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Peter and Shirley were members of our ministry team, and their daughter was kind enough during her last semester of college to buy a dog. That meant that when she finished college, the dog moved in with Peter and Shirley. They inherited Starbuck. No that's not coffee! That's a black Labrador retriever.
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Over the years I've been accused of having a case of technophobia. Well, that's probably true. I remember the first time somebody got me a computer, which was very nice. That's how they got me into the computer age. I have to say it scared me to death. Now, look, I'm living in a world of computers, and so I grudgingly at that time said, "I've got to make friends with this computer by learning a little more about it. Some of my non-technophobic friends were explaining computer installation to me and one of them said, "Ron, I guess we'll have to install a dedicated line." Wait a minute! Wait, that's a word I understood - dedicated line. Sure! In fact, I understand it even better now thanks to, yep, computers.
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Maybe it's somewhere during your senior year of high school you begin to develop this priceless trait called perspective. I know that Chris did. One day just before a football game, he stopped me and he said, "You know, Ron, you told me something when I was a freshman and I didn't believe it then. And now I do. You said, 'You're going to blink, and suddenly you're going to be a senior.'" And I told him at the time, "You know, Chris, it looks like high school is going to be forever. You're only a freshmen. But believe me, it will be gone so fast!"
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Back when I was flying a great deal, people would often ask me where I lived, and I would frequently answer with the name of the airline I flew on the most. Now, when I hear of airplane crashes and disasters, it kind of hits me personally. I think it does anybody who has been a frequent flyer. Whether you're a flyer or not, though, there are images of certain airline tragedies that kind of forever imprint on your memory. One of those for me was the ValuJet crash in the everglades. It's been a number of years now, but the entire plane and all its passengers just vanished in the swamp.
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The best time to go to Long Beach Island is off season. It's this beautiful stretch of land off the New Jersey coast about 12 miles long, not very wide. In fact you can see the ocean on one side and the bay on the other side. It just has this one, long main street. During peak season, which of course is during the summer, it's very slow going on that street; bumper-to-bumper people, cars and red lights. I hope you're not in a hurry to get to the beach or to get back to your house. It's going to take you a while. But when you're there during the off season, which we've had the privilege to be, you see this long string of traffic lights as far as the eye can see. When you're driving you can hit this string of green lights and never stop.
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The health clubs and the spas, do they love January! And beyond probably. Business skyrockets when December bulges turn to January workouts. The infamous New Year's resolution: A resolution according to the dictionary is "A firm decision to do or not to do something." Unfortunately, research shows that about 88% of our resolutions won't happen.
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Well, all of us airline passengers have just squeezed down that narrow aisle to our seats, and everyone is just getting settled in. The ground agent came on board and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is a destination check. This is Flight 305 to Atlanta." The next part is what I love. It's so diplomatic it's almost ridiculous. "If Atlanta is not in your travel plans for today, this would be a good time for you to exit the aircraft." In other words, "Hey, Pal, make sure this flight is going where you want to end up!"
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I had the opportunity some years ago to speak for some pilots organizations, and I've never piloted a plane. I'm always a passenger. But they wanted me to talk about peace and stress. And it was something I wrote a book about, so it worked out pretty well. In the process I met some guys who deal with FFA safety seminars. They told me some interesting things about what happens with some of the crashes that we might see in the news. They said that when a private pilot crashes, there's usually a study of that, and they start to compile case studies to help other pilots fly more safely.
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I was with two friends returning from some Native American ministry in the Southwest, and we had a rental car and a four-hour drive to the airport in Phoenix. So we really needed every minute to make our connection, which made the lurch in our car pretty annoying. See, every time the driver would get the speed up to about 60, the car would start shuttering and lurching. Now, there was a 75mph speed limit, and that's frustrating. We weren't sure we'd even make it with that "shake, rattle, and roll" mobile we had.
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Well, I guess all of us began our training for public speaking back in Kindergarten or maybe First Grade. Remember when the teacher had you do Show and Tell? You had to bring some object to school and tell about it or what it represented. I can still remember the scramble around our house a lot of mornings as one of our three children would remember, of course, with one foot out the door, "Oh boy, I've got Show and Tell today." So we'd race around the house trying to find something they could show. See, the teacher wasn't interested in us just showing up with a story that day. No, you had to have something concrete. Telling was not enough to make it. If you showed up with your show, you had to tell about it too
