Some years ago, I took my second trip on behalf of a youth ministry to South Africa. Now, on the first trip, I remember how very lost I felt when I got to the airport. I'd been on an airplane for 18 hours, I got there late at night, I had no car, I had no directions. I didn't know anything about anywhere in the nation of South Africa.
You know, I'm just not used to news reporters referencing the Book of Revelation. But, I've heard some of them doing it fairly recently. These aren't ordinary times. These people have been referring to statements in the Bible about things like earthquakes and disasters; references to what the Bible calls "the last days." I mean, you think about what's been going on in our world, and in nature, and in governments, and you can understand why people are starting to think Bible a little bit. You know, the Bible talks about these last days—the last days of human history—the days before the personal return of Jesus Christ who will change things forever.
Oh, when the auditor leaves from our annual audit, man, our administrative team is high-fivin'. Partly because, well, again we got a clean audit this past year, and our ministry's been blessed with that year after year, and partly it's just because it's over! They worked pretty hard to be ready for all the things the auditor wanted to check out.
Well, it was my first overseas trip. I mean trip. Ten thousand miles to Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and there we were at Kennedy Airport. Me, my wife, our three young children facing three weeks of Daddy being gone. We'd never had that before. That's a long time when you're a little kid. Actually, it's a long time when you're the Daddy of some little kids. Well, I headed down the jet way, and I smiled and waved goodbye. Rounded the bend to the plane and then I wasn't smiling.
My son used to sleep and drink and eat football; especially eat. You should have seen him after a game. He was a sophomore lineman, and he played with great intensity. John was one of his teammates. John was, let's say, a hard-living kid who had sampled a little bit of everything. And John knew that my son was a Jesus follower. Well, John came to him after the first week of football practice and he said, "Hey, Hutch! I thought you were a holy man!" My son said, "Well, yeah, what do you mean?" John said, "Well if you're a holy man, how come you hit so hard?" Well, John right there was speaking volumes about what our world thinks Christian manhood is all about and he was wrong.
I think the images of that horrific earthquake in Haiti will be with us for a long, long time. For a while there we were looking for any hope we could get, because it was just all about so much death and disaster. You remember that when it seemed that no one else could still be alive in all those collapsed buildings, a boy thought he heard a voice from the rubble of a bank building. The husband of a woman who worked there had been frantically trying to find his wife. When the boy told that man about what he had heard, that husband went for a nearby rescue team from California. And they found her! Buried deep in there, and they found her singing. Over a week after that quake leveled much of Port-au-Prince, a woman was still alive. And when she wasn't singing, they said she was praying, "Jesus, help me! Jesus, help me!" And when they brought out this miracle lady, yep, she just kept on singing. Actually loudly, the rescuers said.
I once met a man with a painful illness, and actually we were in a very beautiful place. He owns a charming inn and it's furnished in every room with this great antique collection. It's quite a place to stay. Let's call him Art. Now, his inn is probably one of the most highly praised inns in the country, and it's not just another place to stay. I mean it gets rave reviews in every tourist book you read.
When I was in the jungles of Ecuador, I was more than happy to have a guide who knew his way. Even though the jungle was pretty jungley (is that a word?), at least we had a little path to follow. That wasn't the case for a pioneer missionary I heard about. He had a long journey through some very thick jungle ahead of him. When he came to the village on the edge of that jungle, he was happy to find a man who was willing to guide him for the rest of the trip.
The summer of '88 might seem like a long time ago, but man, it left an indelible mark on Yellowstone National Park. Forest fires ravaged our national treasure. As you know, it left behind thousands of acres of charred landscape, displaced animals, dead animals. In fact, the fire almost reached that famous geyser called Old Faithful. It came very, very close to it.
Since I was three times a parent, I had to learn something about motivating kids to study. And that's not an easy job; it doesn't come naturally to most of us to want to just sit down and study. But I learned that there are a number of incentives. There are scholarships, threats, rewards, privileges, impassioned speeches. But I've also noticed that there are two words that motivate faster study than anything I know. Those words are "Final Exam."
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