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May 16, 2023

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Sometimes you find something spiritually thought provoking in the strangest places. Like in a rerun of an old episode of that hit sitcom, "Everybody Loves Raymond." Ray was trying to have that most dreaded conversation of all for many parents. You know, the one about where babies come from. Well, Ray is sitting on his daughter's bed, doing his best to get into the subject of s-e-x. At the foot of the bed he has four books open to the pages that he hopes will help. And then his daughter throws him a curve ball. She says, "Daddy, I don't care about how we got here." Ray looks surprised and very relieved. "I want to know why God put us here." Dad's expression is priceless. It's a combination of bewilderment and "let me out of here." She continues to press the question. Now, he's obviously wishing they could talk about the birds and the bees! He's stunned! He's stumped! Finally he fumbles his way into the only answer he can think of: "Well, honey, sometimes it gets... Well, really crowded in heaven, so God sends some down here." Well, his daughter's expression is a combination of bewilderment and "let me out of here."

May 15, 2023

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There's this little old camp song (maybe you've sung it), "Little cabin in the woods, little man by the window stood." I've sung it to my grandkids as they were growing up. Well, that was me sometimes. Yeah, some friends had given us this wonderful gift of vacationing in their mountain cabin, surrounded by woods. One morning we got a call from a neighbor notifying us of a visitor they had that morning - a mother bear and her cub. Since I was going out every day for a vigorous walk in the woods, I had mixed emotions, "I hope I get to see those bears. I hope I don't see those bears." I'd rather eat lunch than be lunch. You know, it's just a preference. I'm kind of funny that way. We never saw the bears. But it was interesting to see the pictures that our neighbor snapped of her furry visitors. There seems to be a special attraction for those bears - garbage. Yeah, when people have seen those bears, they're usually doing whatever it takes to get the lid off of a garbage can, including standing on top of the can, rocking back and forth on it, and trying with both paws to pry it open. They love garbage!

May 11, 2023

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I've stood on a lot of beaches in my lifetime. There's one beach I'll never forget. It wasn't at some exotic resort location believe me. It was in the middle of the jungle along the Curaray River in Ecuador. I'd been flown there by a missionary pilot to record an important radio program there - to tell a new generation perhaps the most amazing missionary story of the 20th Century. It's the story of the five gifted and successful young Americans on whose hearts God had laid a deep burden for an Indian tribe who lived in the jungles that I was now visiting. They were called the Aucas back then - today we know them by the name Waoranis. They were described as living like people might have lived in the Stone Age. Jim Elliott, pilot Nate Saint, and three other outstanding young men were determined that these people would have a chance to hear about Jesus for the very first time - even though the tribe was known as savage killers.

May 10, 2023

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A pastor I heard of was meeting one of the ladies from his large church one day, and he asked her, "What do you do?" Her answer was classic. She said, "Well, Pastor, I'm a disciple of Jesus Christ cleverly disguised as a machine operator!" I love that!

May 9, 2023

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It was such a neat surprise to see our longtime friends, Bob and Marcy, at a conference where I was speaking. We hadn't seen them for several years, and we didn't know they were coming. After one session, my wife was talking with them in the hall outside the auditorium, and my observant honey noticed Bob's color suddenly turned pale. And within moments, he was crumpling to the floor. My first thought was, "Is that what my speaking does to people?" When Bob finally came around, he sat in a chair wondering what had hit him. His wife wanted to drive him six hours to their home, but others were really urging him to get to a local hospital...preferable in an ambulance. Men usually resist ideas like that, but Bob was wise enough, and maybe just concerned enough, to agree. And that was a good thing. His heart stopped once on the way to the hospital, and again in the emergency room. Within two days, he had a pacemaker implanted, and he left that hospital feeling great. Had he not had that scary incident in the lobby, he might not have made it.

May 8, 2023

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It was a time I had the opportunity to be in London. I got to see some things that we don't see much of in America: the palace, the double-decker buses; buildings that represent up to 1,000 years of history. And there's one thing that was very new there for an American, and It could be dangerous. Yeah, the direction of traffic.

May 5, 2023

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They call it the "terrible twos" (remember?) because of the new challenges a toddler presents when they hit that two-year mark and they issue their first declarations of independence. Now, I remember when our granddaughter was two years old and doing human "terribles." Maybe because there were a lot more "terrific twos." Now, one exciting thing was an incredible word explosion she had. Sometimes, she seemed to not only know the words, but even some pretty important meaning behind the words. She's been known to sit down right next to her daddy as he was reading his Bible with her Bible open. Now, she knew what the book was called. She would say "Bible." But more and more, when she picked up her Bible, she said two words that she knew went together, "Bible...Jesus."

May 4, 2023

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We'll put up with a lot from our politicians, but not everything. See, we really don't like it when someone in power abuses that power for personal gain, to cover up wrongdoing, to exploit other people.

May 3, 2023

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Who would think you'd miss a fleet of big brown trucks? If they say UPS on the side, you'll miss them if you're off the streets for long! I mean, Americans found out a few years ago when the UPS drivers went on strike. Within hours in some cases, days in almost every case, thousands of UPS customers were in a crisis. At that time they said 80% of America's packages were carried by UPS! It's probably changed by now, but that's how it was then. Apparently, all the other guys were fighting it out for the other 20%.

May 2, 2023

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I've always been fascinated by eagles. I didn't get to see many of them around New York City. I mean, except for the ones that came from Philadelphia to play the Giants occasionally. But it's always been an exciting event for me to see an eagle. There's something very inspiring about them. When one of my Navajo friends and I were together, I asked him about eagles. And he sees a lot of them where he's from. And he told me about some amazing observations that he's made about them.

May 1, 2023

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Well, there's an early part of my life where I didn't even know the word. Now everybody knows it - cholesterol. You'll see it in about ten commercials tonight. It's one of the most talked about words in our health and fitness vocabulary. Of course, my doctor gave me the alphabet soup...a seminar on LDL, HDL. You know. LDL is your bad cholesterol that clogs your arteries. You want to be low in that. But then there's your good cholesterol. Here we go - good guys and bad guys! Just like the old Westerns. Your good cholesterol is called your HDL; maybe that's happy. I don't know. And you want lots of that HDL. That's the good stuff. Now, my doctor says, "I'm not just concerned when a patient's bad cholesterol is high. I get concerned when you don't have enough good cholesterol."

April 28, 2023

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Some people seem to have a special gift for sleeping. So much so that waking them up is more like a resurrection. We had one of those gifted people staying at our house for a few weeks. Greg was a young intern helping out and training in our ministry. And he did a good job - once you got him out of bed. He stayed at our house - so I got the joy of figuring out how to get him up each morning in time to start his work day. I started with just an alarm clock. Forget about that - no alarm so much as phases this boy. I tried shaking him, and then I tried shaking him violently. I tried bells. I tried water. Yes. If he ever did wake up, he just went back to sleep until I landed on the Extreme Wakeup Option - the pan. I got the biggest metal pan we had. I got the biggest metal spoon we had and I marched into his room playing percussion. If standing at the door clanging that pan didn't do it, I just moved progressively closer until he was up and out of bed. Look, I was a desperate man. Look, I'm really sorry it had to go that far, but he had to wake up, and it wasn't easy.

April 27, 2023

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Yeah, I have a lot in common with a guy from the first century B.C. Actually he was a Roman officer, leading his men on a mission that took them into uncharted territory. Back then, mapmakers drew dragons beyond the line of what was known and explored.

April 26, 2023

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Our ministry was being honored with a gracious award from a Christian foundation, and it was named in honor of a visionary pastor in a major American city. Before his death some years ago, he'd been a powerful spiritual force in that city. But he didn't start out as a pastor. First, he was known and loved as a news anchorman for a major network station. On the night that changed his life forever, he went to cover a gang shooting. He reported at the spot where the killing had taken place. The chalk outline of the victim on the street was still behind him. He interviewed a gang member from the neighborhood and he asked him, "Have you ever thought about living another way; getting out of this cycle of violence?" It was this young man's answer that rocked him: "How can you think about another way to live when you've never seen another way to live?" It was a question that ultimately caused that anchorman to change the whole direction of his life.

April 25, 2023

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It had been a rough year for the flu. Yeah, it was nasty, and it was dangerous. Early in the season, my doctor told me he was already concerned about how high the death toll was in our state. And then a friend texted me and said, "It's time for me to descend into the nightly coughing abyss." She had the flu. We've had some family members spend some time in that abyss - so we knew what they were talking about.

April 24, 2023

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Driving in major urban areas of America can be a challenge - especially if you haven't done much of it. But my ministry team member was doing a good job of navigating the Chicago area, driving me to a number of locations where I was speaking. In one case, he was following our local host who was leading us to a place where we had never been. Honestly, we had no clue where we were going without him. I got to telling my driver one of my many stories, and he even seemed to be enjoying it. We were in the left lane, and suddenly a car came up behind us in the right lane, flashing his lights. Then he pulled up next to us, waving his arm out the window. It was our host. Apparently, we hadn't been following him for quite a while. So he led us in a daring - maybe scary is the word - U-turn to try to get us where we were supposed to be.

April 21, 2023

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On our list of holidays that we all celebrate each year, I have a sneaking suspicion there might be at least one of them that was invented by greeting card companies and florists. In America we call it Valentine's Day! Florists freak out and then they count their shekels the next day. And, of course, I even did my part by helping some struggling greeting card company. Yeah, I would do that. I had to of course. I wanted to get one for the woman I love.

April 20, 2023

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If you watch sports very much, you've no doubt seen some great plays that ended up not counting, because they made that great play out of bounds. Oh, I've seen many arguments over whether or not they actually were out of bounds at the time; many of them have been resolved by video replay. But you don't see arguments over where the boundaries are. No, everybody knows that when they go out on the field, right, or the court, and they know exactly what the penalties are going to be for breaking the rules.

April 19, 2023

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Once you've tasted Vermont maple syrup, all the store brands taste like goo! So my ears picked up one night when NBC Nightly News started talking about the troubles that Vermont maple farmers were having that year. They focused on one farmer who lived on a farm where they've been mapling for eight generations! This farmer had known that the maple trees were ready to be tapped for their valuable sap during the first week of March. But recent weather changes had suddenly thrown that predictable harvest schedule into total confusion.

April 18, 2023

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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!

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