December 5, 2019

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Amy Biehl was 26 years old, and she really wanted to make a difference. Her graduate studies took her to South Africa in the turbulent days when the repressive system of apartheid was coming down and that nation's first all-race elections were approaching. She actually helped develop voter registration programs to help black South Africans participate in a system that up until then had always shut them out. She was driving three black coworkers back to the township where they lived. Suddenly a group of youths pelted her car with stones and forced it to stop. Dozens of young men surrounded the car and they started chanting, "One settler - one bullet! One settler - one bullet!" They pulled Amy from the car, hit her with a brick, beat her, and stabbed her in the heart. During that attack her black friends were yelling that she was a friend to black South Africans, all to no avail. Amy died from her wounds.

December 4, 2019

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Oh, I love this time of year! I love the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting. When I watched it a couple of years ago, you know, it was as always, heartwarming to watch those lights come on in the middle of the city where I spent so much ministry time.

And actually there was some good news coming from that big Christmas tree. Oh, we had the obligatory "bubble gum" songs about Santa and snow and toys. But I was impressed with the fact that Jesus was there, too. That particular year there were some beautiful presentations of "Silent Night" and "Away in a Manger" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." There actually were a few relatively holy moments in the middle of all that New York glitz.

December 3, 2019

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It was one of those nightmare days, trying to get a flight out of Chicago's O'Hare Airport. Some thunderstorms actually sent flight schedules into chaos for about 24 hours. You know what that means. Two hundred flights were cancelled that day, a lot more were delayed, and thousands of people were scrambling to find a way to get to where they needed to go...including me. Finally, I just gave up on trying to get out that day and I reserved one of the last seats available the next morning for the city where I was supposed to be speaking. Well, 7:00 A.M. the next morning my coworker and I were in our seats for a full flight. The engine was running - it seemed like we were ready to go. Until the cockpit came on and made this announcement, "Uh, folks, we've encountered one problem this morning. We can't find a captain for this flight." What? Oh, great! No captain! We're not going anywhere, folks! Well, thankfully, a captain finally came, and we finally got there!

December 2, 2019

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Oh, you can see it at an airport. You can see it in a conference. You can see it whenever people are in a new place. Right away they're looking for a plug. Yeah, you know why? Because we all have cell phones. That's why. And because those cell phones don't run forever. And it's not a good thing when you really need to communicate with somebody and that thing has a battery that's dying. So we're all trying to recharge the battery. I sometimes think I'm like that. We all are like that. Wouldn't it be nice if people could plug in and get recharged like one of those batteries? I think it's called a night's sleep probably. Well, I can't allow my cell phone to be dead. There's too much going on in this ministry, so I need to put that little phone down sometimes, plug it into recharge so it's good to go again.

November 29, 2019

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Amy Carmichael was one of India's most heroic missionaries, and a woman whose life continues to inspire a lot of people today. She has written some inspiring words, but none more inspiring than her account of a scene she saw in her mind one sleepless night as she agonized over the people around her who didn't have a relationship with Jesus. She saw herself standing on the edge of a sheer cliff that dropped off into this dark and seemingly bottomless space. She described the people who were moving steadily toward that edge. She saw a blind woman plunge over the cliff with a baby in her arms and a child holding onto her dress. Streams of people began to come from all directions; all of them blind.

November 28, 2019

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I think our granddaughter was about nine years old when she came home from school and said, "Mommy, Daddy, my favorite holiday, I know what it is. It's Thanksgiving." And they asked her why that is. Well, her daddy is our son and her mommy is Native American, so she came in with a unique perspective on Turkey Day. She said, "I love Thanksgiving because I'm a Pilgrim and an Indian!"

November 27, 2019

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You've probably been speeding down the highway as I have at times, and all of a sudden you'll come to a construction area that says, "Slow down - 35 mph." So everyone, of course, slows down by two or three miles an hour. They're down to 57 now or something like that. And then you'll see as you get a little more into the construction area these words, "Be prepared to stop." Well, I don't want to be prepared to stop. I don't know if you're like me, but I calculate how many miles I've got to go, how long it's going to take. Let's see, "Sixty miles - sixty minutes." Something like that. I don't want to be prepared to stop. I'm prepared to do the speed limit. Sometimes we live our whole lives that way. We're speeding too fast to stop.

November 26, 2019

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Some of our most memorable vacation moments as a family have been spent on the beautiful Outer Banks of North Carolina. It hasn't always been beautiful for ships that were navigating those treacherous shoals that are off the shores of the Outer Banks. It's estimated that over 2,000 ships have gone down there over the centuries. But a lot more lives could have been lost if it hadn't been for the Cape Hatteras Light, one of the most famous lighthouses in America. Its octagonal tower rises massively above the beach and the sand hills, and it's been the guiding light that's kept many ships from going aground. It's stood there for nearly two centuries. Imagine the storms that she's weathered; including more than a hundred hurricanes! Storms that blew away so many other structures, but the lighthouse still stands.

November 25, 2019

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The Titanic couldn't miss that iceberg. These days, you can't miss the Titanic. Ever since they found the unsinkable ship where it sank two and a half miles beneath the sea, there's been a rekindled fascination with the Titanic. As they have studied the wreckage with the latest underwater technology, they've discovered some surprising new information about what happened to the grandest ocean liner in history. It was the equivalent of four city blocks in length! Now most people have probably pictured the Titanic plowing into this huge iceberg and opening up a gaping hole in it. But now we know that the Titanic basically just sideswiped that iceberg; in fact, many passengers didn't even know anything had happened. And it wasn't some gaping hole that sank the unsinkable ship. It was what one newspaper called, "small wounds that doomed the Titanic." There were six relatively small punctures in the hull - "pin pricks" according to a TV special on the subject. Here's a ship that was 95,000 square feet in size, and it was sunk by little leaks that one article said, all put together, would have been about 12 square feet - about the size of a door!

November 22, 2019

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Yeah, my wife was always this way, I'm this way. We're some of those psychos called marathon drivers. Now I know long-haul truckers have to do it for a living. But sometimes, you know, I've been known to choose to do it, just because, well, we wanted to get somewhere quickly. Of course, like most men, I like to be the one driving, sometimes for longer than I should. My wife would always tell me that our lives start to be in danger from the time I would start rubbing my right leg while I'm driving. Now, what does that have to do with it? Apparently, that's the first tip-off I'm going to sleep soon. So she would gently offer to drive and I would, of course, refuse. She'd offer several other times to drive, and then I would start doing a workout at the wheel. And then I would turn on some obnoxious radio station at full volume. Then I would open the window to let in the 20-below wind chill. Finally, just before we're just about to become a National Safety Council statistic, I would grudgingly pull over to the side of the road. We would change seats, and I would be out before we could start the car again.