evidence for myself, and I’ll tell you today the things I struggled with are the things I know are true beyond any shadow of a doubt.
It’s funny how you adapt pretty quickly to a new normal; like when we learned to live without electricity after a storm. The first day without power, we kept turning on useless light switches. Pretty soon we retrained ourselves; we didn’t bother with trying to turn on a light. A few days later, after we managed to get a generator going, my wife had to go to the other end of the house to check on something. She came back to the living room and said, “I can’t believe what I just did. I walked all the way through the house in total darkness, and I didn’t have to anymore!”
My Dad’s in heaven, but I know there are moments he must be looking down and laughing at his city boy son doing country boy things. Like helping a friend carry some lambs. I never did that before. As soon as I got each lamb in my arms, he just went like totally limp, like he had just surrendered to his fate. Made me think of another Lamb who’s come to mean the world to me.
April Fool’s Day has become frustrating for me. I have this mischievous side that loves to leave a trail of “gotcha’s” for people. Life is so busy, I just don’t have time for it anymore. It’s good news for my friends and family. I’m actually not sure any of us have the right to even call someone a fool. Of course, if Jesus does it, that person really is a fool…and He has.
Some years ago, we heard this explosion in our neighborhood. Turned out there was a transformer that blew up. And when the transformer goes, you’re life’s going to change for a little while. Up there above the house are those lines that carry hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity. In the house are things that need that electricity to run: the microwave, the toaster oven, the refrigerator, the computer. But that power in the wires is too hot for me to use. It would fry me and everything in the house. That’s where the transformer comes in; it brings all that massive power down to where I live—to where it can help do a lot of things that need doing.
For centuries, people had to live by the sun. Sun up, work like crazy to get things done while you can; sun down, sleep so you can wake up with the sun. Along came the electric light bulb—lit up the night. Not long ago, we had a taste of the old days. The storm knocked out our power and suddenly left us on sort of a survival basis. And when it got dark, it got dark. I learned that I had to divide my work into two categories: things you have to do while there’s light and things you can do when darkness closes in. Come about 4:30 in the afternoon, I got this real strong sense of urgency. Time’s running out, boy, work while you can.
I didn’t realize how spoiled I am. I walk into a dark room, I flip a switch, light! Until we had several days without electricity because of a storm, and suddenly, I’m walking through a pitch dark house. But my resourceful wife figured out a good way to keep me from either breaking furniture or my ankle. She put a flashlight on a lanyard so it was hanging around my neck, ready to provide some much needed light wherever I went in the house.
This was the date my Dad cried every year. It was the anniversary of the day my baby brother died when I was four years old. He was only six months old. One day he was smiling and he was healthy; the next day he was gone from something the doctors couldn’t even diagnose. My folks were crushed. Why would God send our family that little guy and then take him away after only six months? Lot of people have those kinds of “Why, God?” questions. I don’t have all the “why” about life’s hurts, but I’ve seen how God can use them.
Add new comment 
