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September 18, 2024

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Jessica's all grown up now. She almost didn't make it past eighteen months. You might even remember when, as a curious toddler, little Jessica fell down a deep shaft in her aunt's backyard in Midland, Texas. The shaft was far too narrow for any rescuer to go down, and she was wedged in a position that virtually immobilized her. If you remember that incident, it's because we all watched the drama unfold on television for three nerve-wracking days. By the time it was over, Jessica was like America's little girl! When the rescuers realized there was no easy way, no conventional way to save little Jessica, they devised a whole new way of getting it done: by digging a wider shaft parallel to the one she was trapped in, and then a tunnel connecting those two shafts. That's pretty ingenious! Finally, a rescuer was lowered into that second shaft. Minutes later, we smiled and we cheered as the rescuer emerged from that shaft with an armful of Jessica, holding onto him for dear life.

September 17, 2024

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I spent my seventh through tenth grade in a small town in Illinois. So I went to junior high there and my first two years of high school. And I hadn't seen my friends from there for 28 years!

September 16, 2024

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Every New York television station you turned to had the same bold graphic that just said Blizzard of '96. I still remember it. It was barely 1996; we were only six days into the new year when anywhere between 20 to 30 inches of snow unloaded on the Metropolitan New York area. It was like a mega-ton snow bomb.

September 13, 2024

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Not long ago there were pictures all over the news of these spectacular colors painting a breathtaking scene in the night sky. It was the "northern lights," also known to scientists as the aurora borealis. Now, I'll tell you what! It's worth checking out that view any time you can or at least those pictures. I guess the approach of solar flares from the sun's turbulence sometimes just adds a whole new richness to these lights. Of course, they have amazed people for centuries.

September 12, 2024

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A Pope's visit to Cuba is not an everyday thing by any means. Pope Francis more recently visited. When Pope John Paul II made the very first visit in 1998, he saw a very different Cuba than Pope Francis saw.

September 11, 2024

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At first, they were frightened, even bruised faces appearing on Iraqi TV. Early in the Iraq War, there were seven American soldiers and pilots who had been captured by Saddam Hussein's forces and then they were paraded on television for all the world to see. After that, none of us could be sure whether they were hurt or healthy, or dead or alive. Since then, in many wars, there have been too many scenes like that. In this case, retreating enemy soldiers informed American troops of the place where these particular POWs were being held. As the heavily armed soldiers burst into the room, they first shouted for everyone to lie down on the floor. And then, they yelled out an unmistakable command: "If you're an American, stand up!" Seven prisoners stood up, and they were free.

September 10, 2024

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Most of the courtrooms I've been exposed to are on TV. But there was a moment in a courtroom I will never forget. It began when we learned the whereabouts of a young Native American friend we had been trying to locate for a while. Let's call her Cathy. We learned, almost miraculously, that after a dark time away from God, Cathy was in jail in Nebraska. We got that word on Friday as I was leaving Michigan to meet our Native American summer team in South Dakota on a Monday night. We ate up the Interstate trying to get to Nebraska before Cathy went before the Judge. She had no idea we were coming - until we saw her during her Sunday afternoon visiting hours.

September 9, 2024

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We were sitting on the runway at O'Hare Airport for a long time, in an airplane that is. I thought we were on our way when we left the gate. I said to myself "Okay, in a couple of minutes we'll be in the air and on our way." And then they routed us across the backside of O'Hare, and I saw some lovely storage facilities. We finally ended up in a long, long line of aircraft. I've got a little problem with impatience, but I sure don't want the pilot to have that problem. See, he knows that you do not take off until you get clearance from the tower...no matter how long that means you have to wait.

September 6, 2024

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Now there are happy video tape recordings. You know, audio recordings of our kids when they were little before their voices changed, Karen and I giving our vows to each other at our wedding.

September 5, 2024

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Years ago I had some friends who lived near a heavy industrial area where the mills filled the air with a shall we say very distinctive aroma; well, actually, smell would be a better word for it. It was sort of a sulfur-like, rotten eggs type of odor. When you first went there, you would sniff and you'd go, "What is that?" And the people who lived there would say, "What's what?" See, they'd lived around the stink so long, it didn't even register any more. Well, you know, there are some smells you should never get used to.

September 4, 2024

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I once spoke for a large youth conference at one of the East Coast's most popular vacation spots: Ocean City, Maryland. The boardwalk, the hotels, the restaurants, the amusements seem to stretch for miles there. My friend told me he'd been coming to Ocean City since the 1970s, when most of what I was seeing wasn't there. Not that many folks used to come to Ocean City at all. I asked my friend what changed that. He said, "Oh, the bridge." The building of what is called the Bay Bridge opened up this beautiful spot to many people who literally had never experienced it before.

September 3, 2024

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Back in my old school days, we used to do an experiment in science class. When I told my then teenage sons about this, they were very surprised to find out that there was a science class when I was in school! But there was and we used to dissect the triceratops and the tyrannosauruses.

September 2, 2024

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There was a young man we knew who was pretty distraught over a death in his family. He acted it out by deciding to just delete a bunch of Facebook friends. And think we all know someone that has been "deleted" or "canceled." It's just the world we live in today and it hurts! You can delete a relationship with a stroke of your finger. Sometimes it can be really brutal.

August 30, 2024

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Some people have wall-to-wall carpet. Me? I have a wall-to-wall schedule. Maybe you do too. It was like that even when I had to take my daughter to college years ago. She had just returned from a mission trip to Manila and so had I. We had one day to get her to Chicago for college. Not only did we have to get her to school that day, but on that particular Friday, I had to produce some of these radio programs.

August 29, 2024

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So there have been several Supermen, well, you know, men who have played Superman over the years. From TV to all the movies. The first one was George Reeves, on the TV show many years ago. Some supermen have had tragic lives. George Reeves who played Superman from 1951 to 1958 actually committed suicide after his career had stalled. He was forever typecast as Superman. Then another actor, Christopher Reeve, who played Superman in five films, became paralyzed in 1995 from an equestrian accident where he was thrown from his horse. These actors played the part of a man who was invincible, but "behind the role" was the awful reality.

August 28, 2024

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Hundreds of thousands of Kurdish people had fled Saddam Hussein's Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, and they were spread over miles of mountainside on the Turkish border. Christian agencies were flooding in with food, medical help and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But most of the Christian workers connected with the people there only from trucks and distribution points, where they handed out food and blankets. But the missionaries from one particular mission organization really broke through the barrier that others were encountering when they tried to talk about Jesus. They had a unique way of getting close to the people and winning their respect and their trust. You ready to hear their radical outreach strategy? These missionaries picked up the garbage. See, it was everywhere on those mountainsides, and it was getting pretty gross. Nobody wanted to do the garbage, but those who were willing to were the ones those people listened to.

August 27, 2024

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If you've always been skinny, you can just give it up because you're not going to understand what I'm about to say. But if you're like me and you've battled over that scale your whole life, if you've ever been overweight, you'll probably understand this. Once you've battled that, you always tend to think of yourself as overweight even if you're not any more. Now, I've managed to lose some of it. Others may say you're okay, and the scale might even say you're okay. But there's this voice that keeps whispering, "Overweight!"

August 26, 2024

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If you've ever spent a lot of time in the city, you may have had the experience of waiting for a bus. You've got a couple of packages, it's cold, some weird people are starting to cruise by for the second time, and suddenly you see the dim outline of a bus on the horizon. Biblically "your heart leapeth within you" as you see the bus approaching. Finally it gets close enough for you to read the sign in the window, and there are three words "Out of Service." Oh! Three very discouraging words.

August 23, 2024

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My son was a shrewd and wise baseball card collector. There are certain ones he kept really really well in these plastic folders. He would let anybody get near them. Why? Well, he said, "Dad when they're in mint condition they're really the most valuable and then they're really rare. And rare means valuable."

August 22, 2024

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When you have three children, of course only one can be the first, and that one becomes to the others the measuring stick for all privileges, all fairness, and all comparisons.

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