Chasing Lions on the Trampoline

My son made me smile in a big way the other night. My wife wasn't able to take the kids to their tumbling class, so I had to fill in. For the last five minutes the parents get to come in and watch. Everytime I take them to tumbling they are always very excited to show me what they can do. This week, my daughter went first and showed off some things she could do on the trampoline. When she was done, the teacher called my son over to the trampoline. Now my son has never liked trampolines. I've seen him stand at a distance and watch while all his friends from church have a blast on the trampoline. It's just one of those things he's very skittish about. I expected to see him go over to the teacher, shake his head, and refuse to jump on the trampoline. Imagine my surprise when he stepped on to the trampoline. Not only did he step on, but he jumped. He even did a bunch of special jumps the class had been working on. My smile was so wide my cheeks hurt. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

I just finished reading a wonderful book called "In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day" by Mark Batterson. It focuses a lot on facing our fears and that the greatest opportunities, and our greatest victories, often come about when we face our greatest struggles. It was a book I really needed to read as I'm in a time where my life seems to be filled with great victories one day, only to be followed by great struggles and fears the next. Seeing my son jumping on the trampoline, holding this book in my hand (I had been reading it in the lobby as I waited), I thought about how God must feel when he watches us face our fears. I felt this huge my smile on my face and all I wanted to do was run over, grab my son, and tell him what a great job he did. I imagine when fear comes at us, and we keep moving forward, God can't contain his smile either.

The Royal Book of Oz

Another book I just finished is The Royal Book of Oz, the 15th book in the Oz series.

It was about a year and a half ago that I re-read L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I read it when I was a child and knew there were other Oz books, but I never got past the first. Like I've said before, I've never been a good reader. This time, however, I had such a great time reading it I decided to continue on. My wife just happened to have a copy of the 2nd book, The Marvelous Land of Oz, buried in a box in the basement. So to make a long story short, here we are at book 15.

The Royal Book of Oz is actually the first in the series not written by L. Frank Baum, even though many copies credit him as the writer. It was actually written by the 2nd Royal Historian of Oz, Ruth Plumly Thompson.

The story concerns the Scarecrow's search for his family. This leads him on an adventure which sends him deep underground to a place called the Silver Island, where he finds out he is actually the current incarnation of an emperor called Chang Wang Woe.

I've really enjoyed the Oz books. They aren't without their flaws, but I find myself getting more and more intrigued with this amazing world with every book. If you read through the Oz books you will definitely find some inconsistencies. It's clear that Baum was making it up as he went. The world isn't as well laid out as say Tolkien's middle earth, but I think that's one of the things I enjoy about Oz.

Of course, I love the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz." It's one of the best films ever made. But there's a part of me that would love to see Oz brought to the screen again, in a style more like what we've seen recently with Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films and last year's version of "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe." It'll never happen, of course. Can you imagine the fuss people would make about a new version of "The Wizard of Oz."

Manhunt

I am a horribly slow reader. My wife, she'll go through a book a day, but I'm just not wired for reading. I'm a couch potato...I admit it. But I do enjoy reading, especially non-fiction. This weekend I finally finished a great book I've been working on for awhile, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson. It took me longer to read than I had hoped, thanks in part to the fact that my copy was in my briefcase when it was stolen out of my car a few weeks ago. Take my word, nothing spoils a night of going to see a screening of "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock" quite like coming out to the parking lot to find the window of your car broken and your briefcase stolen. I'm sure the perp thought he was getting a laptop or something, but about all they got was this book and a copy of "Will the Circle be Unbroken" I had from the library.

Anyway, this is a great book! It explores a part of an important historic event that is ignored by many today. I already knew John Wilkes Booth was an intriguing character in American history, but so are so many others who he encountered during the days following Lincoln's assassination. The man who killed Booth, Boston Corbett, has to be one of the oddest people I've ever read about.