One night last month, the ice fell and our power went off. Little did we know that our lives would be very different from that moment through the next 10 days. The basics of living suddenly became much harder: keeping warm, keeping fed, staying safe, having light, keeping clean, having water. With power lines and trees down across the area, just maintaining everyday life at our house became like a full-time job. Usually, my life is full of almost non-stop ministry activity, but an inch of ice changed all that for a few days. My world became our powerless home and a yard that looked like a battlefield. Finally, we were able to drive the few miles to town. I had broken out! And suddenly it dawned on me, I’d allowed all our battles of maintaining to give me something I had never experienced before: a bunker mentality.
At a recent ministry event, I found a good friend of ours sitting on the floor with our three-year-old grandson, showing him how to flex his muscles. That wasn’t the best part. He taught him a little routine that our little guy has been repeating several times a day. He flexes his left bicep (such as it is), and says “Thunder!” Followed by flexing his right bicep, then “Lightning!” Followed by kissing each bicep. ”Thunder! Lightning!”
I couldn't resist buying these two little stuffed bears for my wife for Valentine's Day. You hit the on button and they are drawn to each other with puckered lips and they kiss. Now, there’s a reason they can’t help being attracted to each other; they’ve got magnets inside. So do you.
Okay, I’m a creature of habit. I love light. I walk into a room, and I instinctively flip the light switch on even when we’re in the middle of days with a power outage, which we were recently. So here I am, absent-mindedly flipping light switches and finding the room as dark as before. Those switches made it look like there was light, except suddenly they weren’t connected to the power.
It’s time for March Madness again. You say, “What? Late Spring insanity?” No, if you’re a sports fan, you know it’s time for the exciting national basketball tournament that pits America’s best college teams against each other and ultimately crowns the national champion. Every year, some of the predictable giants are there. But also, a few of those underdog or “Cinderella” teams; schools that a lot of people have never heard of and few expected to be there for what they call “the dance.” And sometimes those underdogs surprise everyone.
The pastor got up to the pulpit one Sunday and made an unusual announcement: “I’ve got some bad news, some good news and some bad news for you.” He had everybody’s attention. He said, “The bad news is the roof on the church is shot; it’s got to be replaced. The good news is we have the money. The bad news is it’s in your wallets!”
We were out of town for a few days, but our friend Rick was at our house, working on a handyman list that my wife had left him. She could have given me the list, but I’d still be trying to figure out how to screw in the first doorknob. But when we got home, I had an exciting tour just walking through the house. Dysfunctional doors, deteriorating flooring, locks, several things that weren’t working—they were all working! I said, “You can tell Rick’s been here. Everywhere I go, things that were broken are fixed.”
I love the cedar tree in front of our house. But this past winter, I thought we’d lose the old boy for sure. There was a heavy onslaught of ice and sleet and snow, and it bent those branches to the ground. A few broke off, but that tree was hanging low like it was going down. Wrong! A few days later, he was standing strong again, looking like nothing had ever happened.
It wasn’t easy for Brian to talk about. He confided struggling with his sexual identity, and as we talked, the conversation became less about that and more about the relationship between a father and son. All of Brian’s brothers are jocks–like his Dad. Brian doesn’t fit the mold. He’s more into music and drama and art. No less male, just different. Dad has struggled to know how to love a son who’s so different from him and his other sons. And Brian thinks that what he’s ultimately looking for is a father’s love.
Someone told me there had been a plane crash in the Hudson River near New York City. And I flipped on TV, expecting to hear about the inevitable casualties and even fatalities. Amazingly, the 155 passengers on Flight 1549 were all safe with no major injuries. In spite of the fact that a double bird hit forced the crew into an emergency landing where millions of people live. But Captain Chesley Sullenberger, Sully for short, did what his co-pilot said no commercial airlines pilot had ever done–successfully ditch his plane. Like Central Casting picked him for the part. He has incredible experience as a fighter pilot, a glider pilot, a crash investigator and an airline captain. From the White House to the Super Bowl, he’s been hailed as a hero. They had the right man at the controls that day.
There was a time when the woman who’s First Lady was checking out this skinny law student named Barack Obama. He was interested in Michelle, but she wanted to know what he was really like. So she asked her basketball coach brother to get Barack into a pickup ballgame. Not to see how good his ball skills were, but to see what kind of person he was. Well, the real guy does tend to surface in the intensity of sports. Did this Obama guy hog the ball? How did he handle cheap shots? Did he nit-pick fouls? The scouting report must have come back OK; you know the rest of the story.
One inch of ice—that’s all it took to totally shut down our area for days. It looked like a battlefield with poles and trees and wires down everywhere. We were some of the 100,000 people who were without power for days; actually nine days in our case. You know, it didn’t really matter what any of us had planned for that week. God changed all our plans.
Here’s a strange headline: “Birds bring down plane.” But that’s exactly what happened to US Air Flight 1549 out of New York—the plane that had to ditch in the Hudson River with 155 people aboard. Some geese flew into the plane’s engines, and it started going down. Something relatively small had the power to bring down something that big. That’s true for planes; that’s true for people.
It’s getting to be that time of year in much of America where the weather really can’t make up its mind. You can get a blizzard, you can get balmy and everything in between. But there’s that growing anticipation of what you know is coming, maybe soon, maybe a little later. But one day pretty soon, Spring is going to pop out. When we were living in New Jersey, I knew the day Spring began for me. One day I saw bushes along the highway. The next day, suddenly, those bushes were covered with yellow forsythia flowers. Of course, they didn’t really happen suddenly; they’d been getting ready to come for a long time. Spring had been coming for a while, even though it was invisible to me.
Honestly, it was one of the most disgusting stories I’ve heard in the news for a long time, and I wouldn’t want to spread it if it didn’t make an important point. A young woman is auctioning off her virginity on the Internet to pay for her education. The bidding is now up to 3.4 million dollars.
I’ve got to be careful here. Some of my Oklahoma football fan friends might be listening. I’m about to say something nice about Tim Tebow, Florida State’s quarterback. They just beat Oklahoma in an exciting game for the national championship. Tim Tebow was named Offensive MVP. He passed the ball, he ran the ball in the same championship way that won him the 2007 Heisman Trophy. But after the convincing victory he led in the championship game, they showed the comments he made after his team’s only defeat of the season. And I thought it revealed the heart of a champion. Tim Tebow told the press that this loss was going to make him push himself and his team to become better than they’d ever been. The result is the trophy they took home from the big game.
This past Christmas, they were telling us that gift cards might not be a great idea. Hey listen! It’s fun going into your favorite store with someone else’s money to spend. The problem in these financially unpredictable times: you can’t be sure the store will be there when you go to cash in your card. There’s been fear that some well-known stores just might not make it and might not be there to back up the card that somebody bought from them.
Little Kaitlin was one of what they call “the lost girls of China”—abandoned by her mother because of a government policy that restricts families to one child. When Kaitlin was just a week old, her mother left her in a basket where she knew she would be found quickly. That precious little girl spent her first year in a nursery with about 20 other babies, bundled in blankets year-round because of the lack of heat and eating the limited food that the orphanage had available. Then something happened that changed her life forever. A couple came from 10,000 miles away, at great expense, and adopted her into their family. She just turned five, and believe me, she’s not an orphan anymore. She belongs!
It’s great having our whole family together—and really loud! We were in one of those three-ring circus moments in our living room with all the kids playing enthusiastically shall we say. I couldn’t hear myself think! I was holding our little four-month-old grandson. He was trying to process all this chaos going on around him. Well, with my mouth near his ear, I just started singing a soft little tune that I’ve sung to my children, and now to my grandchildren. Our little guy just totally relaxed and he fell asleep in the middle of it in spite of all the craziness going on around him.
Our new President reportedly has a favorite superhero. It’s not Superman; it’s not Batman. It’s Spider-Man! In case you don’t know the story, Spider-Man is actually a young man named Peter Parker. Peter’s a sort of geeky teenager who gets bitten by a radioactive spider and suddenly acquires superhuman, spiderlike qualities. Now for a while, Spider-Man was just a comic book. Now he’s been the hero of three very big, blockbuster movies. Please don’t judge me for this, but there are a couple of lines in the Spider-Man story that made me stop and think. With all his new powers, he realizes he can really make a difference, and his beloved uncle tells him, “With great power comes great responsibility.” And then Peter Parker’s provocative announcement: “For me to live an ordinary life is no longer an option.”
I’ve been on airplanes where we had an emergency landing, but at least we had a runway to land on. When a flock of birds disabled the engines of US Air Flight 1549 as it was taking off from New York, there was no way their powerless plane could find a runway. In what the Governor of New York called “the miracle on the Hudson”, that plane landed intact on the Hudson River. And amazingly, all 155 on board got off safely, thanks in large part, to the people who converged on that fallen plane to rescue them including men in business suits and other commuters who were heading home on commuter ferry boats. They weren’t professional rescuers, but they were where the people in danger were, and as one Fox News anchor said, “Ordinary people became first responders.”
Some people relive memories on New Year's Eve; some people make memories. But this past New Year's Eve, some people actually shredded their memories. New Yorkers and tourists were invited to bring bad memories from the old year to Times Square to be shredded. Some wrote "the stock market" or "cancer" on the piece of paper they shredded. One Yankees fan destroyed a poster of New York's longtime rival, the Boston Red Sox! One lady who shredded her boyfriend's e-mail telling her he was breaking up with her said, "This is the perfect way to move on from a bad year and a bad experience."
Don't you just love it when one of your coworkers comes in coughing and sneezing all over? Thank you for sharing, pal! There’s recent research that there are some happy germs that people spread around, too. One article said: "We can catch happiness from friends and family members like an emotional virus. The research shows that every happy person in your social network increases your own chance of cheer by 9% and those effects can last up to one year. When someone gets happy, that person's friend experiences a 25% increased chance of becoming happy, and at least two more friends will be affected—happy germs!
Even with all the scandals we hear about on the news, I thought this one was particularly stunning: the governor of a large state, arrested by the U. S. Attorney for what he described as "a corruption crime spree." The charges included allegations of seeking bribes in choosing someone to fill President Obama's Senate seat, bribes for state jobs and contracts, attempting to intimidate a newspaper into firing reporters who were critical of him. This one seemed really over the top!
Our two-year-old granddaughter had just arrived with her parents for a Christmas visit, and within minutes, I found her wandering through the house with the cardboard center tube from a wrapping paper roll in her hand and a concerned look on her face. And I said, "What are you doing, honey?" She said, "I'm looking for my sheep." Well, the cardboard tube had just become a shepherd's staff. I knew one of our Nativities had some little plastic sheep in it, so I led my little shepherd girl there. She picked up one of those lambs and ran back to Mommy and Daddy, all smiles, and she joyfully announced, "I found my lost sheep!" You know something? That little girl has the heart of Jesus.
It's President Obama's turn now to try to bring lasting peace to the Middle East. As recent events have demonstrated again, it's always a matter of time before the Middle East explodes again. Near the end of his presidency, here's what President Bill Clinton said: "The Middle East is where God is reminding us every day that we are not in control."
When you buy your kids or grandkids toys these days, you'd better be sure you have batteries. They're usually not included and the toys usually require them. My daughter pointed out to me recently a helpful little feature some of her kids' toys have. It’s an indicator that their battery is low. She said, "It’s too bad people don't have that." I said, “That’s a thought worth pursuing.” So I will.
With Valentine's Day coming, I got to thinking about one of the greatest days of my life. It was the day my honey committed her life to me at our wedding. Now the pastor who married us actually apologized to me before we left the church that night. Not for marrying us, but for being too busy to give us marriage counseling. He said, "You know, the pastor who married us did the same thing. But just before we left for our honeymoon, he gave me three words of counseling. I’m going to give them to you. Beginning tonight and every day, put her first.” That pretty much says it.
My wife and I met at a Christian college, so we weren't candidates for the common disease people caught during our last year there. They called it Senior Panic. A lot came there, hoping to find Miss or Mr. Right. I mean, if you can't find him or her at this great Christian school, where are you going to find one? Now you're a senior, and you're still unattached! That's where Senior Panic set in, "I'm never going to be married if I don't get someone soon!" And there was a tendency to do whatever it took to get someone or to settle for whoever you could get. Isn't someone better than no one?
I found a way to get the whole family together on a winter night years ago. Just turn down the thermostat, build a fire in the living room fireplace, and pretty soon they’re all in the living room. It was the only warm place. Especially our youngest son, he loved those fires. What if I came home one day and I said, "Son, I smell smoke in your room. How come?" And he goes, “Well, Dad, I love fire. I built one in my room." No, no, no! There’s no fireplace! We got trouble, man! When you keep the fire in the fireplace, you get wonderfully warm. When you take the fire out of the fireplace, you get terribly burned.
Add new comment 
