April 16, 2024

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When our daughter was little, we displayed most of her artwork on the refrigerator door. We were usually proud of her creative efforts...usually. There was this time, though, that my wife was painting the woodwork of our daughter's room and she stopped briefly to answer the phone in another room. She gave our little girl one instruction, "Do not touch the paint!" You want to guess what happened? When my wife returned from her call, little Miss Rembrandt was working on a three-year-old masterpiece. Unfortunately, she had chosen the wall for her canvas. There on her bedroom wall were Designs by The Princess done with the paint that was intended only for the woodwork.

April 15, 2024

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On the first warm day of spring I can remember my son saying, "Ready for a little baseball, Dad?" Well, 'twas the season, although that early in the season we usually ended up stuck in the mud somewhere between home plate and first base. Now, he didn't ask about playing baseball if it was fall or winter. Now, he always had a like a strong sense of season. By the same token, the first cool day of late summer, of course, that brought a predictable question, "Ready for a little football, Dad?" This is the same son, of course, that got upset when he saw Christmas items up before Thanksgiving, or phone calls when he was studying or homework that you had to do on weekends. See, this kid had and actually still does have for that matter, a strong sense of what season it is, and there's actually a lot of sanity in living that way.

April 12, 2024

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We were in the middle of a community-wide outreach event, sort of a non-traditional strategy for bringing Christ into a community. One of the committee leaders took me on a media marathon to help build awareness for it. So we raced to the local CBS TV affiliate.

April 11, 2024

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You hear a lot about plea bargaining in court cases these days, but plea bargaining... that's not a new idea. Every child learns the art of negotiating his way out of his disobedience. You might call it the art of "yeah, but." For example, "You don't have your homework" says the teacher. "Oh, yeah, but the dog ate it." Or, "My grandma died." For the sixth time? See, that art is first developed at home. "You didn't call," says dad. "Yeah, but there was no phone." "Yeah, but my watch blew up. I didn't know what time it was." See, children are experts at knowing what they should do and then finding ways to excuse not doing it. Well, father isn't impressed.

April 10, 2024

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In much of America, spring announces its arrival with an explosion of color. Those yellow forsythia flowers start popping out on bushes, the daffodils start to poke their heads through the ground, and the trees around our headquarters suddenly color the landscape with those delicate white flowers. Now, my wife, who I think was a certified plantologist, told me that those are ornamental pear trees. When I asked her about the "ornamental" part, she pointed out to me that they produce beautiful flowers, but these pear trees don't produce any pears. I guess that's why they're ornamental.

April 9, 2024

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There's at least one important principle of advertising we need to consider today, and that is you have to demonstrate the need for your product in order to sell it. I'll tell you someone who was good at it some years ago in one of the classic commercials. It was Alka-Seltzer, one of those old commercials I still remember. They would show some irresponsible eater who consumed some nightmare menu, and then the camera just made him look all distorted, like one of those trick mirrors.

April 8, 2024

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Sister is a dog. No, I didn't say my sister was a dog. My friend, Curtis, has a dog named Sister, which leads to some very amusing sentences. When Curtis' Sister first arrived in our area, Sister lived in this big, fenced-in area around the house. But Curtis got a nice dog house for Sister, the dog that is, and went to work making it a nice winter home for her. He installed two inches of insulation, put in a new floor, and even put a waterbed heater under the floor and some zip lock bags of water for the heater to heat. Sister basically had her own home with her own waterbed.

April 5, 2024

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It's the Super Bowl of the Skies! No ticket required.

April 4, 2024

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My wife and I got a late start for our drive to North Carolina this one particular trip, and we had a 12-hour drive from New Jersey to cover. So we thought we'd make a motel reservation somewhere in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. We got there pretty late and saw this disgruntled looking man leaving the lobby, heading for his car. And it was not the look of a man who had just received good news. When I walked up to the check-in desk - nobody home, just a sign that read, "Back in a few minutes."

April 3, 2024

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You sit there staring at the phone for 45 minutes. There's this girl you really want to ask out, but every time you try to pick up the phone to call her, you freeze. Finally, you realize she probably isn't going to call you, and the phone isn't going to call her all by itself. So, you punch in her number. Are you still afraid? Yes. But courage is not the absence of fear, it's the disregard of it! So here goes! Yes, that actually was my life at one time.

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