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Tuesday, October 14, 2014

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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 a number of 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."

Monday, October 13, 2014

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I've never really been addicted to TV game shows. But years ago, my son got me to kind of be interested in one. It is called Jeopardy. Three contestants, given several categories ranging from U.S. presidents to cat food, and the contestant picks a dollar value question. The host gives the answer to the question in that category. Then the three contestants vie to see who can get the right question, because the right answer is the question. I think you get that. Do you? Some of them do very well and they win lots of money; others just kind of fold up. I said to my son, "Look at those people! They wind up in the hole with their money! How did they get on the show?" He reminded me, "Dad, it's hard to come up with right answers when you have all that pressure on you."

Friday, October 10, 2014

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I was on a flight from Chicago to Newark, and I was busily working until suddenly the pilot put on the brakes. We weren't really near Newark yet, so I tried to figure out what's going on. It looked as if the plane was beginning to circle, and our wing was dipped down a little bit. So pretty soon I said, "You know, I believe I've seen that house before. I think I've seen that field before. Those trees look familiar." I got to see them again, and again, and another time. Yep, we were in that time warp that is dreaded by every frequent flier called the holding pattern. We weren't standing still. No, I'm happy to say we were not standing still. That wouldn't have been good. But we were using up time, we were using up fuel. We were in constant motion; we just weren't making any progress.

Thursday, October 9, 2014

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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. So as they taxied out on the runway the little girl was kind of looking straight ahead like a business woman. Then as they climbed up through the clouds; it was one of those cloud-covered days, the little girl occasionally glanced out the window.

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

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When I get sick it's a rare event in our family. I've been blessed with a pretty healthy life. But there was a time a while back when I got hit with the flu. I mean, "hit" with the flu. And it's enough to say I wasn't moving. I was too weak to talk. I honestly think I was too weak to even turn over for about 24 hours. And then I gradually started to improve. When I began to feel better, man, I tell you what I wanted most. I wanted a shower. It was my first physical triumph after the battle with the flu. I very happily piled in a corner what was the symbol of that long, dark day I had just had; those blue flannel pajamas. I'd been wearing them the whole time. They'd been sweated out several times, and they didn't smell very nice. I could give you more details, but you don't want them. They probably should have been burned, but we couldn't afford that. So, here I was showered with fresh, clean clothes on. I could tell you one thing I wasn't about to do. I wasn't about to put those rotten, old pajamas back on for anything.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

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 "I want to give you a boat!" Well, that's what Carl announced to me actually. See, he wanted to give it to the youth ministry I was working with at the time. And I was grateful, but I wasn't quite sure what to do with a boat. Carl had this little fishing boat, and honestly it was pretty run down. He couldn't use it because he had had a heart attack. And now he gave it to us to sell and get what we could for it. Well, we were really in a tight time financially, and so I accepted the boat. I asked a boating friend of mine how much it was worth. He said, "Boy, I think you might get $1,000 for it." And that's exactly what Carl said he would have sold it for.

Friday, October 3, 2014

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Now, I wasn't expecting a goat to be my teacher. But something kind of special happened. A good friend of ours actually helped a new baby goat come into the world. You might say he was "kidding" around. But you wouldn't say that. No, you shouldn't.

Thursday, October 2, 2014

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Caterpillars? Let's face it; don't tell them what I said, but they're ugly. Butterflies are beautiful. Now, I have known people with butterfly collections. I've never known anyone with a caterpillar collection. I guess it's just that every caterpillar gets fed up inching along instead of flying. They get fed up with being hairy and ugly instead of being colorful and eye-catching. But fed up won't do it. No, that caterpillar has to get into this cocoon and get metamorphed. That's a word I learned for that miraculous process. It means changing your form-metamorphosis, right? There's something, actually, for you in that cocoon, especially if you're tired of crawling spiritually or if your spiritual experience gets pretty hairy sometimes.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

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In high school our teenage son had a very, very busy life, which just might go with having the same last name as I do. And sometimes I would just find him kind of collapsed on the couch. And he deserved a rest. He'd set up his own little personal universe there, a little comfort zone. So, he'd have his New York Giants mug, and his school books, and what was going to be on TV, and of course he had his phone. Now, don't think cell phone, because we're talking before cell phones. This is like the old fashioned land line phone. Unfortunately, the phone plugged in two rooms away, which means that the cord was stretched to the max to get to his little zone with the couch, and I could tell when he had the phone there, because I kept hearing people muttering all through the house after they tripped over the cord. See, it was right where all of us had to walk to get to the living room or to the kitchen. And I'd just say, "Hey, you've got to do something about this thing that people keep tripping over!" Well, so do you and I.

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

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Ever since I was little I've been fascinated by the American Revolution, and I always wanted to see Concord Bridge, where it sort of all began. You know, the shot heard around the world? By the time I got there, I had two little boys of my own who were not fascinated by the American Revolution. I wanted to spend a while at Concord Bridge, imagining those Colonial farmers descending and the Red Coats stepping up to the bridge in their rigid formation.

Monday, September 29, 2014

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My wife and I were out for a Sunday afternoon drive, and we saw a very strange contradiction. There was this church, and there were long stairs leading up to the entrance, and one lone lady at the door. She was trying every door to get in that church and they were all locked. She was frustrated. Now, what was the contradiction? Well, the name on the church-Our Lady of Perpetual Help. My wife said, "You know, this reminds me of a scene I saw when I was in Haiti." She said, "I was right near a church and there was this very gaunt woman, maybe starving to death woman and weeping at the door of this church. And she looked like she was desperate to get in and every door was locked. She literally was beating her fists bloody on the door and there was no response."

Friday, September 26, 2014

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I was speaking in Mobile, Alabama when I heard about this amazing phenomenon that occasionally takes place there. It's along the eastern shore of Mobile Bay. They call it Jubilee. It happens on a summer night sometime between midnight and six, and the fish, and the crab, and all the other sea critters suddenly move in very close to the shore. It's like they get so close that many of them are right up on the beach. The locals just walk along and they scoop up the fish and the crab, and they gather as much seafood as they want. Imagine what an opportunity it is for the fishermen! I mean, they can grab anything they want without going out in a boat.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

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Building a fire is just one of those things a man is supposed to know how to do. And frankly, I hate to have my fire fall apart in front of other people. So I can really empathize with my friend, Rich. It was winter, of course, and he set out to get a fire going in his fireplace. It was Sunday afternoon and we were at his place. He did all the right things. He rolled up the necessary amount of newspaper. He stacked logs with plenty of room for air circulation.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

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Now, if you're a weatherman in Seattle, Washington and you absolutely have to guess what the weather is going to be tomorrow, you should probably guess rain. Of course it's not unusual for it to rain in Seattle. It's a beautiful city with mountains, and an ocean, snow for skiing, and more rainy days than most would probably concede.

Monday, September 22, 2014

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Now, let me make clear, I didn't participate in World War II, but I've been told that they gave American soldiers more than bullets to support them when they went into combat. They gave them a chocolate bar. It makes a lot of sense, actually, when you think about needing a sugar rush when they've got to have all that energy for the battle ahead. And maybe that's not all bad. Of course if you did it to a man as he's about to fall on the couch and take a nap, that might be bad. That's the funny thing about sugar. You eat it and you exercise, boom, it's energy! You eat it and you just lie there, it's fat.

Friday, September 19, 2014

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Something very interesting happens at night when I'm sleeping. There are people all over the world making news! The world's different from the time I close my eyes till the time I wake up, and I want to know what's happened in the night. I think a lot of people do. That's probably one of the first things some of us do is make sure we check in with one of the news channels, or maybe we get a paper, and maybe check the Internet. I have a newspaper that arrives early in the morning, and I like that because I can quickly check out the headlines! Of course, I like it better when it's good news, which isn't nearly often enough.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

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Every once in a while my wife and I would get to choose what we wanted to do with an evening. You notice I said, "Every once in a while." It was pretty rare when the kids were still at home. They had such busy schedules that kept us running, and we, of course, have always had a lot of ministry responsibilities. Well, there was this one evening where we were actually able to decide what we wanted to do - with each other! We talked about being with friends. Someone had said, "Oh, there's a movie you ought to see." We finally decided we'd stay home and talk. You say, "Oh, boring." We said, "Great!"

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

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Well, I taught my boys some baseball, some football, some manners, some English, some history. Then along came chemistry. Oh, I wanted to help one of my sons who was really struggling with it, but my desire wasn't enough. See, chemistry wasn't my thing. As my wife says whenever one of our sons does something crazy, "The apple falls not far from the tree." I don't know why she doesn't say that when they do something good. Well, that was true of chemistry. Very early on I could see that I was at the limit of my ability to help my son. So I called Chuck. Now, there's a boy who understood chemistry. We discussed that academically redemptive word "tutor". He did it and our son survived the "acid" test of chemistry.

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

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A while back I had the privilege of being in South Florida over Easter weekend. And between the meetings I was speaking for, we took a short drive out on the Florida Keys. It was Good Friday afternoon, and I saw a sight there that really got my attention. We were just cruising along, and all of a sudden we saw this small group of people who were walking along the side of the road. What was unusual was the man in front. He was carrying a large, full-sized cross on his shoulders. Well, not exactly carrying. I actually did a double-take. I might have swerved the car a little bit. The cross was on wheels.

Friday, September 12, 2014

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My friend, Lance, has played a lot of parts on stage, and he has a lot of acting ability. Naturally he was interested when he heard that his church was going to do an outreach drama. It was to be held in a public auditorium and they developed this powerful, original presentation of The Life of Christ. And Lance was stunned by the casting choice they made. They wanted to cast him as Jesus. Well, Lance had been in enough productions to know that you've got to get into the person you're playing. You have to stay in that character all day long if possible. And Lance said he really tried. And he told me, "You know what I discovered? I couldn't play Jesus." Neither can you.

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