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This is going to come as a surprise to my friends who know my handyman abilities or my lack of handyman abilities, but my sons and I have built several houses together. Uh-huh! Yeah. Now, don't expect to see a pickup truck around town that says Hutchcraft & Sons on the side; that's not going to happen. See, our houses...well, they haven't done too well.
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My car started this morning. You say, "Big deal." Well, it is; it starts every morning no matter how cold it is or how wet it is. That's especially good when you realize the old girl's got, you know, something like 150,000 miles on her. I don't have nearly that many miles on me, and I'm having increasing trouble starting in the morning myself. Actually, all our cars have been like that since we began in the ministry many years ago, and they keep working. And I don't credit the automobile company with it; I credit the manufacturer - no, the manufacturer.
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When someone in our house felt overworked or unfairly overloaded, sometimes you'd hear them say, kiddingly I think, "Hey, I thought Lincoln freed the slaves!" Well, actually, I think the members of our family might have been right about all of us. We do need an update on that Emancipation Proclamation. In fact, you might be surprised who the slaves are today, and the slave master. The slaves are nice people, successful people; maybe someone like you.
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I heard not long ago about a little boy who was trying to move this huge rock. He pulled, and he pushed, and grunted and strained, trying to move it with leverage from a board, but it was all to no avail. Finally his Dad said, "Son, have you used all your resources?" "Oh, yeah, Dad. I can't make it move! I've tried everything." And his Dad replied, "No, you haven't. You haven't asked me to help you yet."
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They tell me that a dog is man's best friend. I hope so, because if you have one of those best friends you get to go for a walk with him very, very often, right? I mean, it's nice to have a walk with your best friend. Of course, you often see folks in our neighborhood walking their dog, and occasionally you see a humorous variation on the old theme of a man walking his dog.
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Do you remember Humpty Dumpty? Well, you might be in the middle of a Humpty Dumpty relationship right now. You remember he fell down, went to pieces and all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again. Maybe that's how you feel right now; there are pieces all around you, and there's no one to put them together. The wreckage? Well, it could be a broken relationship or maybe a breaking relationship with a parent, or a child, a husband, a wife, or a friend. If you're one of the King's men or women, there's actually something you can do to put the pieces back together again if you will.
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On the Sunday before Easter, my pastor was talking about the donkey Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. And my mind wandered (that's never the pastor's fault) to a horse that I met one day in Texas.
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Winter came early to the mountains where we were spending our summer vacation. Of course, that's to be expected if we're on vacation; in the summer, it's probably going to get to be winter. But one night the temperature actually dropped into the 30s and no one was prepared for that. We're in this little cabin, and all of us… suddenly we are snuggling under this warm, Hudson Bay blanket. Therefore, we actually didn't have any awareness of how cold it was outside, because, well, we were warm.
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They keep it under glass that seals out any air getting to it. And when it's not on display, it's kept underground in a vault - actually a bombproof vault. It's the most important document in the history of the United States. Of course, it's the Declaration of Independence.
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I know I really need to exercise. My blood and my pulse - they don't really get going very fast as I sit many days doing my work. You know, like what I'm doing right now. I'm sitting at a microphone, and I haven't made too much progress in my form of exercise since my childhood. Well, you know, I used to chug around on my bicycle when I was a little kid. And when I was little, it was for fun or just basic transportation.
