Olympic Courage – Life Courage

In the past Winter Olympics I was impressed with the hindrances athletes overcame: A skier who overcame years of poor performance. Another skier who competed despite a knee injury. A skater who skated her life’s best right after her mother died. Lugers who slid despite the fact that one of them had just died on the track. All won medals. And then there was the teenager who became the best figure skater in history.

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Blessing Rising from Rubble

I was a missionary in Haiti for seven months in 1983. Years later I took a church group there. I developed relationships with many Haitians. Some were good friends. I’ve been to the areas in and around Port-au-Prince and know all the street names and places that are in the news—they were the nicest parts of town. I’ve been to buildings that are now flattened, stayed in houses that slid down the hillside. Recent photos of the earthquake’s devastation bring me to tears. I so badly wish I could be there right now.
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Spinning Tunnels

I’ve lived near Los Angeles for nearly twenty years, and I finally went to Universal Studios with my brother-in-law. We rode the tour bus past movie sets and props. Then the bus stopped in a narrow tunnel. And, because this was Hollywood, the tunnel started turning—the whole tunnel, counterclockwise.
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Changing the Enemy

This past Christmas’s theme of peace on earth was a bit interrupted by the extremist Muslim dude trying to blow up a plane. What is often overlooked in such conflict is the need for changing minds. One news item that didn’t get nearly enough press was what happened in Libya. Officials of the Libyan government, which once sponsored terrorism, met with imprisoned Al Qaeda affiliates and learned to understand them. Then they convinced the terrorists that blowing up innocent people was not nice and that this activity should stop. The terrorists eventually denounced violence, were released, and are now propagating across the Arab world a concerted message of peace and reconciliation.

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Knocking Down Walls

By Peter Lundell

In this new year, before we try new things or quit old things, we should remember one thing: To do the new or quit the old, we need to break through what has hindered us until now.

Take a lesson from the Berlin Wall, erected in 1961 by the paranoid East German government, which divided democratic and Communist Berlin. The wall epitomized the government’s iron-fisted control of its people and its fear of the West. The concrete blocks and barbed wire isolated West Berlin from the rest of East Germany for 28 years.

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