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October 6, 2023

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Our family had a chance to visit Colonial Williamsburg, that great restored 18th-century village there in Virginia. And as we were looking at one of the more important homes there in Colonial Williamsburg, we noticed a lot of activity in the yard next to the house. I went over and I asked some people what was going on, and they said, "It's a dig." Sure enough, there were some archeologists and college students excavating in that yard to find the remains of the old slave quarters and to discover some treasures there in the dirt that would give them some idea of the lifestyle of those slaves back in the 18th century.

October 5, 2023

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I love high tide! It's when you can see and hear the ocean at its max power. It just takes over everything. I distinctly remember one powerful moment at the Jersey shore during a summer visit. It happened to be high tide and I walked out on a jetty; you know, these huge boulders. What an experience! Everything in front of me and behind me was just covered by this surging surf, but I was standing in the middle of those rocks and in the middle of that high tide. But something fascinating occurred to me. It was that the tide and the ocean and the storms had beat on that rock for centuries, but the rocks never moved.

October 4, 2023

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I heard mooing from our kitchen, and it wasn't a cow in the kitchen. No, it was my wife. No, I don't mean... she wasn't mooing. No, she was doing something that caused the mooing sound. I bought my wife these charming salt and pepper shakers in honor of her farm upbringing. The pepper shaker is a pig and the salt shaker is a cow. Whenever you turn over the pepper shaker, you cause it to start this pig-snorting sound. Would you like to hear one? Nope, I will not demonstrate. The salt shaker? Well, that was a cow, and it worked in the same way. So when I hear that mooing from the kitchen, I know it's announcing that the salt is doing what salt is supposed to do-which is get out of that salt shaker!

October 3, 2023

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It was time for the annual Prayer and Planning Retreat for our ministry team. And someone offered their large farmhouse to us. So we took them up on it. We drove out in the country, hauled in our suitcases, and our bags of groceries, our files, and our bags of groceries, our flip charts, our easel, and our bags of groceries.

October 2, 2023

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You know, you and I are living in a, well, a pretty adjustable world. I mean, we have adjustable rate mortgages, and I have an adjustable wrench that changes sizes for different jobs. Good thing we have adjustable clothes, because it seems like we have adjustable bodies don't we? We have one size that fits all even . And, of course, negotiations that go on between nations, oh yeah, constantly adjusting their views, and their policies, and their public statements. And then politicians...you get it. As the situation changes, we all seem willing to change almost everything with it-sometimes including the truth.

September 29, 2023

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Some friends said, "How would you like to use our condominium down by the ocean in Florida?" Oh, it was a very hard decision, took about ten seconds. I'll tell you what, it was really a great place. I never thought I'd stay in a place like that. It had some very distinctive furnishings. Well, yeah, the mirrors! They were everywhere. And they were very strategically placed so you could see the ocean from almost any spot in the house. Cool!

September 28, 2023

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A few months earlier it had been "Wild Winter." And then it came into spring, what they called "Soggy Spring" that year - the sequel. Oh yeah, we might have thought that we had seen the last of those mountains of snow. Wrong again. In fact, the weather guys had predicted that all that snow would come floating in melted form down our rivers and streams. And there were the floods again! Listen, I lived a long time in a town who has one claim to fame in national newscasts - major flooding. They made it again that year. It's just a heartache that we knew all too well.

September 27, 2023

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I met a man from St. Joseph, Missouri, and I surprised him with my trivia knowledge when I said, "Oh, Pony Express country, right?" He confirmed my recollection that his town was the beginning of the famous Pony Express. What guys those were! Man, they rode their way right into the history books. They're practically legends of the Old West. They rode endless hours through hostile territory, risked their lives to deliver the mail to the West Coast. You knew that part. What you may not know is how many guys we're talking about here in this legendary operation - just 80 riders, and only one mail delivery was ever lost. How long did the Pony Express run? Only 18 months! It only took a few people a short time to make a great impact!

September 26, 2023

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I'm one of those people with a wall-to-wall schedule I'm afraid. And maybe like you, there's just like no time in there for Murphy's Law - no time for anything to go wrong. Occasionally, Mr. Murphy does visit me.

September 25, 2023

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It was one of so many of these that happened more regularly than ever. And we may never know why this particular one happened. That's the usual reaction when another "senseless" shooting leaves its trail of death and heartbreak. This time, this vengeful gunman in the horrific rampage near Santa Barbara, California left this hate-filled, 141-page manifesto to explain it. As one student's self-described "day of retribution" he called it.

September 22, 2023

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If you're a sports spectator, it's the least exciting part of the event. If you're a player, it can really make an important difference. It's called a "time out." Now on TV, a time out is a good excuse for a commercial. Right? But some important things are sorted out during time outs. A coach can give you some perspective on what you're doing right or wrong, some suggestions on how to play better, to improve, to change the play, look at the weaknesses of the other team. You can catch your breath, you can recover, you can regroup. A time out wisely used can actually make a decisive difference in the game... in your game.

September 21, 2023

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Sometimes it's just fun to surprise people. But not when you're trying to check into a hotel. It didn't work out so well for me in Houston. Chuck had contacted me on behalf of an organization to fly to Houston and film a training video. He told me what hotel to go to, and I strolled in with my suitcase. I was confident I'd be greeted with a room number and a key. Instead I was greeted with, "Uh, I never heard of you." They had no record of me! Well, finally, after some frustration I tried one more thing. I gave them Chuck's name. Bingo! The reservation was not in my name; it was in the name of the one who was paying for it.

September 20, 2023

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If you've driven across America much, you might have seen a sign at one point that says "Wall Drug Store." It's in Wall, South Dakota. They advertise all over the country. I was even in Singapore years ago. I saw an arrow pointing West. It said something like "Wall Drug Store 10,000 miles." This once little drug store in an unknown town grew into a major tourist attraction. On some days I've heard they'll draw like 20,000 people! But it wasn't always that way.

September 19, 2023

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Even the hard-core reporters were having a hard time talking about it. Apparently, that Ground Zero Museum where the Twin Towers once stood is one powerful experience. As you walk in, you hear the last "I love you" messages people sent from the towers or from the doomed planes. It's a heart-rending walk through this nation's darkest hour I guess, and the heroism and hope that lit up that darkness.

September 18, 2023

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In many years of youth ministry I have learned that teenagers love to get mail, and if they get mail, whatever form it's in, they probably look at it. They don't actually get all that much sometimes. And then, oh yeah, well, we used to send out promotional pieces when, you know, there was snail mail. And there had to be a good attention-getter on it.

September 15, 2023

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Well, Spring is tornado time, and there were some Mississippi folks at the conference we were at getting some pretty scary reports from back home. There were friends in a ministry organization we know of who were deeply wounded by the death of a coworker and daughters in Arkansas.

September 14, 2023

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A number of years ago I was driving for a pretty extended trip with my son. And in that relaxed moment I said, "Hey, there's something we need to talk about." He rolled his eyes, "Dad, is this 'the talk'?" Well, he must have read me pretty well. He was right. It was time for "the talk."

September 13, 2023

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I've never really been addicted to TV game shows. But years ago, my son got me to kind of be interested in one. It's called Jeopardy. Three contestants, given several categories ranging from U.S. presidents to cat food, and the contestant picks a dollar value question. The host gives the answer to the question in that category. Then the three contestants vie to see who can get the right question, because the right answer is the question. Understand that. Some of them do very well and they win lots of money; others just kind of fold up. I said to my son, "Look at those people! They wind up in the hole with their money! How did they get on the show?" He reminded me, "Dad, it's hard to come up with right answers when you have all that pressure on you." (OK, I stand corrected.)

September 12, 2023

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You know, I've been told so many times in my life, "Go take a hike," so I finally did. Yeah, this particular summer I was at a lovely Christian conference center in California. One day when I wasn't speaking, they had a nature hike. They had a fellow called Father Nature who took us out (you didn't know there was a Father Nature I'll bet) and he showed us the four different kinds of nature zones they had on their property.

September 11, 2023

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We had a few days off, and the phone rang in our little cabin in the woods. A family member was calling. She said, "You need to turn on the news. A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center." I watched the news for much of the next three days. I was trying to absorb a scene that I had no mental file folder for. I don't think any of us did. I felt sickened, I felt vulnerable and profoundly sad beyond words.

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