Friday, October 7, 2016

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I've got a friend who travels with me on a lot of my trips; actually, just about all of them. And I depend on him a lot. It's my clock radio. See, if he doesn't get me up in the morning, I make a lot of people very unhappy. Since he's battery-operated, I'm glad there's a display on there that shows when the batteries are nearing death. The other day, as I set my alarm on my first night home from a long trip, I noticed the big "E" flashing at me. That means it was time to replace the batteries. And I did, with brand new batteries of course. But after I closed it up, the radio was still dead. Hmmm. New batteries, all put in properly, dead radio. A mystery. A mystery solved when I opened up the back of the radio and took a good look at those batteries. See, one of them had a tiny piece of plastic on its positive pole, and it was simply interfering with the connection. I remove that, "Hello, things are working again!"

Thursday, October 6, 2016

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My friend Don was a wonderful family doctor. But some of the greatest moments of his life were spent, not in a doctor's office, but on the river-preferably a river with some very challenging white water. He's a veteran kayaker and river rafter-with some fascinating tips for us folks who don't have his experience. He told me that, as a teenager, during his first days on the river, he was amazed to see canoes and kayaks just ‘hanging out' in the middle of these raging rapids. Then he learned the secret of this amazing feat, There are quiet eddies behind some of the big rocks in the rapids. And those canoeists and kayakers had found a place to rest in the very turbulent waters-behind a big rock.

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

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In my early days of trying to figure out the world of computers, my friends would shake their heads. Sometimes they still do today, because I guess I could be a special challenge in the techy stuff. I mean, in the early days, someone saw me turning off my computer without going through all the steps you're supposed to. I didn't know until they told me that day. Probably my friend was shaking their head as they watched me. He showed me how to bring up on my screen an option called "shutdown". When you activate the shutdown mode, the computer displays a special shutdown screen that stays on while the internal shutdown work is going on. Then, suddenly, your computer is off. Well, when I asked my technically normal friend what shutdown mode was, he gave me a simple answer, knowing my techno-dork limitations. He said, "Your computer is cleaning out a lot of junk that's accumulated in there; any unfinished business from whatever commands it's been given since the last shutdown." Oh, that sounds good to me. Now I never end what I'm doing without going through shutdown mode. Neither should you.

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

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When you eat in a hurry you sometimes leave some traces of the meal on your face, and you sort of wear your food. There are some crumbs maybe, or some tomato sauce, or this little spot of chocolate. Of course, you don't know it.

Now I have to eat on the run a lot of times, and that means sometimes you might be able to tell. Of course, I don't mean to carry it around with me. I mean, you know, my wife or my son in the past have told me that, "You know, you've got food on your face!" Well, I want to tell you it's embarrassing to hear, but I need to hear it. Of course I don't always say "thank you" to them. Sometimes I'll just say, "Oh, yeah, you know, I'm saving it for later." Yeah, right! Which doesn't seem to please them, but I have to say that I do clean it up after someone points it out to me. Of course, if I'm not looking my best, I'd rather hear it from someone who cares about me, right?

Monday, October 3, 2016

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I've done my whole adult life with my Karen, the only woman I've ever needed. Suddenly, I have to figure out how to do the rest of my life without her. That Sunday night, we sat in the bleachers at our local football stadium and we watched our grandson graduate from high school as valedictorian and giving a faith-filled valedictory message. Monday afternoon, she was gone. Wrapped in this huddle of sobs with our three adult children, I just choked out the words, "It hurts so bad." It really does.

Friday, September 30, 2016

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If you're a frequent flyer, as I have been in the past, they give you frequent flyer miles that eventually add up to a free ticket. Well, they give their really frequent flyers a few fringe benefits. The benefits aren't quite what they used to be, but like sometimes you can do early boarding. When one of our leaders and I were flying a lot together, it helped if we could board early. Because we could kind of get set up for a lot of work to get done on the flight. Now, he didn't have all the miles I did, but the boarding agents were pretty nice to him, because he boarded with me. My ticket, well, it has this special stamp that would indicate my high-mileage status. And on one occasion, they actually offered early boarding to us guys that they see all the time. They took my ticket and then he was following right behind me. He said, "I'm with him. Is that OK?" Yep. We went together.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

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"Should I call her, Dad?" That was a common question as our boys were teenagers. Like most boys their age, they were unsure of what kind of response they would get from a certain girl. I can remember at that same stage staring at the phone for 45 minutes and thinking of the most suave way possible to start that conversation. But no matter how prepared I was, when I heard her voice, I would just kind of croak out "hello." Now there were a couple of girls I just picked up the phone and called, no problemo. It was the same with my sons. They were these rare girls who just knew how to make a guy feel, well, safe.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

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It's always hard to lose someone you love. It's especially hard when it's a child. I had friends who lost their precious granddaughter, Amy. Two years old; went to sleep with a little cold and a little fever. By the end of the night, Amy was gone from a cause, well it was still a medical mystery. As I talked with the family at the visitation, of course there was deep grief, but there was also a little comfort from something beautiful that happened right before Amy went to sleep that night. Her mother began singing "Jesus Loves Me" to her and little Amy sang along with her. Her last words, "Jesus loves me, this I know." And then she was with Him.

Monday, September 26, 2016

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I don't know if you've ever driven across the United States, but it's something you want to think twice about. I mean, it's a long haul. How about riding a bicycle across the United States? That's what my friend Scott did when he was a college student with a group called Wandering Wheels. That's a lot of wandering! Scott said he was excited about the idea until the day the leaders displayed a map of the whole country on the side of their chuck wagon. It looked, in a word, impossible. But they started on Mission Impossible anyway. Each day, they'd get up and just start riding again. "So he took it a day at a time, then?" No. Scott said when the riding really got tough and his legs were just about to go on strike, he would just aim for that next telephone pole. And pretty soon, he said, that huge map got conquered, one telephone pole at a time.

Friday, September 23, 2016

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Years ago when I went on my first international ministry trip, I went just about as far as you can go – 10,000 miles to Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. I was going to be away for three weeks, which was the longest I had ever left my wife and our three young children. My wife mobilized the kids to put little love notes all over and all through my luggage. We had a nice meal together on the way to the airport and then some special hugs and kisses at the airport. But I did have to go. And I'm not kidding you, it was a sad moment. My wife was trying to look like she was fine. The children were obviously hurting. I managed to hold myself together until I rounded the bend in the concourse, then I started wiping tears from my eyes. It was hard, but one thing made it OK. It was only temporary. We would be reunited.