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If you've never been to a symphony, let me give you a little advice. Don't leave during the first few minutes. See, the musicians are tuning up during that time, and it doesn't sound like anything you'd want to stay for. That's not what the whole concert is going to be like. You might say to yourself, "Man, if this is going to be like this, I'm out of here. Is this what I paid for?"
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I wonder if someday I'm going to be banned from restaurants. I've been known to give the help a hard time. Now, believe me, that's not what I'm trying to do. And if you're a waiter or a waitress, don't write a nasty letter to me. I just figure that, well, it gets so hum-drum and boring waiting on people and customers treat you like you're part of the menu or like a vending machine. It's fun to inject some laughs into their day.
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Not again. That was my gut reaction when I saw the headline about another shooting at Fort Hood a while back. I just couldn't believe it when they said that the previous shooting on the base was five years ago. It seemed like yesterday.
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Becky was my first serious crush. Well, as serious as you can be when you're 13! I thought she was beautiful. That's why I was so surprised when she said she had been in a violent automobile accident not long before that. She said it had done very serious damage to her face; all kinds of scars. But when I looked at that beautiful face I couldn't see any trace of it. Something had obviously happened to those scars. She told me that a plastic surgeon had worked on those scars. He had very skillfully taken those scars and recreated something beautiful!
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We tend to remember people by what they are most known for. Like, if you're from an older generation, well they would know Sinatra's "Old Blue Eyes" or you might remember Bob Hope. He had a trademark song, "Thanks for the Memories." Or let's say, "Linus" what do you think of? Right, the blanket - he's known for that. That's his trademark. Of course you have a trademark too...something that the people you work with, the people you go to school with, remember about you. That's your trademark. If you're a follower of Jesus Christ, I know what your trademark should be, and it is so rare in our world today it's really noticeable. Didn't use to be rare, but it is now. And if you have it, you'll be noticed.
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Our son-in-law can only sit still for so long. When we lived back East, there was this one time when he was visiting us that he reached his limit regarding that. So he grabbed his basketball and went out to the hoop in our back yard. Now, it was a pretty primitive basketball setup. It was just several boards nailed to a tree at the back of our driveway. So, you know, very homemade, wooden backboard.
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The day grades come out - that's usually an exciting day in most homes. There are a few kids who come home proudly waving their A's and B's. There are more kids who take their time coming home that day. They hope no one remembers. And then there are some kids who just don't come home at all that day. Of course there are the inevitable discussions about, "Why did you get this grade?" And, "Are you doing your best?" And, "What happens next?" And, "Well, you know what we're going to have to do, don't you?" And then we hear a list of very creative excuses as to why the grades are what they are. The problem is, I'm not sure we're always grading the right things. But I am sure that God does.
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I used to think I didn't dream much. But I guess that's scientifically inaccurate. We all dream a lot, but some of us like me don't remember them. Now, my wife? She dreams in these Technicolor epics! I mean, I'm lucky if I remember a black and white short subject. Once in a while, though, I do remember a bad dream I've had. Not usually about monsters or murderers. I think you're going to laugh when I tell you about what a lot of my nightmares are about. Not being ready. Yeah, you know, stepping up to a microphone totally unprepared; having a huge audience waiting for me to speak in an auditorium and I'm backstage. They push me to go out. I'm being introduced. I have nothing ready to say.
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It's 1:00 A.M....the telephone rings. I mumble in my pillow. It was our daughter. See, all through college, if the phone rang when it was late at night, then it was a good guess that it was our daughter. That's even true now. She's a night person. And my wife always reminds me, "Well, it's your fault." See, when our daughter was born I was a director for a youth organization and most nights I'd get home about 10:30.
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It was one of the dumbest things I'd done in a while. I know you find that hard to believe! I was involved in this intense ministry on Native American reservations. That wasn't dumb, but I was missing a lot of sleep and I decided to drive. That was dumb.
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When you work in a ministry as I do, your spending priorities are usually more on people than on things. For example, we have never invested real heavily in office furniture. We've sort of waited for what the Lord supplied, and God has really met our needs. Now, sometimes that gives our office sort of an eclectic look; it's not one style, but it's nice-it's functional. I remember when I once received a new guest chair for my office. It was a nice, black leather swivel chair, and it was a busy chair; a lot of people in and out of there. And it was always so interesting to watch people get in and out of it; especially out. It was relatively easy to plop down into this chair, but there was something about the height and the angle that made it a struggle to get out. You know, life has a lot of positions like that, doesn't it?
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I was thinking the other day about when my son informed me that our local supermarket near his high school had just installed a new air conditioning system. What he meant was that it had just been bulldozed! That store had been there since I could remember, and then in one day it was rubble in a vacant lot.
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A long time ago, my wife and I were vacationing in a mid-south state, and she convinced me to explore this back road. It was just marked "Erbie", whatever that is. It's a town I guess. And we never did get to see it, but we sure did drive a long way. Oh, the road was beautiful, it was bumpy, it was endless, but we had time. We were on vacation. We were having fun.
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After all the hamburgers I have eaten in my life, I must be an expert. Now, when they say, "You are what you eat", oh that's scary. I'm the world's largest hamburger. I might have to spend the rest of my life on a bun. No, no, no. Well, my schedule actually sometimes leaves me no choice but fast food. I'm kind of stuck with something like a fast-food hamburger.
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My son is old enough to have kids of his own now, but we were looking at pictures of him when he was about three. We were in our back yard and we had just set up our tent. We were going to camp out in it that tent that night. Here was a little guy wanting to help his Daddy, so he played with the poles, held the flaps open on the tent door, he was so excited.
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It's a big deal when a child can finally start buying gifts with his or her own money. I remember one of the first gifts I was able to buy for my mother. It was a corsage for Mother's Day. I was doing this all on my own. I was so proud. I saved up my allowances, and I rode my bike about six blocks to the florist. I picked out these two carnations. I still remember - one pink, one white. And I made sure they put that little plastic bumble bee in with the flowers. And then I got on my bike and I held the white box on my handle bars. I was so proud of this gift, and then I hit a bump. In one very depressing moment, that white box went flying off the handle bars in front of my bike and I ran over it. So there I was, this forlorn little guy, bike on the ground, looking very sadly at my gift with a tire mark right down the middle.
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I think there's like this five-year-old kid that comes out in everybody when they get to Disney World. I'm going to have to confess that the little boy inside of me is still alive and well when I'm there, even though it's been awhile since I've been there. I mean, we did enjoy the times when our family visited the Magic Kingdom together some years ago. We've got the memories, we've got the photos. And, you know, now the next generation is taking their family!
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It was a dark cloud over the last Super Bowl Sunday, because the news had rocked Hollywood. It rocked Broadway, and then countless everyday folks who wouldn't forget the compelling characters that this actor had created on the screen. Academy Award-winning actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman, found dead in his apartment of a drug overdose at the age of 46.
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It's really hard for me to drive by Civil War battlefields without stopping. I'm a history buff, and I like to stop at those things! Now, when I say Civil War, I might have to explain that to some of my friends, because if you grew up in the South, they say there was nothing civil about it. It was the War Between the States. At least that's what they taught my wife at her school. One of the battlefields that I've driven by a lot is in New Market, Virginia.
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I should have saved my DVRs of the Winter Olympics. I liked the news from Russia a lot better when it was about the Olympics. As soon as the fireworks in Sochi ended, the fireworks in Ukraine began. And suddenly part of Ukraine is part of Russia. Hello? And with Russia flexing its expansionist muscles on the world's stage again, I'm hearing those two words again that I haven't heard for a long time - Cold War.
