Traveling Mercies

This is my birthday month. I’m such a fan of birthdays, I love parties, I love cake and I love presents. Though I’m a little old to expect all of those things on my special day, I still love it when it happens. Of course, as we age, birthdays have a different perspective. Instead of a celebration, they also become a day for reflection. Are we living the life we thought we would? Are we making a significant contribution to the world? Do we love and are we loved? I’m fortunate as I answer these questions. My life is so full, my cup runneth over! Time is another thing we contemplate on our birthdays. Where have the years gone? How did I go from 10 to 20 to almost 50 in the blink of an eye? Middle-age seemed like something that was so far away for such a long time, but if I am middle-aged now, that means I’ll live to be almost a 100. Hmm, maybe I’m not middle-aged anymore, then what to call this time? When I was younger, middle-age meant a time of crisis, frumpy, and generally out of tou

In May, 1961, before I was born, President John F. Kennedy challenged Congress and our nation to “commit itself to reaching the goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth” within the decade. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and Neil Armstrong, Commander of the aircraft, responded to NASA with the famous words, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Six and a half hours after landing, Armstrong uttered his famous line "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind". I was seven years old that summer night and I remember with clarity watching the event on television, then going outside with my family and staring at the moon above. Forty years later, I don’t understand the logistics of building a machine that would carry men to space, nor the courage it must have taken to leave family behind and climb into such a machine, but the story of the Apollo space program has always fascinated me. Toda

My best Christmas memory of 2009 started early in the month with a trip to Boone, North Carolina for Operation Christmas Child (OCC). OCC is a project of the Samaritan Purse organization led by Billy Graham’s eldest son, Franklin Graham. Samaritan’s Purse is a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world. Since 1970, Samaritan's Purse has helped meet needs of people who are victims of war, poverty, natural disasters, disease, and famine with the purpose of sharing God's love through His Son, Jesus Christ (www.samaritanspurse.org). The organization’s name comes from the story of the Good Samaritan found in Luke 10:30-37, which gives a clear picture of God's desire for us to help those in desperate need wherever we find them. After describing how the Samaritan rescued a hurting man whom others had passed by, Jesus told His hearers, "Go and do likewise." The OCC program started with the c