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Thursday, April 11, 2013

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Okay, here's the scene: My wife and I are sitting together on an airplane. I'm busy working, trying to be a good time manager; getting my work done on my way to Chicago. And my wife has headphones on listening to whatever program happened to be on the stereo system, and she's laughing out loud. You know how frustrating that is? I'm trying to get work done and she's ho, ho, ho, ho! Listen, that drives you crazy when you don't know what somebody's laughing at.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

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I think in a way, life is kind of like 365 deaths and resurrections every year. You know, you go to bed at night. It's kind of like you die, and then you come back to life the next morning. Now I know some mornings those resurrections look a little doubtful, like they may not happen. There's the sound of a buzzer, or a bell, or a radio going on, and then no signs of life. But eventually, sooner or later, there are signs of stirring and the dead person returns to life—another new start in a lifetime full of new starts. Whether or not you find those early moments of your day a little tough, I think I've got something that just might help you get out of the gate each morning.

Friday, April 5, 2013

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One of the most dramatic scientific advances in my lifetime has been those amazing space shuttle flights. Apparently they're behind us now, but man, they sure did make aeronautical and science and all kinds of history. We got to hear space news on a pretty regular basis and watching those dramatic launches. We'd hear conversations from space. We still do from the Space Station. You know, you could hear the familiar sound of the conversation between the NASA Mission Control Center and those astronauts up there. The space day would begin with a wake up song from Houston. They'd play something that would say, "Good morning!" Then they would communicate back and forth all day long. Of course, they were in constant communication. See, when you're living in an environment where so much could go wrong; it's real important to do that.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

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I won't be going on a cruise anytime soon. Not that I ever wanted to. But the reports of those passengers on that powerless, drifting cruise ship a while back, oh that clinched it. Fire at sea, everything shut down - from lights to air conditioning to toilets, no communication, little bags as your personal "bathroom," accounts of sewage running in the halls and down the walls, a repulsive stench, sleeping wherever. I ain't goin'!

Friday, March 29, 2013

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You gotta feel bad for the youngest child. I mean, there's a thousand pictures of the firstborn, "Hey, we've never had one of these before!" Maybe 300 or 400 of the second born. And then, if they're lucky, possibly 30 of the final arrival. Oh, we loved him just as much. We just didn't have as many pictures of him. Probably because his brother and sister wore us out.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

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I think I've been in the front row of almost every group picture I've ever been in. Now, I didn't put me there. No, "Let me be on the front row!" No, the photographer always seemed to put me there. Unfortunately it's not because of my leading man good looks. No, that's not a possibility at all. It's because of my inches...actually my lack of inches. They always put us short guys in front. If you're short, you know that. They always put the tall fellows in the rear of the picture, and that's for a good reason. They put the little guys in the front because the big guys block the view.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

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I'll never forget those early morning seminars in Haiti. We were in Port-au-Prince, the capital city, and we were doing a youth crusade there. Every morning at 6:00 a.m. they offered four seminars in the National Gymnasium to any teenagers who wanted to come. Did I mention 6:00 a.m.?

Thursday, March 21, 2013

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Oh, we have different kinds of meals at our house - "paper plate" meals. Do you have those? You know, pizza, hamburgers, hot dogs - if you want to be more frank. And then we have the "fine china meals." We don't have too many of those, but on some special occasions we break out the fine china. We don't break the fine china; we break out the fine china. Now, it's very different the way we treat those two kinds of plates when we're finished eating. For example, when we have paper plates, we don't wash them after we're done. That probably doesn't come as a great surprise to you. We don't put them in a nice careful place to keep them there. In fact, we just kind of wad them up and throw them away because they're disposable. You don't wash those. No big deal!

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

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Honestly, snowball fights have always been a mismatch in our family. When our boys were little, they didn't stand a chance. Then they got bigger than I am; now I don't stand a chance. Actually, snowballs are fun unless you get too many of them. If you put thousands of snowballs together and roll them down a mountain, you've got an avalanche. That's not fun.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

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It might actually be an unwritten rule of flying commercially. The person who has the window seat in a row always seems to get there last. It's just got to be a rule; seems to always happen. It happened one day to me. I was lucky enough to be in the center seat. There was someone to my left sitting on the aisle seat, and we were all buckled in because they were about to close the door and begin the flight. I said, "All right! I'm going to get an empty seat next to me." No!

Friday, March 15, 2013

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If you ever saw my oldest son eat a hamburger, you'd see how quickly it disappears. I'm sure that you would find it hard to believe that there was a time when he was actually too young to eat one. Yes, but we have the movies at home to prove it! We've got these old Super8 movies. Well, not now; we've, of course, made them something more current. But there's this little baby eating this mush that only babies eat. He didn't have any equipment to chew a hamburger with then. So we'd feed him this smooth, beaten-to-death version of the real thing - no chewing, no effort, it just kind of slides right on down. Now he has to work harder on it these days, like when you're eating a steak. But he seems to have no desire to go back to the good old days of baby food. The best food will require some effort, but it's worth it.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

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Our local high school football team had the most dramatic turn around I think I've ever seen in a high school team. They had only scored in two games the season before. A new coach took over, and the next season they were in the state championship and were on top many years after that!

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

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I was a Flash Gordon freak when I was a kid. Now, you probably have led a deprived life and you maybe say, "Flash who?" Let me bring you up-to-date. Flash Gordon was an inter-galactic hero that was made famous in a serialized movie that I think might have been filmed way back in the 1930s. No, I did not see it when it first came out! But it kept going on and on and on forever. I think you might still be able to find it sometimes on late night TV. Every episode ended with Flash in a jam, and he was always ready to be destroyed by some space monster or death ray. And you were sure there was no way Flash was going to get out of this one. There always was. He always did, and there is always a way out for you and me, too, if you're working for the right director.

Friday, March 8, 2013

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My next door neighbor in our dorm in college always wanted to preach like Billy Graham. I mean he really wanted to preach like Billy Graham. He would tape Billy Graham on his radio program, and then he would listen to the tapes over and over again. He would copy everything, including even the inflections of Billy's voice. And then he would watch Billy Graham. He studied his gestures; he'd try to get them down and gesture just when Billy Graham would. He'd hold his Bible like Billy Graham. Now you are going to think he was really a fanatic, but this really is true. He told me he even counted the words per minute that Billy Graham averaged and tried to get the same pace. Wow! That's a crazy way to approach ministry, huh? Well, it's more common than you might think.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

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It was right at the beginning of the first Gulf War when I got an unusual and an unexpected insight from one of the soldiers who had been shipped out for that very dangerous mission. Thousands and thousands of our military were sent out to the desert to try to liberate the nation of Iraq. And they were hit with such intense desert heat that it could require six gallons of water a day to keep from dehydrating. And they faced the very real fear of chemical warfare. They had to be prepared to resist that. Not just guns and tanks, but deadly gas.

Monday, March 4, 2013

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I think I've been on a diet since I was about six months old, or at least it seems that way. I guess my "thorn in my flesh" is my metabolism. Is that possible? It refuses to convert calories; it loves to store calories instead. Now, over the years, I've made friends with my metabolism, and that's probably why I left 210 pounds years ago and have been able to stay, you know, a lot lower than that by 40 or 50 pounds over the years. I've learned how much intake I can stand in relation to how much I'll be exerting that day. The problem is that the day is filled with caloric choices, whether it's a nibble on those snacks that somebody brought to the office, or getting a sandwich from the deli like everybody else is, or eating that tempting dinner that my wife has prepared.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

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If you're not an avid basketball fan, you may have never heard of Stacey King. He actually some years ago was a rookie player with the Chicago Bulls. I think you've probably heard of Michael Jordan, one of the all-time great superstars of professional basketball. One season, Michael Jordan broke a single game scoring record, and Stacey King, the rookie, had a great quote after that game. He said, "I'll always remember this as the night that Michael Jordan and I combined to score 70 points in one game." Actually, Michael Jordan scored 69 points; Stacey King scored one. I know the feeling!

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

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It actually starts while men are still boys, "I'll beat you!" It's that innate desire in a male to compete, to conquer, to win. A girl is a conquest, a game is a conquest, a career or a business is a conquest. In Spanish, men were called conquistadors! Give them a challenge in their field or in their interest area, and they will work hard to conquer it. Now, that's the good news. The bad news is that these conquerors retreat when the challenge happens to be in a relationship.

Monday, February 25, 2013

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Not long ago I was at a conference in a beautiful mountain setting. We had our work all spread out across the tables we were working on. The tables became messier and messier as the day went on. You know how those meetings go. And, after several hours of our, shall we say hot air, the room was ready for some ventilation. So a couple of fellows went over and opened the windows real wide, and oh did that felt good. And then, a big mountain breeze came up and blew through the room. Some people thought the wind was just what we needed. But some of our work started to blow around, and some thought it was suddenly too cool. One man got up and loudly slammed those windows shut! It seems as if there are always those who want to shut the window when the wind is starting to blow.

Friday, February 22, 2013

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Somewhere on your body there is probably some mark or scar from your early days of riding a bicycle. Most of us took a pretty good spill somewhere along the way and we've got the marks to prove it. Well, our family was staying at a little cabin in the woods, and our oldest son came cruising down this little dirt path on his bike. He spun out on the gravel and he had an unscheduled meeting with the ground. When he got up he was bleeding pretty profusely from his mouth.

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