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Thursday, August 4, 2016

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Spring is nice. I mean, it means flowers! Spring is not nice. It also can mean floods! One North Dakota town some years ago, saw it coming; the floods, not the flowers. And they decided they weren't just going to sit there and float away. Because of a winter that had produced mountains of snow, they knew where that snow would go when it melted - right into their homes and businesses. So, while the snow was still deep, they started to make an island out of their town. Everyone pitched in to literally build an earthen dike around the town. Yes, they would be an island. Yes, they would be surrounded by a flood. But they made a wall so they would be safe in the middle of it!

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

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My wife and I had been staying at a friend's house at the New Jersey shore. It was a great setting to be working on a book about "Peaceful Living in a Stressful World". One night this powerful storm hit the area, and we heard the wind howling and the rain was bombarding that house all night long. By morning, the storm was over, and I wanted to go to the beach to see what the storm tide might have deposited there. Even though the sun was out and the storm was history, the sea was still churning all brown. In fact, even when there wasn't a storm that week, the ocean never rested.

Monday, August 1, 2016

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Not long ago we met some wonderful radio listeners from the Sault St. Marie area of Michigan. That's way up north, you know, near the Canadian border. They told me this amusing, and slightly amazing, true story about a woman they met recently. She was driving from Detroit, which is about six hours south of them, so she had made a good northward trek, and she was lost. So she stopped in at our friend's workplace looking for directions. Now that's not anything unusual. But she walked in the door blurting one frustrated question, "Which way's Texas?" Texas! Well, for starters, ma'am, you need to turn that car around and go six hours back to the place you started!

Friday, July 29, 2016

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Some people have wall-to-wall carpet. Some people have a wall-to-wall schedule. I think I'm one of those. And it was like that when we took our daughter to college. She and I had just returned from a mission's trip to the Philippines, and I had to be in Chicago Friday to produce radio programs and deliver her to college. It had to be perfectly timed.

Thursday, July 28, 2016

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While our Ministry Headquarters was being built, we had a problem. We were soon moving out of the space we had rented in another area of the country, and we had no space to move into and the ministry couldn't stop in between! That's when my wife began to take a second look at the one structure on the land that we were about to build on. It was an old pole barn. At first glance, it looked like a good storm could knock it over. Someone jokingly suggested that it was still standing only because the termites were holding hands! But my wife has this incredible ability to see potential in something that everyone else would tend to give up on; which might be why she married me.

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

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Our son's first word was the name he called me, "Da!" I know it's supposed to be "da da," but it was good enough for me. He'd greet me at the door each night with a loud and impassioned "DA!" Now, our grandson's first word was "mama," which he liked so much that he just kept it rolling, "ma-ma-ma-ma-ma." Sort of the opposite of "da!" The first words children learn reflect what's going on around them. If they see Mama all the time, you can expect them to say her name early on. Sometimes, those first words aren't happy words. Our friends were dedicated missionaries in a war-torn part of the Middle East for years. Not long after their daughter was born, their area became a place where frequent bombardments and violence erupted all around them. Some of her first words told the story: "bomb", "gun."

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

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It was Moving Day! If you've ever moved from one house to another, across the street or across the country, you know how much fun it can be. And if you think it's fun, you've never done it. Our daughter and son-in-law and their two boys had moved a lot of their belongings to a temporary house while major repairs were being done on their house. A few weeks after they hauled a lot of their life into their temporary home, they got to move it out again and back into their real home. We all pitched in and there were a lot of trips back and forth with armloads of boxes and bags, and loading everything into several family vehicles. Our then three-year-old grandson was watching all the work going on, and as he heard some of us discussing what was still left to do, he quickly volunteered his personal perspective. We hadn't yet asked him to do anything, but he still turned to walk away with these words on his lips: "I'm not available right now."

Monday, July 25, 2016

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What mental picture comes to your mind when you hear these words, "They keep going and going and going." Do you per chance see this rabbit with sunglasses? Do you hear the drumbeat from the bass drum he's beating on as he moves across your TV screen? Then the people who created those Energizer battery ads have succeeded! Actually, think about it. Batteries are a pretty boring thing to advertise, "Here, would you like some batteries?" But most of us have watched with amusement as this particular brand of batteries keeps that crazy bunny going and going and going.

Friday, July 22, 2016

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Sometimes when we travel to Indian reservations in North America, we end up on roads that go where not many go. Our Director at the time, our Qjibwe brother, Craig Smith, was on one of those roads. His destination was a remote reserve in Northern Canada. At one point in his 140-mile journey, he noticed a van coming from the other direction, proceeding very slowly. Craig decided to slow down, too. That's when he saw what the van driver had already seen-a beautiful deer by the side of the road. Sadly, one of his rear legs was broken and just kind of dangling limply when he moved. Actually, my friend said it was too painful to watch. At that point, he saw the rest of the picture that had caused the van to stop in front of the deer. On the other side of the road was a wolf, stalking the wounded deer. It was obvious all the van could do was postpone the inevitable. There was no happy ending for that deer.

Thursday, July 21, 2016

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As a musical composition, Frederick Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" stands in a category by itself. There are few pieces of music that has the power to stir our hearts like that majestic chorus that even brought the King of England to his feet the first time he heard it. But before Frederick Handel wrote the "Hallelujah Chorus" and "The Messiah" oratorio of which it's a part, he wasn't having much of a hallelujah time. He was basically broke, depressed, and against a wall. Then someone asked him to write an oratorio, to be performed at this benefit concert on behalf of people who were in debtor's prison – locked up because they were too poor to pay their bills. There were 700 people who contributed to be at that premiere performance of "The Messiah" and the "Hallelujah Chorus" and 128 prisoners went free as a result!

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