Author: Jon Gauger

It was a desperate search.  A Hail Mary.  I was looking for a misplaced check.  A big one. Previous attempts had turned up nothing.  So there I was, pulling out the large drawer under our bed.  The one where I keep my cards.  All of them.  That’s when I knew this was going to take some time. There were cards from my wife, Diana: birthday cards and Christmas cards and Valentine’s cards and cards for no other occasion than her simple desire to express her love. By far, these took up the most space.  It was fun to read through…

His ship was in flames. His path was blocked. But Jim Downing had a job to do. Sprinting toward the harbor, he dodged machine gun bullets from an overhead fighter plane, and then slid across the five-inch gun barrel of a neighboring vessel to launch himself onto the inflamed deck of the battleship West Virginia.   December 7, 1941.  If the gun magazines aboard Jim’s 624 foot long boat were to overheat from the fires, the explosions would be enormous.  So he grabbed a hose and aimed at the flames.  “Several times that day, I was sure I would shortly be…

Imagine that you are 23 years old, standing outside a door.  On the other side is the confidant of presidents and princes—the most famous evangelist of our time—Billy Graham.  You are there for an interview.  But what will he say to you?  What will he actually be like? That was me, along with my friend Dave, waiting for our appointment  in Amsterdam’s Rai Convention Center.  It was a muggy July afternoon more than 30 years ago.  Feels like an hour ago, though.   Had we prepped enough?  Would we come across as hicks?  And what about the formalities—do you call him…

One name.  That’s all it took to send toddler Sadie into a joyful romp.  She squealed from the next room and then trotted over once she heard that name, hoping for a little face time on FaceTime.   What name generated all this excitement and anticipation?  “Di-Di,” the moniker our little grandkids have affectionately chosen for my wife, Diana. Guess that’s a lot easier for them to pronounce.  So Di-Di it is. Once, when Sadie’s brother Caleb was just learning to talk, we went to McDonald’s and enjoyed a visit to the play area after lunch. Caleb made a grand…

The knock at the orphanage door brought a little child with no birth certificate and almost no background.  Would they take in this little one?  Not many will ever hear this saga of a young Mexican mother whose child was taken from her. You, however, are among a handful who will know the truth (minus a few key details I must hold back for security reasons).  This lady had once thought her boyfriend the man of her dreams, so they married and had a baby.  But the dreams turned to nightmares when her husband immersed himself in a life of…

Everyone has heard of Tony Evans. Okay, I’ll qualify that: almost every single Christian who has a pulse has heard of Tony Evans. But not as many know Tory.  I met them both last week. We were at Dr. Evans’ church, Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, to record some audio and video content for Moody Radio.   Now, recording a radio interview doesn’t take much more than a microphone and a portable recorder.  But video?  That requires a camera, tripod, lights, batteries, shotgun microphone, backdrop, etc.  It’s a long list of stuff—and you never seem to have enough of it….

“Been pokin’ around the gospels a bit,” spouted my friend, Jack, as he shoved a toothpick in his mouth.  The long pause he left dangling meant I was supposed to inquire further.  “Whatcha find in the gospels lately, Jack?” “I’ve noticed Jesus spent a surprising amount of time at dinner with lost people—and amazing things often happened at those dinners.”  Here his toothpick waggled in the left corner of his upturned mouth. “Take me to one of.…”  Jack anticipated my response.  Didn’t let me finish.  “Luke 19.  The short guy—Zaccheus.  Couldn’t see Jesus so he climbed the sycamore tree.  But…

Four little kids in a museum filled with priceless objects.  A recipe for disaster, right?   If they were yours, you’d want to keep an eye on those little ones for sure—and we did. Imagine a porcelain vase standing about two-and-half feet tall.  It was a magnificent shade of blue covered with gilded gold. The thing had a diameter of about two feet, so it was plenty big. Mythological characters in raised relief walked the entire circumference of the vase, their fantastic appearance engaging the laser focus of Caleb.  Caleb is five and fearless and faith-filled (a tribute to his mom…

At the age of nine, you haven’t lived long enough to sense greatness—let alone define it.  But there was something special about that summer at Camp Awana in Fredonia, Wisconsin.   There was a guy there with a flat-top haircut and a twinkle that never left his eye.  He called himself Art.  Decades later, I can still hear him speaking to us kids that night in the “Long House.”   Art told us the story of how when he was a kid, he really didn’t know Jesus as the leader of His life—His personal Savior.  But his mom and dad did….

Saw something weird on a flight to Cincinnati the other day.    We were wheeling away from the gate.  The last of the last-minute fiddling with overhead storage compartments was completed as flight attendants mashed the large plastic doors shut on backpacks, winter coats and roller boards.  Time for the obligatory safety demonstration.   It began with a reminder that seatbelts should be worn “low and tight across the waist.”  We were comforted by the knowledge that in the unlikely event of a water landing, our seat cushions could be used as a flotation device.  We were encouraged to look…