“Ingrown Eyeball Syndrome” is a condition where the eyeballs turn completely around and can only look inward.  These are the symptoms of the disease:

• Blind to the needs and joys of other people

• Blind to the evidence of God’s love in the little things in life

• Blind to gratitude and oblivious to reasons for celebration

The sufferer of Ingrown Eyeball Syndrome is negative, self absorbed, and no fun to be around. They can be contagious!

Thank God I have discovered a cure.

Six little people reminded me of the steps to healing this malady and living fully alive!

So when your eyes balls begin to cross, your vision becomes narrow and dark, when fear and doubt threaten to rule the day. You may find these steps to healing helpful.

Note: The youtube attachment below will make these steps very clear.

1. Open your eyes and see the cherry tree
2. Lift your hands and revel in the joy of the blossoms
3. Be the monkey that shakes the tree for someone else

Do you ever suffer from Ingrown Eyeball Syndrome? When you opened your eyes what was the “Cherry Tree” you saw?  What blossoms fell?

Shake it!

Ken and Diane

You have Cancer! Those words, spoken to my wife Diane, hit us like a sucker punch to the stomach.  There had been tests and then three weeks of cruel waiting for the results.  Finally the trip to the doctor, another eternal hour of torturous waiting and then the words…….. You have cancer!

Today, Diane and I are celebrating the fact that those words were spoken over 20 years ago.

Sometimes we take life for granted.  A recent checkup reminded us that God has blessed Diane with 20 years of vibrant life after cancer.  That brings a song of thanks to our lips and a humble prayer for those that have heard those numbing words recently. For you, I pray that this blog will be a beacon of hope.

My bride is a twenty year survivor of breast cancer.  We have a significant number of friends and acquaintances for whom those words did not have such a positive outcome.  This blog is dedicated to everyone who has fought this disease and won as well as those who have lost that battle.  Do you hear me Grace?

Grace Scheer Our beloved friend. Promoted to an eternity of joy March 2010

We have a truckload of plans for the future:

A theatrical release to be filmed the 26th in Grand Rapids, a new book, an animated feature, a Bible study Series, a new tour, etc, etc, etc.

All of that pales in light of the fact…..

Diane has been cancer free for 20 years.

Although I have followed Christ most of my life, I don’t make a lot of religious sounding noises.  But today because of 20 years and because of the joy that our friend Grace is experiencing with God………….    on this day I shout,

“Praise God!”
“Alleluia!”
“To God be the Glory!”
“Thank you Jesus!”

Do I hear a witness????

FYI  “Do I hear a witness” is the Greek phase for, “I welcome your comments!”

Everything is so far away!

Are your dreams far away and undefined or within reach and rich with detail? I just spent a week with my youngest grandson, Tyler.  He is one of the most positive little people I have ever met.  His answer to almost everything is an enthusiastic “OKAY!”

“Want to climb a mountain?”

“OKAY!”

“Want to ride the four wheeler?”

“OKAY?”

There are some exceptions! I asked him if he wanted to get a flu shot and couldn’t find him for an hour.

One morning I caught him stumbling across our deck looking through a pair of binoculars.  He seemed very frustrated, confused and he had a hard time keeping his balance.  He was looking through the binoculars backward. Even his feet looked like they were miles away.  I wish I had captured the look on his face when I turned the binoculars around and he saw things close up, detailed, and reachable.  You couldn’t pry them out of his hands.  He even watched TV with them.  Everything seemed within reach.

Made me think.  As you set goals or face challenges, does it all seem far away and impossible! Do you find yourself saying things like……..

I can never do it,

It”s going to take too long,

I can hardly see myself accomplishing this?

Do you find yourself off balance,

stumbling and afraid to take steps?

Do you struggle to see the details that will help you overcome obstacles and propel you toward your goal?

Turn the binoculars around!!!!!!

Hellooooooo!

Don’t be afraid to study the detail of what lies between you and your goal.  Take a long CLOSE look at what you are working toward.

With your eyes glued to that goal, develop a strategy to overcome any obstacles. Replace distant negative thinking with aggressive close up  strategy. Eventually you will have to put the binoculars down because you have reached your goal. You can reach out and touch it!

Which end of the binoculars are you looking through?

A recent Jay Leno interview of a random person on the street revealed that this person had no idea what that flag stood for.  No idea what the stars and stripes signified.  A generation of such people are quickly populating our country.

If we forget the price of freedom we will loose it.

If we forget our history we will forfeit our future.

The flag reminds us of the history and cost of the freedoms we enjoy today.  We must be sure that this young generation can still SEE the significance of the flag and know its rich history. That knowledge will help guarantee that long after we are gone, old glory will still have a land of the free and home of the brave over which it can wave.

Oh, say can you see?

At eighteen, Ken found himself in the thick of battle defending the Philippines against the onslaught of Japanese attack. One day he lay behind a log and watched as enemy soldiers overran his position by the hundreds. Ken and a companion hid their rifles and surrendered. It marked the beginning of a three-and-a-half year nightmare. Ken became a prisoner of war.

The grim realities of prison camp quickly decimated Ken’s health. He’d survived the grueling Bataan death march only to be wracked with malaria and dysentery. In prison camp, the privilege of staying alive depended on a prisoner’s ability to work. Those gravely ill or incapable of labor were shot or perhaps buried alive. The young man’s weight dropped below one hundred pounds, but he struggled to make himself useful enough to avoid execution. It was no good; frail as he was, Ken fought a losing battle.

The war drew to a close and Japanese defeat became a looming certainty. As the captors’ prospects dwindled, their atrocities increased in number and intensity. The Japanese began executing prisoners at random.

One day, Ken found himself lying beneath a thatch roof hut with several other prisoners. As a Japanese officer shouted commands from the hut’s balcony, prisoners were dragged from the shelter in pairs to a nearby rice paddy. The bonds were cut from their hands, and they were summarily bayoneted to death or shot in the head.

Ken watched his friends dying two by two, knowing his time would come. As evening approached, the shrill voice of the Japanese officer shouted yet another command. Ken and his friend were wrenched from beneath the hut and dragged into the rice paddy. Kneeling in the mud, he waited in terror for the inevitable. There was another shout from the hut—then an explosion in his head. Ken fell forward into the filthy water.

He hadn’t been shot. He’d been struck with the butt of a rifle. The sun had gone down, and the Japanese didn’t conduct executions after sundown. As he regained his senses, Ken knew this would be his last night on earth. As sure as the sun would rise in the morning, the executions would continue.

Huddled sleeplessly that night, Ken’s life flashed before him. He saw the face of his mother. He recalled the admonitions of his father, a stern Nazarene evangelist. He thought of his brothers, some of them fighting for their country in theaters of war across Europe. Ken whispered his farewells.

He also remembered his sins. Every sin he’d committed, from minor indiscretion to shameful transgression, flashed before his eyes. Yet his guilt gave way. It vanished in a great wave of peace that rose up and flooded Ken’s soul. The faith he’d placed in Christ years ago, as a small boy, was suddenly present and potent. He was reminded of the price paid for each of those sins. He was forgiven.

By the time Ken watched the sun rise, a miracle had taken place. Facing certain death, he felt no fear. He’d made his peace with God, and he was emotionally overwhelmed with grace and forgiveness. The cool silence of dawn was shattered by the call of the executioner. Ken heard the approaching boots of the guards. They yanked him to his feet. Then they led him not to the rice paddy, but back to the prison sector.The executions had halted.

Ken would live to return from one of history’s bloodiest conflicts—by a few seconds. On the day of liberation, he was little more than a skeleton. Sick and half-starved, his weight was 85. He was so weak that he needed assistance to clear a two-inch board at the back of the truck bound for freedom.

This is a story I know by heart. Its hero is my father, Ken Davis Sr. And the most amazing element of the narrative is the placing of his emphasis in its telling. He focuses not on God saving him from the bayonets and bullets of enemy soldiers, but on God saving him from his sin. If God could forgive the sins that paraded before him that dark night, then not even the razor edge of a bayonet, or the brutal impact of a bullet, could separate him from that love.

My father had endured considerable physical abuse; malnutrition and malaria had taken their toll. The medics examined my father and concluded he would not live to old age. Certainly, they told him, he couldn’t have children

That was more than half a century ago. They underestimated my dad. He’s seventy-five now, and I’m one of the five children he didn’t have. I cling to one lesson from the fascinating stories of Dad’s POW experience. In those dark, horrible moments when death confronted him, my dad had an authentic supernatural encounter with grace. Peace overcame him; fear was cast out.

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: ‘For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35-39).

My father was finally forever set free on April 18th 2006. He lives with the Lord he loved so much. A fellow hero who understands the price of freedom.

Story adapted from my book “Lighten Up” published by Zondervan