Subscribe  

April 18, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

If you travel America's interstate highways much, you've seen lots of cars, lots of scenery, and lots of road kills. Yes, many animals still think they can beat the cars that are storming down the highway - and they're wrong. They end up as those carcasses we see by the edge of the road. It must be a full-time job just picking up all those road kills. At one spot on an interstate in Pennsylvania, they didn't pick up one of them. No, the news reported that a paving crew found a dead deer in their path and they didn't remove it. They just paved right over it! Great! No one could see it now, but they felt it!

April 17, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

The headlines that day were about a movie star dying. But Paul Walker had been a lot more. For those familiar with the "Fast and Furious" movies that he was famous for, his death was especially jarring. Because of the way he died - a high-speed accident, the exotic race car that he was in exploding in flames; eerily reminiscent of the movies that made him famous. But in the days that followed that initial shock, people were actually focusing on Paul Walker the man, not just the movie star.

April 14, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

There are many kinds of artists. My friend, Martha, she made her masterpieces out of thread. She lived in a tiny, sparsely furnished house in a remote corner of the Navajo reservation. It hadn't been an easy life with 11 children and a husband who blew most of his meager income on alcohol. But she found a way to provide at least enough money for her family to eat. She wove Navajo rugs. Now, I've had the privilege actually of being there when she was working on one. She had a loom in her living room where she worked for hours on end, pulling thread from one side to the other. In some ways, it didn't look like it had much promise; no pattern could be seen anywhere. It was all in her mind. But there was something beautiful in her mind that only she could see as she patiently wove those threads back and forth. And when she was finished, she'd produced a masterpiece for which a tourist would pay thousands of dollars in a nearby store. She'd only get a fraction of that, but shame on anyone who ever questioned what she was doing on that loom.

April 13, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

I've lost count of how many times I have landed in an airplane. But who would care? For the most part - routine landings - except for the ones that were unusually soft or unusually hard. In fact I experienced one of those hard landings a while back. We hit the runway, well, let's say with authority.

April 12, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

Two words that will inevitably cause a lot of excitement to appear on any face in our family - Ocean City. That's the name of this charming town on the Jersey shore where our family has got a lot of memories over the years. There was this one trip where several of us rendezvoused there for a couple of days making a few more memories.

April 11, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

I would call home to my wife, and I'd get a serenade. No, not from her. From our canary. We had only had him about a couple of weeks, and man, I found out he could sing up a storm! The whole time I was talking to my wife, the yellow bird symphony was going on in the background. It was hard to hear that canary sing and stay gloomy very long let me tell you. Every night we would put this cloth over Cherokee's cage - that was his name. And all the singing stopped. The next morning I would go into the living room and there wasn't a sound coming from under that cloth. But as soon as I took the cover off, the canary started jumping all over the cage and singing his wakeup song.

April 10, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

Many years ago, one of the 20th Century's great Christian leaders, Peter Deyneka, was immigrating to America on a long Atlantic voyage with only a few coins in his pocket. When he got hungry, he reached into this little bag he'd brought with him to eat the same thing every meal - a few dry crusts of bread and some water. He was pretty hungry when his ship finally docked in New York; not to mention pretty sick of bread crusts. That's when he realized something that he'd wished he had understood at the beginning of the voyage - three full meals a day were included in his fare. They were all included in the price of his ticket!

April 7, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

Abraham Lincoln was kind of a hero of my boyhood. No, not because I knew him personally, not because I was alive when he was alive. But I'll tell you what, I did study a lot about him. He died on Good Friday. Yeah, he did. And until recently, I didn't know his final wish. He actually whispered it to his wife just before the fatal shot at Ford's Theatre, and it's pretty moving.

April 6, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

A close friend of ours was in China on family business. In the process, he had a wonderful opportunity to worship with some Chinese believers in a Sunday church service. It was a not-to-be-forgotten experience. They pointed him to something he didn't know existed in China - a Christian bookstore. It was the only one in this large city, and it's hard to find. It's stuffed into this very small space on the fourth floor of a nondescript building - but it's a Christian bookstore in China. Our friend commented in an email about the small number of Christian books that were available there in Chinese. In addition to books, they also had a small selection of Christian bookmarks and refrigerator magnets with verses or inspirational thoughts on them. And there was one fridge magnet that our friend absolutely could not, and cannot, get out of his mind. Here in the midst of this great city in this great land where Christians have paid such a price to follow Jesus was a magnet that simply said, "Pray for America." The only comment our friend had was this: "How humbling." I guess.

April 5, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

It's the mission with the famous birds. During our ministry trip to California, I had a chance to visit one of the most charming of the old Spanish missions, San Juan Capistrano. If you've heard of it, it's because of the birds - the swallows. The swallows like to hang out at that mission until about October 23rd every year. And then like a lot of northerners they fly south for the winter. Oh, but they will return. In fact, lots of local folk and tourists will be at the mission on the day the birds are expected to return. The time might vary a little, but one thing you could be sure of when you see them leave, they'll be back.

April 4, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

Beep ball. Yep, I'd never heard of it until I received an email from a listener who told me she's blind. Beep ball sounds like fun, unless you're sighted like I am. Apparently, beep ball is a lot like softball except the bases beep. That helps the player know where the bases are or where the ball is coming from, if you have good ears; which, of course, blind people develop. The sighted people have to play blindfolded, and they just can't process the beeps like the blind players can. They're used to hearing more than a sound. They hear the direction of the sound. So the sighted people don't stand a chance playing beep ball!

April 3, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

I've got to confess; sometimes the Bible actually makes me laugh out loud. I mean, I was reading the Easter Story, and it happened again. They're about to bury Jesus in a borrowed tomb. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, issues this command to his soldiers: "Make it as secure as you know how" (Matthew 27:65).

March 31, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

Before videos and DVDs there was a primitive form of media known as Super 8 movies. And that was the medium on which we were able to capture many memories as our kids were growing up, which was a great improvement over what my parents had to record memories when I was growing up. They had a chisel and a stone tablet. Well, our three children all enjoyed being in the movies, but one of them enjoyed it a little too much. And, no, I'm not about to tell you which one. But this child loved the camera, so much that it didn't matter whose birthday we were filming or what activity, this same little face kept popping up right in front of the camera, effectively blocking out anyone else that might be in the picture.

March 30, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

I've been to South Africa multiple times, and so when I heard about the death of Nelson Mandela, it caught my attention. He, of course, was the first black President in South Africa, where the 90% black majority had never had the right to vote. Or many other basic human rights for that matter.

March 29, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

It's an English-speaking church. The visiting pastor was Hispanic. He spoke in Spanish, using an interpreter to help his audience understand. I've spoken through an interpreter. So, you either have to say half as much or it takes twice as long. Well. the pastor chose the latter. Yeah. It took quite a while to get through his message. And to be honest, I know some minds started to wander at times. Well, at the end of his message, the pastor surprised everybody. He spoke to them completely in English. And he made a promise - the next time he would definitely speak in English. Of course, some folks were just a little frustrated. He could have spoken in the language of the people he was talking to; he just chose to speak in his own.

March 28, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

French beaches! You say that and most people might think about like a vacation that would be nice. Well, not when the Western world remembered a major anniversary that happened on French beaches on D-Day. I remember, for example, the 50th anniversary. For several days American media bombarded us, and we couldn't forget it. Something else happened on French beaches - the heroic battle to establish an allied beachhead in France and to push back the darkness of Hitler's madness.

March 27, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

If the firstborn in a family is a girl, the younger children often end up with a bonus feature; they get two mothers instead of one! Big sisters are often happy to be another mother for her younger siblings, whether they're happy about it or not! But the instinctive motherly concern of a big sister came out loud and clear. It was in our three-year-old granddaughter some years ago. She had gotten a brand new baby brother whose life was pretty much eating and sleeping; mostly sleeping...until he needed something. And some friends were visiting our son and daughter-in-law, and there was a lot of talking and laughing going on. Suddenly, our little granddaughter said, "Shhhh. Shhhh, hear my brother crying." He was. And she was the only one who heard it.

March 24, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

My wife and I were enjoying a wonderful few days of rest on the Gulf Coast of Florida. And one of our favorite things to do is to walk the beach, even though we can't seem to agree on how fast to walk. See, I've always been Mr. Aerobics and she was always Mrs. Aesthetics. Yeah. Loved to walk slowly enough to appreciate the beautiful sea shells that the tide deposited on the beach. Well, she finally slowed me down long enough to enjoy some of the color and the design that God put into those shells. I'm glad she did.

March 23, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

Our son can usually tell when the weather's about to change. His knee is his own personal "weather channel." Now I know he seems like he might be young to have pain like that, but it actually goes back to one day on a football field in high school. When one hit tore his anterior cruciate ligament - that infamous "ACL" injury so many athletes dread. Since he was five, his dream had been to play football, and he did and he was good, but then the injury. I was with him in the office of a sports medicine specialist when the doctor said, "You will never play football again." That was the day his dream died. And, as he says now as part of his life testimony, it was the day his god died. His sports dream was dead. But that began a series of events that led to a time of tearful repentance, then the redirecting of his life goals, and ultimately to the incredible ways God has used him among Native American young people and in our whole ministry. And lest he forget who's in charge, he's got this alarm in his knee.

March 22, 2023

Download MP3 (right click to save)

An upscale restaurant in Manhattan's iconic Rockefeller Plaza, filled with Wall Street "movers and shakers." A dusty reservation basketball court, surrounded by impoverished, hope-starved Native American young people. I've ministered in both worlds, within weeks of one another. Worlds that - at first glance - seem to be really far apart. But when it comes to what God is doing, these divergent worlds share some striking - and instructive - similarities.

Subcategories

Your Hard Times

Your Relationships

Page 25 of 213

A Word With You Categories

                

GET IN TOUCH

Hutchcraft Ministries
P.O. Box 400
Harrison, AR 72602-0400

(870) 741-3300
(877) 741-1200 (toll-free)
(870) 741-3400 (fax)

FIND OUT MORE

Home / About

What We Do / Resources

News / Blog / Store

Contact Us / Privacy Policy

Donate

STAY UPDATED

We have many helpful and encouraging resources ready to be delivered to your inbox.

Please know we will never share or sell your info.

Subscribe

rhm-logo-white Copyright 2025 - All Rights Reserved - Hutchcraft Ministries

Back to top