I received an email from a friend today—deployed and with limited internet connectivity. She grabbed the cyber-opportunity to let me know how she was doing physically/mentally/spiritually and added: “ . . . went last night to my first women's Bible study session here. It's a small group that just got started a few weeks ago and we don't have a formal study yet, but the fellowship will be invaluable.” I cheered! The fellowship of believers in a small group is absolutely invaluable—priceless!

I did some vehicle recovery training early in my military career. I don’t remember much of it other than this one exercise where the instructors drove an M113 Armored Personnel Carrier into a swamp and told us to drag it out using some ropes, pulleys, ground anchors and get this---a hand winch! An M113 weighs around 10 tons and this one was down a bank and in the mud. The winch was rated for 2 tons! We followed the instructor’s directions and set up a series of ropes running through pulleys and anchored to solid ground at the other end. The pulley was then attached to the end of another rope and so on. The theory was that each pulley/rope/ground anchor we set up doubled the weight we could pull because the ground anchors would take half the weight.

In thinking about my all-time favorite messages of Pastor Chuck Swindoll’s, I have come to the conclusion that his teaching on “worry” is probably the best I had ever heard on that sticky subject. And it has stuck with me through the years. . . .at least in my memory if not in my actions. According to my study, this message was first preached in 1990 and entitled "Christ at the Crossroad of Anxiety." I would like to share what I transcribed from the recording of that timely sermon, as perhaps there is something in it which would help you in these days of deployment anxiety.

I remember Ruth Bell Graham’s teaching from years ago on the power of light. She said that film crews were coming into their log cabin home in North Carolina to interview her husband, Billy Graham. She cleaned and cleaned—wanting everything to look just right for the cameras. When the crews arrived and set up their equipment, she was horrified by what the bright studio lights exposed—cobwebs and dust that she had missed in her cleaning! As we all know, things can be hidden in darkness. What does this have to do with deployment?

Have you ever wondered about the aircrews on those fateful flights of 9/11? One man's story gives a vivid description of what happened . . . please consider what the pilot, Steve Scheibner, has to say about life.