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Once upon a time, there was a season when neither THE Ohio State University or the University of Michigan made a post bowl game.
So, THE Ohio State University football coach Woody HAYES and the University of Michigan football coach, Bo Schembechler, got together and decided on a weeklong ice-fishing competition between their teams with one stipulation. Woody made it clear that he would not go up North and they would have to find somewhere else to go ice fishing.
A site was found and on the first day, THE Ohio State University caught 100 fish and the University of Michigan caught none. On the second day THE Ohio State University caught 100 more and the University of Michigan once again caught none. The third day THE Ohio State University caught 100 fish again and it was no better for the University of Michigan. Coach Bo Schembechler suspecting cheating, called one of his players over and told him, “I have a scarlet and gray uniform that I like to throw darts at. I want you to dress in it and go fish with them tomorrow morning and then come back and tell me what you see. On Thursday morning the UM player dressed in scarlet and gray and to THE Ohio State University camp. At noon the UM player came back to his camp. Coach Schembechler asked his player, “ARE THEY CHEATING?” “THEY SURE ARE,” replied the University of Michigan football player, “THEY’RE CUTTING HOLES IN THE ICE.”
On Saturday November 17th 2007, the oldest college football rivalry in America between THE Ohio State University football team coached by coach Jim Tressel and the University of Michigan football team coached by coach Lloyd Carr will be played at high noon at the University of Michigan football stadium known as “THE BIG HOUSE” which seats approximately 107501 people.
Today in the Tremont City United Methodist Church is known as Veterans Day and Scarlet and Gray Sunday. A time to reflect on what we are blessed to have as Children of God and the freedoms we are blessed to have as United States Citizens.
The headline reads: Church liable for protest at funeral, USA TODAY Thursday 11/1/2007, page 3A: A federal grand jury on Wednesday awarded nearly $11 million to the father of a marine killed in Iraq after members of a fundamentalist Topeka church picketed his son’s funeral in 2006. Albert Snyder of York Pa, sued the Westboro Baptist Church, founder Fred Phelps and his two daughters after members of the church picketed the funeral of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder in Westminster, MD.
David Hudson, an attorney with the First Amendment Center, believes this is the first lawsuit filed by the family of fallen servicemen against funeral protesters. The jury awarded 2.9 in compensatory damages, $6 million in punitive damages for invasion of privacy and $2 million for emotional distress. The church routinely pickets military funerals with signs reading “Thank God for dead soldiers” and “God hates fags,” saying God is punishing American for its immoral ways. The group is planning to picket the memorial services of the seven college students who died in a North Carolina house fire, it said on its website. The church’s leader said they will continue to picket military funerals and they plan to appeal Wednesday’s ruling. “Oh, it will take about five minutes to get that thing reversed,” Phelps said. The defense said that the burial was a public event and that the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech and religion, protects even abhorrent points of view. First Amendment proponents have expressed concern over those laws, and are now troubled over the prospect of people facing monetary damages for speech that is deemed offensive. “You have a very unpopular group engaging in unpopular speech,” said Hudson. “When you have that combination that can lead to a bad law.” Albert Snyder sobbed when he heard the verdict and said he would follow the church “until the day I die” to stop its protests at other funerals. His lawyer, Craig Trebilcock, called the verdict the church’s judgment day. “They’re always talking about other people’s judgment day,” he said, “Well, this is theirs.”
On Tuesday of this past week I was invited and asked to be one of the speakers at an Ohio National Guard appreciation luncheon held at Spradlin Brothers Welding in Springfield. There were approximately eighty men and women in camouflage military fatigues. Some had just returned from Iraq, some were being redeployed, some were being deployed for the first time to Iraq. They shared with me their fears, their concerns, the pain of being separated from their spouse, children and family. Wondering what status they will be the next time they come home.
And I shared with them and all who were present in the talk I was asked to give, that as I read this article in the USA TODAY of the protesters outside the funeral of a GI killed in Iraq I remembered during Vietnam I was walking through the Dulles International Airport in my military uniform. Someone spit on me and called me a child killer.
As I asked those GI’s, I ask you. Do you know why Americans have the right to spit on a person in their military uniform? Burn the American flag, bad mouth the president of the United States of America and the nation?
It wasn’t that long ago in Beijing, China that protesters gathered in a Stadium to protest and the Chinese government sent military tanks in and killed them all.
It is because of American veterans that in America one can spit on a person in uniform, burn the American flag, bad mouth our president and leaders and then not only live, but go out to eat and go home to their creature comforts and loved ones.
Do you know why we can worship so openly, wearing Scarlet and Gray or Blue and Maize?
It is because of military veterans who have, who are, who shall, serve the United States of America.
Open your Bible to the Book of Ecclesiastes 1:1-7,
THE WORDS OF THE PREACHER, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south, and goes round to the north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.
As we know Solomon wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes as a reflection on His life so that others would not spend their life living without God as Solomon did. Let’s look at this text.
“THE WORDS OF THE PREACHER,” Ecclesiastes 1:1, means one who addresses the assembly, being Solomon. In the Book of Ecclesiastes Solomon uses the word “vanity” thirty-eight times as he writes about life under the sun.
In Ecclesiastes 1: 2, the words “Vanity of vanities” is a reference to the curse of Genesis 3: 14-19, in the Garden of Eden and considers it all unnecessary as war may be considered by some as unnecessary. And the word “vanity” in Ecclesiastes 1:2, means “emptiness.”
People are born and people die, the sun rises, the sun sets, the moon comes out at night and disappears at sunrise and the grind of life goes on. And through it all, Mother Nature continues as God created her and as humans we are, we will, have challenges in our lives.
The question is this, do you go ice fishing to fish or do you go ice fishing realizing the challenge before you and the wisdom to approach the challenge?
Ecclesiastes 1: 8-11,
All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new?” It has been already, in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to happen among those who come after.
We live in a world where human desire never, or rarely appears satisfied. A world where the eye is not satisfied with what is before it nor the ear satisfied with what it hears. With all we have as Americans, with increased knowledge and freedom we appear to have increased sorrow instead of realizing the wisdom of the words spoken by the wife of the twenty-sixth president of the United States of America Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
I must confess to you that last year when THE Ohio State University football team showed up in the national championship to a humiliating loss I was totally thrown. It was as though the uniforms showed up but the team stayed in Ohio. I was rather disturbed; angry is the correct word, over their pathetic appearance and brewed about it for a while. In the search for meaning for what we as Ohio State University fans were humiliated by, God spoke to me. Walter, it’s only a football game, it is not a human life. Be glad that you are an American and can have this privilege that some only dream of.
As I listened to God speaking to me I realized we all need to realize that life does not stand still; rather it is a non-stop adventure of faith that is anything but predictable or tedious, Yes, death is certain for only our LORD & SAVIOR Jesus Christ has ever beaten it. But life is a gift that begins at the moment of conception until the time of our death. Why not enjoy it? For in the game of life what matters in the end is, Who’s packing your parachute?
Charles Plumb was a U.S. Navy jet pilot in Vietnam and after 75 combat missions his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands where he was a POW for six years in a Vietnamese prison. Plumb survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from his experience as a POW.
One day Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant when a man at another table walked up to him and said, “You’re Plumb! You flew fighter jets in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!” “How in the world did you know that?” asked Plumb. “I packed your parachute,” the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man pumped Plumb’s hand and said, “I guess it worked.” Plumb assured him, “It sure did. If your chute hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t be here today.”
Plumb couldn’t sleep that night, thinking about that man. Plumb says, “I kept wondering what he had looked like in a Navy uniform: a white hat; a bib in the back; and bell-bottom trousers. I wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even said, ‘Good morning, how are you?’ or anything, because you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor.”
Plumb thought of how many hours the sailor had spent at a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands the fate of someone he didn’t know.
Now, Plumb asks his audience, “Who’s packing your parachute?” Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day. Plumb also points out that he needed many kinds of parachutes when his plane was shot down over enemy territory; he needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional parachute and his spiritual parachute. He called on all of these supports before reaching safety. Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us we miss what is important.
Plumb concludes by sharing, We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you, to congratulate someone or something wonderful that has happened to them, give a complement, or just do something nice for no reason.
As you go through this day, this week, this month, this year, recognize the people in your lives who’s packing your parachute and say thank you.
For those who badmouth the president of the United States of America, our American leaders and this great nation of ours…. I have something to say to you: “God bless America and God bless you.”
And God bless our veterans and their loved ones.
Let us pray,
God bless America land that I love. Thank you Father for the blessings that we have in our lives everyday. May we not take them for granted, may we not let them slip by. God bless America, my home sweet home. God bless America my home, sweet home. Amen.
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