I guess you could call it the two faces of Ian. See, Ian is a friend of mine who is the leader of a very effective youth ministry in New Zealand. And as you converse with him personally, well, it's obvious that he has a stutter. And sometimes it makes it difficult for him to complete his sentence, and I'm sure it's probably very frustrating for him. And while it's noticeable, it's not really that important to anybody. Actually he is a Godly, magnetic leader, stutter or not.
When I was in high school, I was a part of Youth For Christ's very active Bible Quiz program. Now, it was a long time ago, but I still remember a lot that I learned in studying books of the Bible in this highly competitive atmosphere.
During two visits to South Africa, I grew to love the people of that troubled country and its history too. It used to be British turf, except for the tribal lands of the great Zulu Warriors. And in 1879 the British army moved in under Lord Chelmsford, invaded Zulu land to claim it as a property for The Crown.
I realize now that I really wasn't ever going to make it as a tennis player. Oh, I played the most with my son. And, I think I had a decent serve for a beginner. But I had trouble returning my son's shots. Now, I think you'll agree that is a basic skill for succeeding in tennis. You do have to get it back to the other guy. Actually, that's important in a lot of sports. For example: volleyball; you lose the point when you can't return the shot; ping-pong; oh, you know, there are a lot of places where that's important. In fact, in most arenas returning the shot—well, that's an important skill to be cultivated. In one arena it's a skill to be eliminated.
On the first warm day of spring I can remember my son saying, "Ready for a little baseball, Dad?" Well, 'twas the season, although that early in the season we usually ended up stuck in the mud somewhere between home plate and first base. Now, he didn't ask about playing baseball if it was fall or winter. Now, he always had a like a strong sense of season. By the same token, the first cool day of late summer, of course, that brought a predictable question, "Ready for a little football, Dad?" This is the same son, of course, that got upset when he saw Christmas items up before Thanksgiving, or phone calls when he was studying or homework that you had to do on weekends. See, this kid had and actually still does have for that matter, a strong sense of what season it is, and there's actually a lot of sanity in living that way.
Well, as the years go by, we get more and more perspective on the presidency of Ronald Reagan. For example, people who were in his administration began writing books like crazy, telling everything they knew. And people, you know, have started to feel free to tell us what they saw, what they heard, especially behind the scenes.
My three kids once gave me the most unique gift. It was called The Terminator. It wasn't as bad as it sounds. It was this little black, plastic control device. It looked sort of like uh...that remote control switch for a television, and it had three buttons on it. One said Missile Launcher, and when you press that button, it was supposed to make the appropriate sound of a missile being fired and exploding. Then you had a button for Machine Gun. And that had the appropriate rat-a-tat-tat of a machine gun. And if all else failed, you had the Death Ray. That was the other button, and it made sort of a surreal type of sound that lets you know that you've got the ultimate weapon in your hand.
It's amazing what a difference a camera can make. Some years ago there was a very popular TV series that lasted for years and kept getting reincarnated, pioneered by a guy named Allen Funt. Now he was pretty well known in his time, and the reason he became well known was one thing. He became the creator of a program called Candid Camera. And he proved the principal over and over again, that the camera can make a big difference. See, he would prove that people do these dumb little things totally unaware that the nation was watching. If they knew that, they never would have done what Allen Funt tricked them into doing. Course, the results of clicking cameras aren't always amusing. Incriminating photos can bring down a presidential candidate or a Christian leader and they have. You can imagine the photographer's victims saying, "If I'd only known they were recording this." Well, why don't you assume they are?
Some years ago for my wife's birthday, she was given a gift of dinner at a restaurant that is themed to look like an Air Force base during World War II. So we went out to dinner because it was a gift and we had a great time, and everybody there kind of gets into the atmosphere.
Most of us urban or suburban type husbands don't go out with a bow and arrow to bring in our family's dinner. That was in the good old days where Dad went hunting for dinner. Instead, we go to a shop, or an office, or some such place and we get a paycheck. Then we turn it over to the grocery store.
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