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Every day the people who broadcast the news to us have to decide what's going to be big news and what's going to be little news. The big news they talk about first. And the little news may not get mentioned at all.
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My friend Billy knew where his parents hid the Christmas gifts. He's an adult now but he still remembers the year he sneaked downstairs while his parents were gone. (I'll bet you could guess the rest.) He went in the closet and saw the shopping bags that contained all his gifts. Nothing was wrapped yet. He looked inside the bags and there they were. He folded up the bag and went back upstairs. His parents never knew.
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Right after Thanksgiving I'm in my annual pilgrimage to the Christmas corner of our garage. I did it last year, and I brought out Christmas. Now, we've been accumulating ornaments and decorations for a lot of years now, and it's always a big deal for the family when they make their annual re-entry; all those decorations come back into our life again and all the memories. The house is actually alive with Christmas. Well, I mean for a while. But before very long, I'll reverse the exercise, repack everything in their aging boxes, and put them back in storage for another year.
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Over the years, our family's had the chance to see Christmas from many different perspectives: Christmas in Manhattan, in Chicago's Loop, a mountain Christmas, a colonial Christmas.
But it's a man named Nate Saint who, better than anyone else I know, may have captured Christmas from heaven's perspective. He was one of five American missionaries, called by God to the jungles of Ecuador to introduce the Gospel to one of the "lostest" people groups on earth, the primitive Auca (Waorani) Indians.
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Not many parents can sleep very soundly until they know their children are in for the night. My wife and I always asked our big, teenage guys to stop by our room no matter how late it was and let us know they were home. Some of the most beautiful words in the English language to us were: "Mom, Dad, I'm home." Isn't it natural to want a 'fix' on where your kids are? Maybe you know a child who is way overdue.
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The occasion was a city-wide art contest where the participants were told to paint paintings on the subject of "Peace." Well, you can understand that the judges were attracted to this beautiful "pastural" scene that a local painter had painted. It was a green pasture with puffy white clouds and this beautiful blue sky and a little boy going by with a fishing pole over his shoulder, little quiet brooks and birds flying around. Yeah. that one came in second.
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There have been a number of movies and television shows about angels taking human form."Touched By An Angel" was a television series that ran for nine seasons. You can still find it in "re-run." I remember this particular episode (for some reason, it really stuck with me) where a young angel was kneeling at the feet of a man who I think had been a homeless guy. I think maybe he had been in prison, and he just was pretty unkempt. Didn't look like much of a match for an angel. But the angel had this basin of water, and the man was telling her not to do what she was about to do. The angel was about to wash this old guy's feet. But she looked at him with tears in her eyes and she gave an answer that came from deep in her heart. She said, "I have to do this so I remember who I am." That stuck.
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Like most families, our family looks forward to Christmas traditions. And several of those traditions have to do with calories. Maybe the best of those traditions would be Christmas cookies! One year when our kids were young, my wife broke her hand in a traffic accident. And she has been the baker of the cookies. So, the kids went into mild shock, "Oh no! Christmas without Mom's cookies?" So she attempted to explain what it took to make them. Friends of ours, who knew the tremendous trauma our kids were in, offered to bake some of her recipes.
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These days it's rare to have a happy, happy, happy week in Washington.
National leaders usually try to cool the rhetoric so we don't panic over things. But sometimes it seems like they've given up, especially the closer we get to the next Presidential election. But the leaders in Washington have been more candid than ever before saying things folks like that usually don't say.
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Through the years of ministry, God has miraculously provided so many things through His people that we'd have never been able to buy. So much of the furniture and equipment in our office is like a God-story.
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I always look forward to it as one of the season's great Christmas moments – the lighting of that towering Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. And it's happening tonight.
I remember last year. It was just a tad more exciting, for me anyway, because I had sort of a second-hand personal connection. The tree came from the farm owned by our good friends' daughter and son-in-law. (Did you get that?) They were chauffeured to ringside (actually rink-side) seats for the big show. So, not only did I get to watch the tree and the performers. Hey, I had like friends on the front row!
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I've seen several Presidents come and go in my lifetime. But during that time there's been only one Queen of England – Queen Elizabeth II – and she recently celebrated a milestone. She became Britain's longest reigning monarch, surpassing Queen Victoria. It's pretty amazing when you think about it. Over 63 years as Queen.
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If you know teenagers or even pre-teens, you'll hear that word "like" a lot! It's not new. Even when one of my sons was going through those interesting teenage years, he had a case of "like-itis", we'll call it. Typical sentence, "Well, there was like this movie I wanted to like watch, and so I like looked for what time it was supposed to be like – you know." Well, you know what though? There might be some power in that word like.
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Thanksgiving dinner in Baghdad! That's not many folks' dream way to spend Turkey Day. But for some American soldiers several years ago, Thanksgiving 2003 is one of the more memorable holidays of their lives. That was the day the President of the United States joined them for Thanksgiving Dinner; actually helped serve Thanksgiving Dinner. In the aftermath of the Iraq War, Baghdad was still not a very secure place, so the President's visit came as a total surprise and a total secret from the press. Many American soldiers were feeling the weight of an extended tour of duty and, for many, the sudden appearance of their President... well, you can guess it was a real morale boost. As GIs have learned in previous wartime visits from other Presidents, there's just something really re-energizing about a personal visit from your Commander-in-Chief.
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When you visit Washington, D.C., you're bound to see the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the Capitol Building. But there's this one side trip to Northern Virginia that's probably the most humbling stop you'll make. It's Arlington National Cemetery where this endless sea of white crosses reminds an American of the high price of freedom. That price is beautifully dramatized every hour at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier-with the Changing of the Guard.
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A team member who served on our radio team for a number of years loved to go white water rafting. His white water was on the Chattooga River, in South Carolina. He loved to take his youth group on white water kayaking trips and that's where he learned about a river phenomenon called hydraulics.
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I really hate it when a five-year-old makes me feel dumb; especially when it's my grandson. I mean, he didn't mean to make me feel dumb. He didn't know he was making me feel dumb. But he is really smart, and he knows a lot about a lot! Like the solar system. He's got the planets down cold along with all kinds of facts about the universe. Things I either have forgotten or never knew. Another thing our grandson is really mastering is numbers. Man, can he count! He's working on thousands, millions, billions, and his favorite quantity, a google! When it comes to our universe, he's never going to be able to count that high!
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It was always so much fun when we stuffed all five Hutchcrafts into the car for a long trip. And, of course, we had turf wars in the back seat. You remember that? Especially as our kids became bigger. We had three kids trying to figure out who gets which third or more, of the turf in the back seat. Of course that was only one of our problems.
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Alcoholics really need to stay away from places that are all about alcohol. Bookaholics need to stay away from bookstores. Like it's dangerous for me to spend time in a bookstore, especially a Christian bookstore.
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During the winter it's nice to think about a beach and all that sun. Of course the easiest way to cook yourself on the beach is to be there on a cloudy day. You say, "I don't feel a thing." But let me tell you by experience, the rays are still burning you.
