Wednesday, August 4, 2004

If for some reason you ever have to guess what the weather's going to be tomorrow in Seattle, Washington, guess rain. Of course, it's not unusual for it to rain in Seattle. It's a beautiful city with mountains and oceans and snow for skiing and more rainy days than most American cities.

I was on an airplane, and I was discussing this with a resident there, and he said, "You know, there's a lot of things people don't realize about Seattle, and a lot of them don't move here because of it." But, he said, "We've got all these natural resources to enjoy," and he listed some of the things I just mentioned. And he said, "You know, we don't have so much annual rainfall. A lot of days, there's just like a light mist, and it's not all bad." Then he said why. "Maybe that's why it's so green in Seattle." And you know, that's true. You can see it when you fly in there. There's green most of the year, while a lot of us Northerners are looking at a lot of brown and gray stuff!

Tuesday, August 3, 2004

Building a fire is one of those things a man is just supposed to know how to do. I hate to have my fire fail in front of other people frankly, so I can really empathize with my friend Rich who set out to get a fire going one winter that I was with him. He was trying to get this thing going in his fireplace when we were with him one Sunday afternoon. So, of course, he did all the right things. He rolled up the necessary amount of newspaper. He stacked logs with plenty of room for air circulation. Now, he didn't have much kindling. That was the only weakness in his fire. Well, the fire flared, and then it sputtered, and then it smoldered. So real quick, he rolled up two or three tight paper logs, and a newspaper, and that didn't do anything. Then finally, he said, I thought it was kind of strange, but he said, "I've done all I can do. Only God can start it now." We talked for about an hour without a fire, and suddenly this little flame appeared. It grew steadily, it became a really cozy fire, and Rich and I just looked at each other and smiled!

Friday, July 30, 2004

Since I was a boy, I've been a fan of Abraham Lincoln. No, I never saw him in person. I do know he was born in a log cabin, I read about him studying by candlelight, splitting rails as a young man, grieving over the death of the love of his youth, and then becoming an unlikely political leader. And then the dark days of trying to hold a nation together during the Civil War, and then, his tragic death just five days after the end of that war. His name, his life, his face - they're known around the world. But only a couple of years ago, I learned something about Abraham Lincoln's life that really thrilled my heart. I read a Lincoln scholar's description of him making a personal commitment to Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. It was during one of the darkest days of the Civil War, and God used a surprising person to lead Abraham Lincoln to saving faith.

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

I love to drive through Custer State Park in South Dakota because if you're lucky you get to see a lot of buffalo. Now, seeing them is one thing - riding them is another. We were recently in South Dakota. One important part of our ministry, of course, is reaching what one researcher called the most devastated young people in America, and we were there for an outreach among Native American young people. Reservation young people are in just great need of the Lord. We were with our Lakota Sioux Christian brother and we saw some buffalo, and we joked a little bit about hunting them, and so on. Then he said, "You know, I know someone who rides buffalo in parades and on holidays." I said, "Wait a minute. Did you say rides a buffalo?" I can't imagine boarding one of these wonderful wild animals. Well, somebody asked this buffalo rider, "What's it take?" He said, "Patience." Then he said, "If you neglect him one or two days, he won't be tamed anymore."

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

I've been told that during World War II, (which, of course, I don't remember personally), that they gave American soldiers more than bullets just before they went into combat. They also gave them a chocolate bar. It makes sense, when you think about a sugar rush, when they need all the energy they could muster. So, maybe sugar's not all that bad. Of course, if you give it to a man just before he's about to go and lie on the couch for a hour - now that's bad. That's the funny thing about sugar. You eat it, you exercise - it's energy. You eat it and just lie there - it's fat.

Monday, July 26, 2004

Telephone etiquette is usually one of the last things children learn - if they ever learn it! In fact, I sometimes kind of cringe when a child answers the phone. You never know if they're going to hang up, or if they're going to yell into the phone, "Hey, Mom!" or if they're just going to put down the phone and forget to tell anyone that you're waiting. Ah, but the daughter of a friend of ours - she is a pleasant exception. The family visited our office a while back, and when they got home, I called and the little girl answered. She's so polite, she's so coherent, she's so competent. I said, "Hey, girl, how would you like to be my secretary?" She must have seen how crazy that job is when they were in our headquarters, because she answered immediately. Oh, not with a yes - not with a no. She just said, "Uh, how about my brother?"

Friday, July 23, 2004

As a musical composition, Frederick Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus," stands in a category by itself. Few pieces of music have 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 debtors 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!

Thursday, July 22, 2004

When I'm in a new city, I don't usually make visiting a local cemetery one of my sightseeing priorities. But I did during my recent ministry trip to Halifax, Nova Scotia. I visited the cemetery where 121 passengers of the doomed Titanic are buried; many with names still unknown. Not long after the midnight radio transmission, "Have struck iceberg," three telegraph cable repair ships were dispatched from Halifax to make the 500-mile trip to the collision site to pick up the bodies of victims. In a way, the aftermath of the sinking of the Titanic is a tale of two ships. One was the Carpathia, the ship that rescued hundreds who had made it into lifeboats, later taking them into New York Harbor. The Carpathia carried a ship full of rescued people. But not the Mackay Bennett, the first funeral ship to arrive at the scene of the sinking. All they found was 328 people, floating in their lifejackets, frozen to death. The first one they found was a little two-year-old boy, floating face up. They were devastated. By the time they sailed into Halifax Harbor with every church bell in town tolling, there were three long rows of bodies on their deck - every one a person who did not have to die. Those lifeboats had been half empty. But as the people in the water cried out for help, the people in the lifeboats just kept rowing away. So one ship carried those who had been rescued. The other ship carried those no one cared enough to rescue.

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

It was England's darkest hour. Each night the air raid sirens would wail their haunting warning that German bombers were again approaching London with their showers of death. And each night, Londoners would race to the city's bomb shelters, many of them underground in London's subway stations. When people surveyed the damage the next morning, the landscape had changed, with familiar buildings turned to rubble - and sometimes neighbors lost to the bombs. In that long dark night of the soul, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was the inspiration that kept the spirit of the British alive. Each day, he was there picking his way through the rubble, directing emergency responses, and giving encouragement wherever he could. But where was Winston Churchill when the German bombs were raining down on the city over his head, trying to bomb England into submission? In his bunker in front of a table that was covered with a map of Europe, and with his nation under brutal German bombardment, Churchill was planning the invasion of Germany!

Friday, July 9, 2004

Every once in a while we get a wakeup call regarding the meaning of the word "hero." In our culture, the word is used routinely to describe outstanding athletes. But then someone does something really heroic and we remember what the word really means. Pat Tillman, starting safety for professional football's Arizona Cardinals, gave us one of those "hero" wakeup calls. Oh, he was one that was playing on the football field, but then he shocked fans and players alike by walking away from millions of dollars to serve his country on the battlefield. He joined the Army Rangers, served on the front lines in Afghanistan, and one April day in pursuit of enemy forces, Pat Tillman was killed. He believed he was fighting for something greater than winning a game. He believed he was fighting so people could be free. And, in the eyes of millions, he gave meaning to that overused but important word - hero.