"Any time someone falls from that distance, your expectations are low."  That's how Nolan Ryan, Hall of Fame pitcher and Texas Rangers team president, described what's being called a "miracle" in our city.

At Tuesday night's game, a firefighter named Tyler Morris reached for a foul ball and fell 30 feet from the second deck to the field level below.  He struck four fans and fractured his skull and ankle.  Play was stopped for 16 minutes; several players were visibly shaken.  The four fans turned out to be fine, and Mr. Morris should leave the hospital soon.

In even better health are four senators whose offices purportedly told the world they had died.  Politico is reporting this morning that Democratic Senators Feinstein, Leahy, and Lautenberg have been subjects of false death reports.  Now Texas Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison has been victimized by the same hoax.  D.C. officials are looking for the person who fabricated the statements.

All this brings to mind Mark Twain's response after hearing that his obituary had been published in the New York Journal: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."  He was not the first.  In 1816, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge heard his death being described by a person reading a newspaper obituary.  A man had hanged himself in Hyde Park, London while wearing a shirt marked "S. T. Coleridge," causing the mistake.  The poet concluded that the shirt had been stolen from him; he did not die for another 18 years.

Last June 10, a radio broadcast in New York City reported that the actor Russell Crowe had died.  On May 17 of this year, a BBC reporter announced the death of Queen Elizabeth II; on September 5, 2008, singer Miley Cyrus was reported by a false Reuters article to have died in a car accident.  Baseball player Joe DiMaggio was watching television in 1999 when the station reported his death.  On August 27, 2008, Bloomberg published a 17-page obituary of Steve Jobs.  Mr. Jobs responded by quoting Mr. Twain.

One day, you'll be able to do the same.  When Jesus' beloved friend Lazarus died, the Lord assured his sister, "He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die" (John 11:25-26).  No Christian ever dies.  We simply step from time into eternity, from this fallen planet into God's glorious paradise.

When John Owen, the great Puritan, lay on his deathbed, his secretary wrote to a friend in his name, "I am still in the land of the living."  Owen saw the letter and said, "Change that and say, 'I am yet in the land of the dying, but I hope soon to be in the land of the living.'"

Everything you will see today is but the prelude to everything you cannot see.  So let's start the day by praying, "Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy" (Matthew 6:9, Holman Christian Standard Bible).  Then let's spend the day answering that prayer by the way we live.

What will you do to glorify your Father this morning?

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