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A boy from the south side of Chicago; a girl from the Ozarks and they lived happily ever after. It's the story of my wife and me. As we approached our wedding day several years ago, (ahem!) it was a week after our college graduation. We had a lot of love, but no money to speak of.
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We were trying to teach some young leaders the importance of teamwork. One of the exercises I used was to have them put together a puzzle. (I thought it was a bright idea.) You tear off a page of a magazine, tear it into pieces, dump it into the middle of each small group, and see who could put their pictures together first. It didn't work too well. See, I forgot one little thing. I forgot to give them a copy of the complete picture so they could see what it should look like when it was all together. Duh! Now, I've tried to work on one of those big, many-pieces puzzles myself, and I've had the same frustration because I didn't know where the top of the puzzle box top was. It was really hard to put the pieces together when the complete picture wasn't there.
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My wife hates snakes! Okay, let's just get that out there. Her skin crawls almost at the mention of those critters. Of course, growing up in the Ozarks didn't exactly help her learn to appreciate them. And then there were the weeks she spent as a counselor at a camp deep in the woods. Oh, man, that really didn't help.
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Christians that were in Russia anytime during the 1950s to about 1990 were familiar with the voice of Nick Leonovich. For decades before the Iron Curtain came down, Nick had been faithfully broadcasting the gospel in Russian to his people. When the doors began to open, and Nick would travel through Russia and meet those Russian believers finally, a lot of them would stop him and they'd say, "Hey, I know your voice! You led me to Christ." Wow!
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You remember when the word window just referred to that opening in a wall that kind of you then covered with glass? Well, NASA changed all that. A window is still an opening, but the folks at Cape Canaveral use that word to refer to that brief period of time where everything is right for the launch: the wind is okay, the weather's okay, they've checked it at the Cape, they've checked it down range, and the atmospherics are okay for communication. The conditions have been predicted for the time of return and they look good, too. But the window will pass soon. If you're going to get this thing off the ground, go when the window's open.
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The occasion was a citywide art contest. They had been told to paint paintings with the theme "Peace". Well, the judges were understandably attracted to this beautiful pastoral scene that a local artist had painted. It was a green pasture, puffy white clouds, a beautiful blue sky, a little boy going by with his fishing pole over his shoulder, and a quiet brook and some birds. That got second place.
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When I was in junior high school, we usually bought one copy of the local newspaper every day. Until the day I won the County Spelling Bee! Yeah, I can do autographs later. I'm sure you're very impressed. Well, that day my parents bought about twenty copies of the local newspaper. What was the difference? Well, my name was in it this time!
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It's about that time of year when you start getting all those Christmas letters from people. You know, all those family letters that tell you about all the things they've done: Junior's in Boy Scouts, Emily's in cheerleading. I've noticed there's one recurring word; it's almost like a theme that runs through all those letters. It's that little four-letter word "busy." Everybody tells you how busy they are all year long. "I'm busy, busy, busy and I have a busy, busy, busy family."
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Christmastime is kind of like time to get things in shape; especially around the house. Most of us become very motivated when December arrives in terms of getting things cleaned up. We dust corners and clean areas that haven't been touched for like eleven months. Trouble spots in the carpet that had gone unnoticed, suddenly we notice them and we work on them. That wall in the kitchen that needed some touch-up paint, it becomes a priority. We begin decorating things! Houses are suddenly in better shape than they've been in all year, especially since last Christmas. Christmas is shape-up time for houses…and people.
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When I got my wife a bread maker for Christmas one year, I'm not sure who that present was really for-was it for her or me? I love the smell; I love the taste of fresh bread. I mean, who doesn't? She just pours the mix into the bread machine, punches in all the proper settings, leaves it so it can begin its wonderful three-hour process of becoming fresh baked bread. Of course, we get busy and we forget it's baking sometimes. But we don't have anything to do with it anyway. It's just silently getting done.
