Everybody, Always

who like to play pranks on me, so I immediately went down the list of
suspects in my mind. It was a long list. The body of the message was
brief. It read, “We’d like to meet Charlie.” After a couple of quick calls, I
confirmed that, incredibly, the invitation was legit. We got back on the
plane with our friend, Darla, and flew to Washington, DC, where Sweet
Maria met us. This kid was standing in the bush in Northern Uganda two
days before and was now standing in President Obama’s Oval Office.
Charlie walked over to the wall and pointed to a document hanging in
a frame. “What’s this?” he asked. We spent the next ten minutes talking
about the Emancipation Proclamation, signed by Abraham Lincoln.
Before we left, Charlie grabbed an apple from the bowl on the coffee
table between two sofas and took a bite. You know, the one next to the
eagle emblem in the carpet. I leaned over to Charlie and whispered,
“Don’t drip.”
Why does God do things like this? The honest answer is, I’m not
really sure, but I’ve got a good guess. I think He wants to blow our minds.
There’s a letter in the Bible Paul sent to some of his friends. He was
trying to explain something similar. He acknowledged not many of the
people he was writing to were wise or powerful or born into famous
families. But he said God uses unbelievable things, just like what
happened to Charlie, so we wouldn’t keep making everything about
ourselves but instead would see how powerful God is.
The next day we left Washington, DC, and flew to Los Angeles for
Charlie’s operation. Any kid who is headed to that kind of operation
needs to go to the happiest place on earth, so I took him to Disneyland. I
know several of the characters there and they made him feel special.
Tinker Bell is a friend of mine and is about Charlie’s size. We arranged
for them to spend some time together. He kept looking at her wings and
touching them in amazement. She wrapped her arms around him and told
him what a brave young man he was. I think I saw the two of them lift off
the ground a little as she did.
The next morning, I put Charlie in his hospital gown and got him on