Our local high school football players survived grueling triple practice sessions one summer. Our sons were on the team, and I know. But you know what? It was then off season, and I noticed then that several of them were going for a relatively simple one-mile run. I mean, simple compared to those triple sessions. Well, when they got back, they were totally wiped out, they were gasping for breath, they were sore, they were exhausted. My son was among them, and he summed up what he learned that day. He kind of collapsed in the car when I picked him up after the little run, and he said, "You know, dad, it doesn't take long to get out of condition." Well, he's right—especially when it comes to your heart.
Sometimes if you're a commercial flyer, it's probably best if you don't watch the news. There was that whole string of plane incidents that where suddenly one had a hole in the roof, and then they found cracks in other planes like it after that. Oh yeah, and then there was the plane with the bullet hole in it. Yeah, that was right about that time.
I was on an airplane flight and I overheard a conversation in the seats behind me. Okay, I eavesdropped on the conversation behind me. All right! In any case, there was this little boy flying with his Dad and he was full of questions...the little boy that is. He said, "Daddy, what are all those lights for? Daddy, why did part of the wing go down? Daddy, why is it called Lake Erie?" See, the pilot told us the name of it, but he didn't necessarily tell us why.
Parenting is not a precise science, you might say; you don't just mix certain ingredients and get a certain reaction. In fact, it's largely experimental. But after a while you learn more creative ways to do what is right. Now you can yell, you can overpower, you can threaten them until they're bigger than you are. Or you can work through the method I came to call "The Squeeze." It's a method that steers a child to the right choice. It's also known as "The Lousy Choice" approach.
I didn't realize all the things that our uncle pays for. I mean, Uncle Sam, that is. Well, you know again, a while back they were talking about a government shutdown. It's happened before; it will probably happen again when there's political deadlock in Washington. But as they talked about it, they started to reveal all the things that wouldn't happen if the government shut down; all the people and the services that would feel the pain if Uncle Sam didn't get some money. For example, it looked like America's military and government workers might not get paid, and they're doing more things for us than we ever realized, and they wouldn't be seeing their paycheck on time. It looked like even our National Parks were going to be affected. Can you imagine Smokey the Bear not getting paid?
One severe weather system behind us, another one coming. Yeah, well, that's like spring living in Tornado Alley. Uh-huh... You know, I can look at our children and know that they are going to have, when those warnings go up, probably young children in bed with them before the night is over. And I can probably count on the fact that l will be waking up during the night to the annoying alarm on our weather radio and that robotic voice of NOAA radio. But that's OK. There's a reason all those weather guys strongly urge you to have one of those life-saving radios. And why I strongly urge me to respond when the warning comes!
Over the years in campus ministry, I always put on a special push to reach football players, because, you know, they're pretty strategic people on campus. And there was one event that football players always enjoyed. We called it "The Great Cheerleader Put-On." What we would do is we'd invite in four cheerleaders and then four football players to be their coaches. You say, "What? Coaches for what?" Well, we brought in most of the pieces of football gear: shoulder pads, knee pads, hip pads, helmet. And then we wanted to see which cheerleader could get fully dressed in a football uniform first.
A lot of people I know of have friends in Joplin, Missouri. So you can imagine that they have been feeling the unimaginable devastation and loss from that huge tornado there on a personal level. And it's always that way when a disaster has a face; it's not just a story on the news.
World events? I mean, even the ones as tragic and dramatic as Japan's quake, and tsunami, and nuclear emergency. Well, they tend to get pushed off the front page by the next big story. And these days, it looks like there's a next big story just about every day.
Twice in a little over a year we were stunned by news of major earthquakes, and the images we won't soon forget. But they were in two very different parts of the world. The first one was in Haiti. When the ground was finished shaking...well, you remember. The homes, the businesses, even their President's palace were in total rubble. The second quake hit Japan, and for those areas that didn't get the tsunami—just got hit by the quake—most of their homes and businesses were left standing. What's the difference? The materials their structures were made of. You know, a quake has a way of exposing the strength or the weakness of what you're building on.
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