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Tuesday, December 11, 2018
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Christmas shopping is really fun for a while. But after a few stressful trips to the mall, after spending more time looking for a parking place than you do in the store, after battling the crowds and trying to find a store that still has what you're looking for, well Christmas shopping starts to lose some of its glitter. But then there's that golden moment when you walk in the house with your last installment of shopping bags, you collapse in the recliner, and you declare in a loud, triumphant voice, "I'm done with my shopping!" What a feeling!
Monday, December 10, 2018
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Every child's dream-Disney World! Our three-year-old granddaughter had counted down her visit there for weeks. And she was absolutely giddy as she finally entered the Magic Kingdom. One ride she really wanted to try was the flying elephants. Actually, the flying Dumbos, named after that elephant with the oversize ears that enabled him to be a flying elephant! Dumbo basically just goes around and around; he's a ride for little kids...kids like me. Now when you pull the bar in your Dumbo car, it starts to go up. Not super-high, but high enough to get a nice view of a lot of things in the park. And our granddaughter began making those Dumbo circles with her uncle, and he started to pull the bar up to help the flying elephant fly. It was not to be. Our little princess would have none of this going higher business...nope! Too scary! She made it no secret that Dumbo was to fly at the lowest possible level...and stay there.
Friday, December 7, 2018
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In just one year, a whole lot changed for my wife and me. We sold our home of 24 years, and we disposed of a quarter century of accumulated "stuff"! We relocated to a home way out in the country in another state after our Board decided to relocate the entire ministry to that part of the country. So, we got a new personal address, we got a new ministry address, we had all new phone numbers, and new license plates, and new co-workers. But with all the changes, there was one thing that didn't change - our email address. No matter where we are, our email address is always the same!
Thursday, December 6, 2018
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Some of the nasty words in the English language are often described as four-letter words. So it's probably not a coincidence that "boss" is a four-letter word. You sure get a lot of complaining about the boss. Usually the boss writes a Want Ad when an employee is needed. But what if the employee got to write an ad when the boss was needed? What would you put in there? "Boss wanted: fair, consistent, caring, listener, interested in his employees, impartial, approachable." Hey, hold it! You want it? You got it!
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
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It was one of the most compelling television documentaries I think I've seen. It aired on an anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The stories of rescuers and survivors, told first-person, literally took the viewer into what that day felt like for the people who really lived it. One story I just can't shake was told by this British young woman who worked in a brokerage firm high up in Tower Two. She recalled with remarkable composure the confusion in her office on whether or not to evacuate the building. She's alive today because she made the right decision. But many of her coworkers never made it out. She actually broke down for the first time as she talked about her good friend in the office. All she could say was, "I keep thinking, 'I should have asked him to go with me.' I can't get that out of my mind."
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
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We were having a fabulous time sailing across Long Island Sound on a large sailboat. The sky was blue with little puffy white clouds, there was a warm, steady breeze moving us along and the kids were making memories. As for me, the sun and the water had me feeling like totally relaxed, or collapsed maybe. Suddenly, Dave, our skipper and host, said, "We're heading into the harbor." Everything in me wanted to scream, "Whaaattt? Why? Why would we do that?" But I didn't. It was his boat. It was his right to do what he wanted with it of course. By the way, he had heard a little static in the radio, but that told this veteran sailor that bad weather was on the way. I can't believe it! Sure enough, just as we sailed into the harbor, the skies opened up with a really nasty storm.
Monday, December 3, 2018
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For many years, my wife's father managed to squeeze out a living for his family on this little farm in the Ozarks. It was always a battle financially, but the battle got really intense the summer of the long drought. My wife talked about it so many times. First, he emptied all three of their ponds to get water; then all of the ponds on his parents' adjacent property. Then a friend let him use his well that had never gone dry. Well, it did go dry that summer. Finally, Dad had no choice but to find water and dig a well on his property. But that meant mortgaging a lot of his cattle. And as the well diggers had to go deeper, it eventually meant mortgaging all his cattle. And they never found water. His farming days were over.
Friday, November 30, 2018
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Our sons had them when they were little-action figures of their TV heroes. Every new generation of kids has their action figures: GI Joe, Superman, Star Wars, X-Men. And now they've got a gazillion super heroes you can have as your action figure. Well, a while back I caught a story on TV news about the best action figure idea I've ever heard of. They were talking about a company, the name of which I didn't catch, who are making custom action figures dressed in contemporary combat dress. It's especially for the children of Americans who were serving in a war zone. Guess whose face is on their action figure? Your Dad! Wow!
Thursday, November 29, 2018
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They just don't make garbage like they used to. Do you remember the good old days when you could throw away everything when you were done with it? Actually, those were not the good old days, because we were also trashing our environment. I don't know how it is in your neighborhood, but we lived in a neighborhood for a long time where we had the privilege of sorting and putting out what used to be just garbage; you know now they're called recyclables. It's amazing how they can take that garbage and then recycle it into something useful again.
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
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I was teaching at a national seminar on how to communicate an unchanging Christ in our rapidly changing culture. Well, at the end of a session, a pastor from Kentucky came up to tell me his story he thought really illustrated some of what I had been saying. He said, "When I was a young man, we used to have some big tent revivals in my community. Each night an invitation was given for folks to come forward if they wanted to be, well as this country preacher would always say, ‘borned again.'" The pastor went on to describe how some of the deacons would actually go out into the audience and go row-to-row, and shall we say they were "encourage" folks to make that choice. Near the back, one of the deacons came to a young man who gave him an honest and memorable response. The deacon said, "Son, do you want to be borned again?" To which the boy said, "No." The deacon pressed the point, "Why don't you want to be borned again?" The young man answered in all seriousness, "Cause I'm afraid this time I'd come out as a girl!"