I don't talk about it much. I don't want people putting me on a pedestal or asking for autographs. But the fact is that I was the champion of our county's 8th grade spelling bee. I even got a trophy.
Can't find the trophy though. I think the last time I saw it, it was broken. That's the problem with trophies. Just ask the University of Alabama football team. They won it all this year - including the national champion trophy. It's a $30,000 Waterford crystal football. Well, it was.
We know about the iceberg. And the lifeboats. Even the wreckage and debris two miles under the ocean.
But with a blockbuster movie and all the Titanic TV specials, we probably won't be hearing about the lists. Not the first, second and third class passenger lists from when the voyage began. But the two lists that emerged when the Titanic went down. As it turns out, the only lists that mattered.
There's just something about the Titanic. Yes, the ship sank - but it seems our fascination with it is unsinkable. And that includes me.
So many stories. So many life lessons. But in the many moving stories of that horrible, haunting night, there's one that just blows me away. One passenger - John Harper. A man whose life and choices during those three fateful hours still give me goosebumps.
John Harper was a Scottish pastor...a widower with a six-year-old daughter...a man who'd been invited to preach at Chicago's prestigious Moody Memorial Church. It was April 1912. And it just so happened that a ship - the new world wonder, named Titanic, was sailing for America. John Harper booked passage for himself, along with his daughter Nina and her aunt.
Sometimes the Bible makes me laugh out loud. This past weekend, reading the Easter story, it happened again.
They're about to bury Jesus in a borrowed tomb. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, issues this command to his soldiers: "Make it as secure as you know how" (Matthew 27:65 ).
That has to be - at least in retrospect - the dumbest order in history.
Use a really big rock. Put on a really strong seal. Post some really intimidating guards.
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We know about the iceberg. And the lifeboats. Even the wreckage and debris two miles under the ocean.
There's just something about the Titanic. Yes, the ship sank - but it seems our fascination with it is unsinkable. And that includes me.
Sometimes the Bible makes me laugh out loud. This past weekend, reading the Easter story, it happened again.
