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September 19, 2022

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I had to stop at a convenience store on Halloween night. I was not "trick or treating." I was just trying to pay for the gas I put in my car. That's when I saw this interesting sign they had posted; it was a sign I had never seen anywhere else. It simply said, "Please remove your mask before you enter." I wasn't wearing one. But for one unhappy moment, I did remember what they used to tell me in school long after Halloween, "Hey, Ron, Halloween's over! Take off your mask." I wasn't wearing one then either. But the sign was no joke. Obviously, they didn't want someone to try to pull off a Halloween heist, wearing a mask that would conceal their identity from the security cameras. Honestly, I didn't see anyone in the store that night with a mask.

September 16, 2022

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When I worked with our championship high school football team, I was there for a lot of timeouts called by the coach. And I know how important they were. He told the players what they were doing wrong, what they needed to do more of, and how to play against the other team and their weaknesses. It was a strategy for winning, actually. When you watch sports on TV, they usually run commercials during the timeout. A timeout may not be very exciting to watch, but what happens during a timeout can determine the outcome of the game.

September 15, 2022

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One Saturday morning years ago my son called me into the living room to see what was coming on television. I knew it was Saturday morning, and I thought, "Oh, great! The Smurfs! That's not my idea of a Saturday morning." Well, when I saw what it was, I dropped what I was doing, I sat down and I watched the whole thing. It was the original episode of my favorite boyhood television show, The Adventures of Superman.

September 14, 2022

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For some reason, for over a century, people are still intrigued with the Titanic. I mean, it hit an iceberg and it sank over a century ago, and there have been a handful of big screen movies made. And the story - then it was made into two television miniseries. There have been explorations of the wreckage, even sales of pieces of coal from the Titanic.

September 13, 2022

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Another sad story from the "entertainment capital of the world." A lot of that goes on behind all the Hollywood hype.

September 12, 2022

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Even though I was really busy speaking at a conference, I was blessed with this beautiful mountain cabin as my accommodation while I was there. The best time, and about the only time I could enjoy it, was early in the morning. This cabin has a large porch. And from it you can see these majestic forest views, this awe-inspiring tapestry of green mountains and deep valleys. As I stepped out onto that porch one morning, the scenery had undergone a significant makeover. The fog was winning, and I watched as these large clouds of fog billowed up. First they filled the valley below and then steadily rose to totally obscure the mountains. It looked almost as if the mountains were being consumed by the fog. So, the morning light from the sun that should have been illuminating the area by that time was nowhere to be seen. Well, briefly. Because you know what happened. The sun continued to rise behind that conquering fog, and in a short time, that fog began to quickly shrink and pretty soon it was gone.

September 9, 2022

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A friend called that morning and said, "Ron, You should turn on the TV. An airplane just hit one of the World Trade Center towers." There was no file folder in my heart for what I was about to see. I quickly found a news channel. And from that moment on, I did not turn it off.

September 8, 2022

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My friend, Donna, had never been on a rafting trip before, until someone gave it to her as a gift; which meant she felt obligated to go. Little did she realize that the river her group would be rafting on goes from being a river of glass at the beginning of your journey, to the sudden violence of Class 3 rapids, at a point they simply named "Surprise." And ultimately, through the most challenging, most dangerous level of white water there is, Class 5 rapids. Thankfully, there was an outfitter that prepared them for this perilous journey. He coached them as to what to expect on the river, where to sit on the raft, and how to paddle in various situations. He equipped them with a life jacket, a paddle, and a helmet. Donna was not particularly thrilled that her helmet had an unexplained dent in it - she didn't even want to know how it got there! The outfitter had provisions for his crew, including the food and basic medical supplies they might need. And, best of all, he was with them all the way. They had one wild ride, but they all made it just fine...even Donna.

September 7, 2022

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Gayle was part of our ministry team. Her parents were away and they asked her to check on their house while they were gone. It was a pretty cold night, and Gayle thought the heat should be on in the house. So she called her Dad, and Dad said, "Well, you should know what to do. You've done it before. It's probably just the zone valve is stuck."

September 6, 2022

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It must have felt like a scene from the book and the movie called "The Perfect Storm." Their vessel was a 61-year-old wooden fishing boat, making the Inside Passage from Sitka, Alaska to Port Angeles, Washington. It was supposed to be a one-week trip. It was late in the season - a time of year when wild storms can develop. They sink ships; they take lives. Sure enough, their boat hit hurricane-force winds that threatened to take them to the bottom. At one point when green water washed over the pilothouse and the boat plunged for what seemed to be the bottom, one passenger heard the captain mutter beneath his breath. But as this 30-year veteran of Alaska's ferocious storms worked that wheel, he turned to his passenger, smiled and said two words, "No problem." No matter how vicious the storm became, no matter how perilous the situation seemed, the captain remained calm, and he helped steady his very frightened passengers...and they made it.

September 5, 2022

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In the old Westerns, they said the hero was the guy in the white hat. Well, in the life-or-death moments of September 11, 2001, it was the man with the red bandana.

September 2, 2022

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There was this violent thunderstorm, and about 18 hours followed without electricity. Fortunately, my wife was never without candles, so we had a nice candlelit dinner at home. I read the newspaper by flashlight. We easily survived without our television. We even played a board game by candlelight. Go figure! But there was no electric power in the house. Not after that huge lightning bolt found its target in our yard - the transformer that sets on a telephone pole not far from our house. My wife saw it, and apparently it was a pretty impressive hit. But there's no way you're going to have power when the transformer's down. I mean, that's what brings all that power in those wires down to where we can use it to like run our house.

September 1, 2022

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It's a miracle my wife made it through college. Not because of her grades. I'm talking about because of finances. Halfway through, her parent's financial help suddenly stopped. It wasn't because they didn't want to help, they just didn't have it. See, they were running a small dairy farm at the time, and they needed a well desperately. So Dad sank most of his money into digging a well. The drought came. The well came up dry. You know what? Wells have a way of doing that don't they?

August 31, 2022

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Our friend, Mary Ann, was just driving down the road and her precocious five-year-old piped up from the back seat. It was one of those moments. He said, "Mommy, didn't you say that Jesus was building a beautiful home for us in heaven?" She assured him that's exactly what Jesus is doing. "Well, Mommy, we've got our house here, right? And then we've got the mountain house, right? That seems like too many houses. Shouldn't we give one of them away?" I'm not sure how you answer a question like that.

August 30, 2022

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Some kids aren't even sure what their school bus driver looks like. They're still asleep when he picks them up in the morning. But every child who's ridden in that yellow "limo" knows that the "chauffeurs" come in all kinds of flavors.

August 29, 2022

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For many years, our family went to Ocean City, New Jersey, for vacations and conferences. There's this three-mile boardwalk, great Atlantic beaches, and family atmosphere. Those are all things that we can all get excited about, but something happened over those years at the beach. The beach shrank. Not all at once; it was a little at a time. It just got eroded. Eventually, the city fathers had a major challenge on their hands. They had to rebuild their bread-and-butter; those beaches that were slowly disappearing!

August 26, 2022

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I'm used to turning on the news and hearing about bullets or ballots or budgets. But the Bible? On newscast after newscast a while back, the Bible was one of the lead stories. I mean, actually "The Bible." It was the ten-hour History Channel mini-series. It stunned everybody with blockbuster ratings, especially among young viewers. There were epic moments from Noah's Ark to the parting of the Red Sea, and of course David decking Goliath.

August 25, 2022

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It was one of those winters when the bottom dropped out of the temperature in our area. I mean, folks there just aren't used to visits from North Pole weather. For a while, our favorite song was, "Freeze a Jolly Good Fellow." I was discussing this extended freeze with a friend who has lived in the area most of her life, and she actually helped me have a very positive outlook on the cold weather. She just said, "Well, just think - it's killing a lot of bugs!" Okay! Well, with all the ticks and the other pests we had the previous summer, I guess that was good news. So the next time I walked outside and felt a blast of that chilling cold, I said to myself, "Well, I'm turning blue, but the bugs are dying!"

August 24, 2022

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She was just seven years old; the lone survivor of a plane crash that killed her parents, her sister, and her cousin. The sheriff said "she literally fell out of the sky into a dark hole." They called her survival "a miracle."

August 23, 2022

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The book is called Good to Great. It's a thought-provoking book on management written by Jim Collins and a research team that he headed. They identified eleven of the most effective companies in the United States, and then they pursued this question: "What specifically makes these companies so different?" This research actually challenged many of the author's preconceptions. There were actually lots of surprises. Interestingly, the first thing Collins and his team point to as common to every one of these consistently successful companies is this, and it is a surprise - the modesty of the various CEOs who led them. They suggest that the starting point of a great company is a humble leader - highly focused, sometimes driven people - but known for being gracious, self-effacing, understated. I guess in a word, humble.

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