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Friday, May 4, 2018

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Linda, one of the members of our ministry team, married a guy with an eye. I mean, an eye for artistic possibilities. Ted works on home improvement projects, and he actually helped to improve our home a little bit not long ago. For example, he created this beautiful shelf in our living room. It's made from wood that he scouted and found in the nearby forest. My wife said, "Hey, we're the only ones with a shelf just like that." Ted does originals. Recently, he took Linda out into the woods to see a tree that he thought had tremendous artistic possibilities. So, he envisioned out loud what he wanted to make of it. Linda's comment on this little field trip was slightly amusing: "Ted saw this beautiful work of art. All I saw was a tree."

Thursday, May 3, 2018

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Our family has had the wonderful opportunity of visiting some of the most beautiful places in America, and taking in some incredible views. From the top of towering mountains, from the edge of the Grand Canyon, and in my wife's estimation, often too close to the edge. There's good news and bad news about getting real close to the edge. The bad news is. it is dangerous at the edge – you can fall off. But the good news is, the view from the edge is spectacular!

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

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For the most part, Spring is a season we really look forward to. I mean, everything's blooming, colorful. Unfortunately, though, Spring isn't just flowers-it's floods! Some folks who live by rivers and streams, well they hold their breath a little each Spring. Every year we see vivid pictures of whole areas submerged under floodwaters, and we hear interviews with victims who have lost a lot of their possessions. But invariably, you will hear those victims say, "But we're thankful that at least all of us are safe." You know it's true. I mean, things can be replaced...people can't. It was back in the spring of 1997; it was Kentucky's turn to get hit by major flooding. On the news they showed a list on the wall-a list that was pretty moving to see. At the top were these words: "Missing people," then the names of loved ones who were missing in the flood. But some of those names had a beautiful five-letter word scrawled over them: "Found."

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

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We were with our Native American team to Alaska, and I probably ate more salmon and learned more about salmon than I had all the rest of my life. We were in the Kodiak area one day, and our host took us to this neat little swimming area with a charming little waterfall. And I watched this salmon trying to jump up the waterfall to the stream above it. And he made it! I thought, "Man, that's the gutsiest fish I've ever seen!" Our host explained to us that the salmon was actually heading home - back to where he came from originally. Apparently, after a salmon is spawned, he heads downstream and ultimately out to sea where he spends a lot of his life. But eventually he seems to hear the call to go back to where he came from, even though it means a rugged upstream swim. Something summons him to fight his way back to where he began.

Monday, April 30, 2018

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I have had the wonderful privilege of being in all of the United States actually. One of the last I had the opportunity to visit was one of the most beautiful - Alaska. When I went there the first time, I was impressed with the motto they had on their license plates. It seemed pretty appropriate. "Alaska - The Last Frontier." I can see why they say that. There are hundreds and thousands of miles of unpopulated expanse, abundant wildlife like bears and moose and eagles, great untamed areas, even some untamed people. There's a wildness that does seem to make it the last frontier.

Friday, April 27, 2018

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Now it's pretty rare to see an eagle in our area, so I've had to settle for another bird that at least soars like an eagle. They're the turkey vultures that I see circling overhead so often. I actually love to watch their gracious flight. I mean, I hate to think about their repulsive diet. But as you know, these vultures like to chow down on dead animals. Wherever you see vultures, you can pretty well assume there's a carcass somewhere nearby.

Thursday, April 26, 2018

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My wife and I had an unforgettable time on the little island of Haiti some years ago. You know, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and a heartbreaking place for anyone with a little compassion in their heart. While we were there, missionaries told us about one recent tragedy that was indicative of so many in the lives of these beautiful people. There had been an epidemic of conjunctivitis, or "pinkeye" as it's often called. Women were frustrated by having their eyes crusted over or just running like they do with conjunctivitis, so they tried what they thought might cure it-bleach. They rubbed bleach in their eyes. You know the outcome.

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

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I've traveled a lot. Of course, sometimes I drive, and time matters a lot. So over the years, I've learned a fundamental secret of making great time on the open road. Not speeding – just driving steady. Over and over, I've watched what I call a "spurter" come roaring up behind me. (You've seen them too.) He does everything but push you into the right lane. He's obviously well into the State Trooper Zone as far as his speed's concerned. So I move over...he roars past...but I catch up with him a few miles later without ever changing my speed. See, he's settled back into the right lane, just cruising along. (Have you passed this guy, too?) He speeds in binges, he floors it one minute and then he's just tapping the accelerator a few minutes later. I usually make excellent time driving places, and I've talked to other marathon drivers who are used to getting places fast. And we pretty much agree. How do you trim hours off a long trip? A steady foot. The fast way to get somewhere is not with big spurts, but with a consistent, steady speed. 

Monday, April 23, 2018

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There was a movie years ago called "The Horse Whisperer." I thought it was about a man with laryngitis, but it's actually about this man who has an amazing ability to gentle horses-horses that it seems no one else can tame. In fact, the main character was modeled after a real man whose skill in gentling and training wild mustangs is almost legendary. In the past, people have used some pretty brutal methods to force a horse into submission. But the real horse whisperer doesn't "break horses." He uses body language and, yes, some quiet talking as his tools to gentle a horse that otherwise would be uncontrollable.

Friday, April 20, 2018

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One of our team members reminded me the other day of how I felt about junior high school lunches. He was talking about it in our team devotions. Few of us remember those 7th or 8th grade cafeteria lunches with great fondness. Friday wasn't bad – that was French fry day. But most of the other days – who knows what some of that stuff was - mystery meat! We'd complain about the food, we'd trash the food sometimes, and sometimes we even had a food fight with it! Hey, it's junior high; what do you want? There were many days I wasn't too excited about what was on my plate. There still are.

Thursday, April 19, 2018

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Every fall, the TV networks start hyping their new shows. And usually, they have a couple that feature some well-known star. You can be sure that those headline shows and those headline stars, won't be on at 2:00 in the afternoon or 1:00 o'clock in the morning. No way. They will air sometime in the heart of the evening, like 8:00 or 9:00 o'clock. What do they call it? Prime time! You know you've made it when you've got a show on prime time. Even though a lot of what's on in those hours doesn't seem very prime to a lot of us, to the networks it's their best. Stick the reruns and the less popular shows to the off-hours when not as many people are watching, right? But prime time, hey, that's reserved for the best.

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

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It was pretty scary for a four-year-old little girl. My wife's grandfather had somehow managed to drop his favorite pen down a cistern in his yard. Yeah, Karen always remembered it as being about 25 feet deep, and she remembered that because she was the one who had to retrieve Granddad's valuable pen. Her Daddy made this makeshift harness for her to sit in, then tied a rope around her waist, and began to lower her down into that hole. Her mind was focused partly on the lost pen, and partly on what snakes might be down there in that damp hole in the ground. As she dangled in space in this scary place, she was counting on one thing: her big, strong Father was holding the rope.

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

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When you live in the New York area, locking up your house is just second nature. In fact, it's wise to make sure that every door and every window is locked. Unfortunately, all those precautions can work against you if you forget or lose your house key. Yes, this is the voice of experience. Not only are all those nasty people locked out, you are now locked out! I've been there and done that. I can remember making a complete circuit of the house, desperately trying every window and every door. And the good news was that sometimes I actually found something was unlocked. I'd take even a window that I had to be a contortionist to get through! Anything to find a way to get in!

Monday, April 16, 2018

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We've gotten all too used to seeing streams of refugees pouring into another land; into a place to escape whatever was happening in their country. I still remember the heartbreaking images from the end of the 20th Century. You know, there were tens of thousands of Kosovo refugees fleeing from the attacks of Serbian soldiers and police. Day after day, we would hear reports on the news of how many more refugees had arrived on the Albanian or Macedonian border, and how many were jammed into makeshift camps, desperate for food, for water, for shelter, and for a feeling of being human again. Most of the major networks had correspondents on the scene who would report from that sea of humanity and misery. In a moment of disarming honesty, one reporter said, "When you cover a tragedy like this, you have to put up a steel wall to protect yourself or you can't do your job." But then he went on to say, "But I have to confess to you, suddenly today my steel wall came down. I just lost it."

Friday, April 13, 2018

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I was in a convenience store one night when an alert clerk made an important discovery. Someone had just handed her a bill, and she did what she was trained to do: she held it up to the light. She got this furrow in her brow and she reached for a special pen. When she marked the bill, the mark was black. When she marked another bill of the same denomination, it turned out yellow. The clerk turned to her coworker with the black-marked bill in her hand and said one word - I'll bet you guessed it - "counterfeit." Apparently, the man who gave it to her didn't realize it was counterfeit. But, looking at the bills side by side, there was no way I could tell one was counterfeit. But the light revealed that something was missing from that counterfeit that actually was printed into the real ones, and the pen confirmed it. I want to tell you, though, if you don't know how to detect the difference, the counterfeit and the real thing look the same...except one is worth absolutely nothing.

Thursday, April 12, 2018

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There's this one experiment I remember from my grade school science class – no, it was not dissecting a brontosaurus. Our science teacher had this little hand-crank generator wired to a light bulb. And we'd turn that little crank, and it managed to generate just enough juice to light the light bulb. That baby generator was fine for the limited demands of Mr. Light Bulb, but I'd hate to try and run my whole house on it! Bye-bye stove, microwave, refrigerator, computer, lighting, and heat. No way that puny power supply could handle all those demands!

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

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We were adding onto our little house, and we were getting some help from good old Chuck. He's been a part of adding to our house; actually, he did most of the work. A wonderful Christian brother, skilled builder and handyman. He's like an everyday genius...which I am not. Now the days were pretty long and we'd be leaving the house earlier than Chuck got there and we'd return home after dark. So, I didn't get to see him much. But every day that front porch was noticeably farther along than it was when we left that morning. I actually did get to talk to Chuck on the phone one day, and I told him, in a way, he reminded me of the Lord. He was interested in how that happened. I said, "Well, I don't actually see him, but I see the difference he's made!"

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

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It's a ghost town now. But in the 1880s, she was one of the boomtowns of California-all because of some silver in the ground. When the price of silver soared, so did their fortunes and so did the population of this little town that we visited not too long ago. But when the price of silver crashed, well, of course, so did the town. Back in some of her better days, a fire hit the town and it burned a lot of it to the ground. The only original buildings still standing there today had one thing in common. In a town that was mostly wood structures, these were the ones that were made of adobe. They've reconstructed some of those wood buildings, but hey, they weren't there long ago because, of course, they couldn't survive the fire. 

Friday, April 6, 2018

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We hear millions of words in our life...especially if you spend much time around me or our family. We forget most of the words we hear, don't we, except for some that are just too important to forget. Like our baby's first words, or the last words of someone we love, or the words that end up changing our life. Our five-year-old grandson called me one day and he said, "Granddad, I stayed up extra late tonight till I could talk to you and tell you what I memorized." It took me a while to recover from what he said, and I'll never forget it.

Thursday, April 5, 2018

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Look, I know I live in a digital world like computers, and I think I have an incurable case of technophobia anyway. But, you know, I've slowly made friends with all of this. It's great stuff! Early in my computer life, some of my non-technophobic friends were explaining a computer installation to me and what they needed to do with it, at least back at that time. They used a lot of words I didn't understand, but then they said, "Ron, we have to install a dedicated line." And I said, "Yes! At last! I understand that word."

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