The Mugging of Dearly Departed Grandma Betty

Posted on August 26, 2010
Filed Under Marriage & Family, The State | 3 Comments

THE MUGGING OF DEARLY DEPARTED GRANDMA BETTY

A ONE-ACT VIGNETTE

FADE IN:

INT. LOCATION - DAY, AN OLD STYLE LIVING ROOM

WE JOIN THE READING OF GRANDMA’S WILL IN HER OLD LIVING ROOM. HER THREE CHILDREN WITH SPOUSES AND HER TEN GRANDCHILDREN ARE SEATED ON COUCHES AND OVER-STUFFED CHAIRS, ALL DRESSED AS IF THEY HAD JUST COME FROM HER FUNERAL. A BANKER-LOOKING FELLOW WITH WIRE-RIM SPECTACLES IS READING THE WILL SEATED BEHIND A SMALL DARK SECRETARY. WE PICK UP HIS DIALOGUE…

BANKER: “…and finally, for my dear sweet grandchildren. You know how much I adore you and long to see each of you go to college. Patrick, I believe you’ve wanted to be a surgeon from the day you started to walk. Lilly, you have all the talents and skills to be the best architect in the whole world. Jay, you know how much you want to build bridges and you can do that if you can keep the girls away long enough to get your engineering degree. All of you have so much potential and I suppose if you’re reading this, I’m obviously not going to get to see it from down there. So, to help you reach your wonderful potential, I have left one final surprise for you. If you look around the room, you will see ten paintings. I have spent my life collecting them and since I know that none of you have any appreciation for art (which always irritated me), I will tell you that each are an original Dubreaux and have grown in great value over the last fifty years. They are yours now. They will be kept in store for you until you are ready to start school and then they will be sold to fund your college. I suspect they will take care of your tuition, room and board and possibly even some spending money. Spend it wisely, Jay. (Can you see me looking at you over my glasses?) All of you, make me proud. I love you. Grandma Betty.”

THE BANKER PUTS DOWN THE DOCUMENT AND THE ENTIRE FAMILY BEGINS TO BREAK INTO JOY AND A FEW START TO GET UP TO LOOK MORE CLOSELY AT THE PAINTINGS HANGING ON THE WALLS. BUT THEY ARE THEN INTERRUPTED BY A LOUD CLEARING OF THE THROAT. IN THE SHADOWS, HIDDEN FROM OUR VIEW, A MAN, DRESSED IN BLACK LEANS FORWARD. HE HAS A MAFIA LOOK ABOUT HIM AND SPEAKS IN A MUGSY-STYLE VOICE. EVERYTHING SEEMS TO TAKE ON A 1920′S GANGSTER-ERA AMBIANCE… Read more

Whose Property? The Sukup Family Story II

Posted on August 24, 2010
Filed Under Labor, Marriage & Family, The State | 20 Comments

After spending several days with the Sukups, we stayed over on Saturday to join Sheffield’s pancake breakfast, parade, and BBQ. If you’ve never experienced a small town celebration, then you are missing one of America’s sweet traditions.

…and a long line of antique tractors!

It isn’t fancy; there isn’t a lot of glitz; it doesn’t come close to the parades you’ll see on New Year’s Day from the Rose Bowl or Macy’s; the floats are really home-made…but there is something very special about the simple joy a community of people have coming together for food and fun and fellowship.

Eugene and Mary drove their old ‘57 Ford Fairlane in the parade as well.

Have you ever been somewhere that you didn’t want to leave?

That’s how I felt visiting the Sukup family and the town of Sheffield, Iowa. And I guess because I’m still an engineer at heart, that’s how I felt walking amid the machinery and creativity found in the family business that Eugene, his sons and now his grandchildren are involved in…and making it prosper. In fact, Eugene told me that the company has really sprouted under the leadership of Charles and Steven.

They are delightful people in a delightful town doing a wonderful business.

So why would the federal government think that it is in the best interest of this country to take over half of it when Eugene and Mary pass on?

The reality is, from several studies, the country actually suffers financially when the inheritance tax reaches into these family businesses and practically destroys them, regardless of the “revenues” that are received.

This is the dark cloud that hangs over the wonderful story of the Sukup family, the employees, and the small towns in the area.

What is it?

Well, the “inheritance”, “estate” or “death tax” as some call it, works basically like this. Read more

Whose Property? The Sukup Family Story

Posted on August 20, 2010
Filed Under Labor, Marriage & Family, The State | 8 Comments

I just spent three days in Iowa, visiting the Sukup family, their manufacturing plant and the good folks of Sheffield—population ~1,000.

Yes, I ate some of the most delicious corn you can imagine. In fact, I was so fascinated by the cornfields that it gave me a chance to meet the local sheriff! (I’ll fill you in on that later).

We were there to film a story for Cross Examine. I flew into Minneapolis and then drove the 2 ½ hours south. This is a land of farms, silos and cornfields as far as the eye can see. You can’t get a whole lot closer to the heart of America.

As a farm boy myself, I loved it!

Eugene and Mary Sukup are farmers at heart for sure. But several years ago, the need to figure out a way to keep so much of his corn from spoiling in the silo stirred his creativity and ingenuity into devising a solution that worked not only for him, but for other farmers as well. One thing led to another and Eugene ended up in the manufacturing business with a bucket-full of patents and a large business that not only produces silos that keep farmer’s corn dry, but also a host of other useful farm products.

Eugene’s sons, Charles and Steven pretty much run the plant now. It truly is a family business that extends down the lineage to Matt, husband of Eugene’s granddaughter, Crystal. Matt graduated from college with an engineering degree and works at the plant designing new control systems for the various Sukup products.

Mary cooked us an awesome Iowa dinner and we shared it with a larger gathering of the Sukup family, including little great-grandchild, Lilly. I unashamedly ate through way more than my share of the corn-on-cob. Makes me hungry just to think about it! Read more

Good-bye, Bart

Posted on August 14, 2010
Filed Under Personal | 14 Comments

My dear friend, Bart Phillips, went home to be with the Lord last night. He leaves a sweet wife, Suzi, and three boys.
He was only 41.
He went to sleep and then just went home.
Bart and I had travelled together, primarily for Truth Project events. Having a conversation with him always left you feeling good. He had a love of life, his family, people and especially the Lord.
It is hard to believe that he is gone.
Life is indeed brief…sometimes painfully so.
After Bart’s friend, John Webber, chaplain for the Dallas Cowboys, died suddenly in early November, 2007, Bart posted a blog entitled “Live Like You Were Dying”.
The last line in his blog was: “Live today like it’s your last. Love today like it’s your last. Live purposefully.”
Bart did all of that.
I’m going to miss you, Bart, as will many, many people.

Taylor’s Closet

Posted on August 12, 2010
Filed Under Community | 11 Comments

Meet Lindsay Giambattista. Four years ago, she was a typical teenager caught up in her own life and her designer clothes. She had the blessing of being in a loving Christian home where the cares of the world were mostly unknown to her.

Then something happened.

Providentially, Lindsay’s life intersected with a stark reality. They are called “girls at risk”—young girls who find themselves pretty much on their own—often “on the streets”.

This was a world that was not only unknown to Lindsay, but it was puzzling. A young girl should be living a happy life in the security of a home with a loving mom and dad. That was her experience. How could these girls, instead, find themselves alone, on the street, blown to and fro like a piece of discarded rubbish?

The Lord began to convict Lindsay to get involved.

At first, it didn’t go that well. These two worlds don’t have much in common.

So Lindsay got a divine idea. It had to do with one of the things she cherished in this world: her clothes. Give them away and use them as the bridge between her and the girls who had nothing. She began to enlist others and it didn’t take long before she had nearly 70 huge garbage bags filled with designer clothes.

And she was just getting started. Read more

Open for Business Again

Posted on August 10, 2010
Filed Under Personal | 5 Comments

Sorry for the problems we have been having with the blog site.

We just completed moving the blog to a dedicated server. Hopefully, that will “serve” us all better!

I am sorry to say, though, that we lost some stuff in the process. There were a number who posted wonderful comments to the “Keeping the Truth Project Vision Alive” blog as well as others. They have all gone to the bit grave somewhere in cyberspace.

Thank you, though. The ones I got to read were very, very encouraging and a great testimony to what the Lord continues to do through the Truth Project in the lives of His people. I must reiterate that it certainly isn’t because of me. I thank you for the kind words, but God is the One at work here.

I am always humbled, however, by the fact that the Lord still chooses to ride donkeys!

We will be making some changes now to the blog site and I hope to begin posting in the morning. I would also like to begin a periodic feature called “Today’s Paper” where we can examine an article from the newspaper to help us build a more comprehensive biblical worldview and develop better discernment skills.

I’m on a plane headed to Florida and then to Iowa, where we will be interviewing a family battling the inheritance tax. We will address that issue and some relevant stories in an upcoming Cross Examine show entitled “Whose Property?”

Thanks for your patience with me. I am convinced that someone has turned the dial up on the speed of time. I know many people are feeling the press of life. But don’t ever let that keep you from smelling the flowers or stopping to gaze at the moon or a sunset. By the way, the sunrise yesterday morning was awesome!

(P.S. Yes, the picture you see here isn’t the sunrise I was talking about. That is because I can’t upload any new pictures yet! This is an uploaded picture from my Canyonlands trip. It makes the case though, no?)

It was a Dark and Stormy Night…

Posted on July 28, 2010
Filed Under Personal, Theology | 24 Comments

“What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!” Matthew 8:27

Few things evoke a picture of fear more than the “dark and stormy night”.

Darkness, of course is one of the main ingredients, because we fear the unknown more than anything. Darkness veils reality leaving our imaginations to dream up monsters or snakes or boogey men lurking in the night waiting to jump out at us.

The storm adds the next main ingredient because the lightning briefly reveals strange and scary images, barely discernable as the flickers of light add to our fearful imagination.

The third ingredient is the thunder and the sounds that accompany the wind and the rain. A loud thunderclap will make us jump, but maybe not as much as the banging of the shutters or an open window (“How did that get open? Is someone in the house?”) or a limb that crashes against the window pane just as the lightning briefly highlights the wet leaves and twisted branches shaking in the tumult. Surely something sinister and hideous is hiding in the dark. “Wait, didn’t something just move over there?!”

Ah! The cinematic magic of the “dark and stormy night”!

Well, not long ago, it was a “dark and stormy night” at our house. The thunder was making things quiver and it was hard to sleep. My wife got up and walked out into the living room.

Then she screamed out my name.

I jumped up and ran to where she was standing looking out at the deck door. Then the lightning flashed and revealed a figure standing there.

Another flash…the figure was hairy…

Another flash…it was a six-foot hairy beast leaning on our deck railing right up next to the glass doors.

It was a dark and stormy night… Read more

USA Today Cries Over Failure to Loot Steinbrenner’s Pockets

Posted on July 19, 2010
Filed Under Marriage & Family, The State | 11 Comments

I don’t usually read USA Today, but I’m in Florida again filming for Cross Examine and the hotel offers it for free. Today’s “Our View” editorial was on the estate tax. Here is the subtitle: “Steinbrenner’s ‘smart’ financial move reveals stupidity of inaction”.

In case you missed the news, George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees, passed away recently. The “stupidity” USA Today is referring to, is the stupidity of the Federal Government for missing a chance to loot his estate. Evidently this was a “smart financial move” on Steinbrenner’s part because the estate tax in 2010 is zero, which means that people who die this year will be able to pass on the family china to their kids.

This galls some people, including USA Today which believes that we missed out on a grand opportunity to rifle through a dead man’s pockets and take half of his stuff. Read more

Keeping the Truth Project Vision Alive

Posted on July 16, 2010
Filed Under The Truth Project | 12 Comments

The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. 2 Timothy 2:2

Sorry for the absence. I have been in class over the last couple of weeks with some of the greatest college kids in the world…the Summer 2010 class of the Focus Leadership Institute.

Class runs all morning, followed by an “Open Forum” where students bring their lunch back into class and we talk about anything on their hearts (literally “anything”!). Then we fill the rest of the afternoon with one-on-one meetings where we can talk about personal questions, issues and just get to know each other better. Then, some evenings, we head out to the park for dinner and games and more conversation.

Have I ever told you that I love these folks?

I do. And I will miss them greatly when they graduate not long from now.

Our last class together is primarily dedicated to talking about God’s call for us to be involved in the culture around us. Read more

When God Steals the Fireworks Show

Posted on July 5, 2010
Filed Under Personal, Theology | 68 Comments

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Psalm 19:1

I hope you all had a very wonderful 4th of July and celebrated the privilege we have to live in this wonderful country. With all of her faults and current travails, she is still awesome to me.

We gathered most of our local family and headed to the Air Force Academy last night to watch the fireworks.

They, too, were awesome.

I never tire of this.

Especially at the Academy.

For me, there is something very special about celebrating this day on a military post…with the bands and the patriotic music and military marches playing in the background.

I admit it…I am a patriot, through and through!

But something different happened last night. Read more

keep looking »