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Over the years, our family has had the chance to see Christmas from many different perspectives: Christmas in Manhattan, in Chicago's Loop, a mountain Christmas, a colonial Christmas, a white Christmas, a warm Christmas, and a one horse open sleigh Christmas.
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I guess you could call it the two faces of Ian. See, Ian is a friend of mine who is the leader of a very effective youth ministry in New Zealand. And as you converse with him personally, well, it's obvious that he has a stutter. And sometimes it makes it difficult for him to complete his sentence, and I'm sure it's probably very frustrating for him. And while it's noticeable, it's not really that important to anybody. Actually he is a Godly, magnetic leader, stutter or not.
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Oh, the frequent flyer bonus. That's one of the smartest ideas the airlines ever had I think. You know, you don't usually have to think twice about what airline you're going to book with. If they've got a flight going to the city that I'm going to anywhere near the time I need to go, you know I'm going to try and stick with that one company. Oh, I'm just a loyal kind of guy! No. See, the airline credits me with mileage awards that convert ultimately into discounts, and upgrades, and even free trips. They're getting a little harder to get, but you know, it's still a pretty good deal. Now, that bonus incentive sure has worked in getting me to stay with one carrier. And I understand it's worked on millions of other flyers too. The golden principle here is pretty simple: the biggest rewards are for those who stick with the same carrier.
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The barber shop I used to go to was definitely a man's world, and you got more than a haircut when you went there; you got an ear full. See, something seems to happen when men sit down in that barber chair. It's as if they were administered truth serum, and they start to suddenly talk openly about their relationships, and their marriage, and their kids, and their frustrations, whether you want to hear it or not.
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My daughter wanted to put her fingers in the fan. Oh, she was a very little girl at the time. I said, "No." She cried. I think she thought I didn't love her and if I loved her I'd let her put her fingers in the fan. She really wanted to check it out!
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Okay, some people might call it a form of insanity, I know that, but I love snow. I guess it began when I was a little kid. I guess kind of you're always a five-year-old kid when it snows, especially some of the first snows of the winter. There's this kind of kid inside of me that maybe has never grown up. Well, I love new fallen snow. That probably should be qualified. Oh, it's so nice to walk through our neighborhood when it's blanketed in white and there are no tracks. Now, when the snow has been around for a while, oh it's not really very beautiful. Yeah, it's gets dirty, and crusty, and slushy, and messy. You know. Untouched snow—oh, that's the best, kind of like untouched love.
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I just can't get this little four-year-old girl out of my mind. Even as I was preparing this, her story just hits my heart again.
She and her family only had moments to prepare before the F5 tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri not long ago. Now, Mom and Dad battled fierce winds; they were desperately trying to shepherd everyone into the safest corner of the house, but not quite everyone. Somehow this little four-year-old daughter of theirs got separated from them, and these winds were so strong that it was impossible to look for her any more. So, they huddled together as the tornado made a direct hit on their house. When they looked up, it had leveled everything almost instantly.
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We've always been big Winnie the Pooh fans at our house. Our kids always enjoyed having that read to them, and now they read it to their own kids. Now, there is one scene from Winnie the Pooh that I really remember.
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I think it had to be one of the most like insecure afternoons of my life. Our committee had been meeting for two days at this hotel. Two days straight; I mean two days straight. We had a slave-driving chairman, and finally he said, "All right, guys, how about a couple of hours in the pool?" "All right! The pool! The sauna! We deserve a break today."
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Because we have so many Native American friends in the Southwest, I was carefully watching a ravenous wildfire in eastern Arizona. You know, when you are told to evacuate, honestly you never know if you'll have a home to come back to.
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Joey's story really touched me. Joey ran in the handicapped Olympics that were held in conjunction with the Olympics in Seoul, Korea some years ago. Of course it was at a separate location, and in his particular track event there were only two people competing. Well, Joey got off to a good start, but of course because of his handicaps, his arms and legs were flailing and he wasn't very graceful. The announcer was heard to say at the beginning of the race, "I'm glad I'm not like Joey."
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When I spoke at a winter conference in Canada, the word cold took on a whole new meaning to me. It was 40 degrees below—that's Fahrenheit, not wind chill temperature! We added the wind chill in just to make it a little more exciting. It was the coldest, sustained temperature I have ever been in.
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During two visits to South Africa, I grew to love the people of that troubled country and its history too. It used to be British turf, except for the tribal lands of the great Zulu Warriors. And in 1879 the British army moved in under Lord Chelmsford, invaded Zulu land to claim it as a property for The Crown.
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Wait! I thought Humpty Dumpty was just a nursery rhyme. You know, the big egg who sat on a wall, but had a great fall. Turns out he's got a lot of company these days—sitting on a high wall, and smashed by a big fall.
Take one of the world's most powerful financial figures, for example, in a $3,000-a-night Manhattan hotel suite one night, and then the next night, in a tough New York jail. He stood accused of serious sexual violation of a hotel maid. Now, those accusations had to be proven in court, but they did resonate with a reputation for mixing power with sexual aggression.
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It was some years ago, but I remember when they closed our local airport. Yeah, there was a violent storm at Newark airport, and thousands of people had their plans suddenly changed. Storms have a way of doing that. Did you ever notice that? There's a snow storm, for example, and schools and businesses oh, they all had their plans made for the day, and suddenly all those plans are out the window. Meetings that had to be today are amazingly rescheduled. Planes and ships are diverted or blown off course. You see, a storm is a classic embodiment of that familiar phrase, "Due to circumstances beyond our control..." Maybe you're in the middle of a storm right now. Your life, your plans are being blown around, and it seems like everything is out of control. I've got good news for you today.
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Let's say that someone steps on the wooden backstairs of your house. Imagine what they do when all of a sudden one of those stairs caves in. Okay, whose fault is it the stair caved in? Well you could blame it on your friend and say, "'Bout time you went on a diet, isn't it buddy?" Or could it be that it wasn't their weight that really made it collapse? Could it be that those little bugs got in and ate it from the inside; and it was already weakened? In fact, even a skinny friend might have made it cave in.
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We say a lot of things we don't really mean. For example, when we sign our letters, sincerely yours—now have you really been sincere about everything you said sincerely yours about? Or how about this one, the check is in the mail—well, sometimes yes, sometimes no; maybe just an intention. Here's a classic one that we often don't really mean, "Hey, let's get together sometime; we'll give you a call." How many times have you been told that, and then how many times did it really happen?
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It's amazing what a difference a camera can make. Some years ago there was a very popular TV series that lasted for years and kept getting reincarnated, pioneered by a guy named Allen Funt. Now he was pretty well known in his time, and the reason he became well known was one thing. He became the creator of a program called Candid Camera. And he proved the principal over and over again, that the camera can make a big difference. See, he would prove that people do these dumb little things totally unaware that the nation was watching. If they knew that, they never would have done what Allen Funt tricked them into doing. Course, the results of clicking cameras aren't always amusing. Incriminating photos can bring down a presidential candidate or a Christian leader and they have. You can imagine the photographer's victims saying, "If I'd only known they were recording this." Well, why don't you assume they are?
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Special people tend to get special treatment. Did you ever notice that? For example, look at what we serve for dinner when the boss is coming over or some out of town friends. It's kind of interesting when special people come and your kids look at you and say, "Mommy, I like it when guests come." And then you find out the reason why. "We never have this when they're not here." They finally get something other than hotdogs and hamburgers. It's amazing when somebody special is coming. We clean house, we cook new things, we put on our best manners. The problem is we often forget who the most special people on earth are—well according to Jesus, that is. And how you treat them is a revealing measure of how much you think like your master.
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If you live in snow country, there are few words more frightening than the word "avalanche." And there's no place where that is a greater concern than in Alaska. Oh, its got majestic mountains; it's got massive snow accumulations. And so, they've actually been creating avalanches there on purpose. You say, "Wait! Avalanches on purpose?" Yeah. Yeah, they actually fire avalanche cannons that bring down accumulations of snow that might otherwise trigger a larger avalanche or come down at a time when people would be jeopardized. Now, at first, it sounds kind of strange to cause an avalanche to control an avalanche. But it works with snow, oh, and it works with relationships.
