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When I'm in a new city, I don't usually make visiting a local cemetery one of my sightseeing priorities. But I did in a ministry trip to Halifax, Nova Scotia. I visited the cemetery where 121 passengers of the doomed Titanic are buried; many with their names still unknown.
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The five members of the Hutchcraft family have the same last name, of course, except for our married daughter, but that's pretty much where the sameness ends. And I think it's good that we're different.
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It wasn't the big one, but it was pretty big. It was that 6.6 earthquake that rocked Los Angeles some years ago. It was 4:31 A.M. and the ground began to tremble underneath Southern California again. And those who watched it will not forget the picture of what collapsed; those Northridge Meadows Apartments where 16 people died in those apartments. But in the midst of the Northridge tragedy, you heard the word miracle a lot. Maria Ballesteros was one who survived that apartment collapse and she was rescued. And she claimed she knew why. She said there were 50 pictures hanging on her wall and 49 of them were destroyed. But one was still there when the shaking was all over. Maria said this, "The one of the Lord was the only one left hanging."
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Monday was not a favorite day for our local high school football players during the season. No, that was the day they watched the film of last Saturday's game. Oh, it's nice to see what you did right, of course, but see, coaches don't spend much time on that. Most of the coach's attention is focused on what you did wrong or what you could do better. And so, on Monday you may get yelled at, critiqued, pushed to improve.
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My wife was on this airplane flight, and she was sitting in the aisle seat, and a mother was sitting next to her in the middle. And this little four-year-old girl, the daughter of that mom, was at the window. The daughter had never flown before, so she wanted to be where she could see. It was one of those cloud-covered days. This little girl occasionally glanced out the window.
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I was on an airplane flight and I overheard a conversation in the seats behind me. Eavesdropping? Maybe. In any case, there was this boy flying with his Dad and he was full of questions...I mean the little guy. He said, "Daddy, what are all those lights for? Daddy, why did part of the wing go down? Daddy, why is it called Lake Erie?" See, the pilot told us the name of it, but he didn't necessarily tell us why it's named that.
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The summer of '88 was a long time ago, but man, it left an indelible mark on Yellowstone National Park. Forest fires? They ravaged our national treasure. And you know, it left behind thousands of acres of charred landscape, displaced animals, dead animals. In fact, the fire almost reached that famous geyser called Old Faithful. It came really, really close to it.
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It was another one of Daddy's great vacation adventures! I announced to the family that we were going to climb Panther Mountain that day. The idea was greeted with underwhelming enthusiasm, but off we went, hiking up the gentle uphill trail that would get us to our goal: the rock fortress I had been told was at the top. As we trudged up the trail, my wife kept pointing out nice things along the way, "Oh, look at the chipmunk! Look at that tree growing out of the rock! Oh, don't you love the sound of the wind blowing through the pines?" I would smile and politely acknowledge her little observations, all the while keeping my male mind firmly focused on the real reason for this activity-getting to the top of the mountain. You can imagine how un-thrilled I was when my wife suddenly said, "Well, the kids are getting tired, and this has been a really neat hike. Let's head back." What? Head back? We were only halfway to our goal? If we went back now, this would all have been a waste of time!
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I know the flight attendant was trying to be polite. The kid wasn't! No. We're on this plane and everyone's eager to take off, everybody's got their seatbelt on and we're ready to go, except for this mother and her four-year-old boy who were standing in the aisle of the plane. The son wouldn't sit down. He's crying, he's yelling at his mother, and the flight attendant was making the announcement, "We'll be able to leave as soon as everyone is seated."
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I had been scheduled to speak at a winter retreat in Pennsylvania. I lived in New Jersey. It was the kind of thing where I could drive to Well, that day, winter decided it was time to do some serious wintering. We had heavy snow all day long and I knew it was going to be a very exciting drive along Interstate 80 out to Pennsylvania.
