Subscribe  

September 30, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

I've got a lot of friends in law enforcement, and usually they don't show a lot of emotion. But the Cleveland police chief said, "Yes, law enforcement people do cry." I think some of them did when three women, missing for a decade, were suddenly found alive several years ago. They'd been imprisoned. You might remember it, a nondescript house by a man who kidnapped them years before and endured living horrors that we may never fully know.

September 29, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

Somewhere in the Fathers Handbook, I think it says the father gets to carve the turkey, or the ham, or the roast. And I don't mind; I feel very fatherly when I get to do that, very manly sitting at the head of the table with my super carving knife. But I have observed this phenomenon. Often I end up with an empty plate. See, sometimes at a large dinner gathering, you've got someone who loads up their own plate, starts chowing down and shortstops all the food where they are. Ever notice that it all seems to pile up sometimes in a corner and it doesn't get moved past there? I mean, they're satisfied, so some of us end up with nothing in our corner. Some lucky guy has it all in his corner. Now, what's fair is that you take what you need and then you pass it on to others who don't have any yet. That's how this system works. When you've got plenty. it's just real easy to forget those who haven't been served yet.

September 28, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

October is really beautiful in a lot of parts of the U.S. It's fall; it's the time, as I told my kids, that the angels come out at night and paint the leaves red and yellow and orange. Pray for my kids. Forget the angel part. The trees really do put on a fantastic show of color in the fall, and spring isn't bad either. I love that fresh green of spring's new life. But in between fall and spring, there's this long stretch where the trees are just basically colored "dead." Well, not all the trees. There's life all year long; there's green all year long. They don't lose their color, however dead and barren the rest of the world around them may be. Hello! They're EVERgreens!

September 27, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

One of our team members got pretty sick. Linda first developed a high fever, then muscular pain, and then these excruciating headaches. It actually took several tests to uncover what had caused her debilitating symptoms, but the doctor finally concluded she'd contracted Lyme Disease, which of course is carried by little deer ticks. And as Linda thought back, she remembered noticing a big red bite on her body a couple of months before. It occurred to her that it might have been a tick, but you know, she didn't think much about it...until now.

September 24, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

Well, it happened three times at the Hutchcraft house. Yep, a teenager learning to drive. With all of the angst that goes with that. Not for them, but us! And three times we'd come around to that question happening again and again, "Dad, can I have the car?" I have to tell you, I had real mixed emotions about that, and I had a lot of questions about "How far are you going to go?" "How long will you be gone?" "Where are you driving?" "Who are you going with?" I was apprehensive about turning over that ton of deadly metal to a teenage son. And there's probably some reasons, right?

September 23, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

I was meeting with an FAA official in preparation to speak at a meeting of private pilots. Actually, the only pilot I know much about is Pontius Pilot, but I had been asked to speak on the subject of peace and stress. Mr. FAA happened to mention to me that there were 10,000 private pilots in the New York area. That's when I became especially grateful for a special group of people called flight controllers. When you're up there in an airplane, and you think about all the other airplanes that are up there with you, it's nice to know that the pilot isn't just trying to figure out by himself where to fly. All across the country, he's got the help of that man or woman in the tower who can see the whole picture of what's going on in the sky or even on the ground. And that pilot doesn't check in, oh just every once in a while. No, he or she makes sure that they stay in touch with the tower!

September 22, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

"When I was young..." Kids hate those words. If you're a parent, I'll bet your kids; they probably do. But here I go. I'm going to do it anyway. When I was young, there was this woman named Emily Post, and she was the expert on etiquette. And so, we would often ask, "Well, what does Emily Post say we're supposed to do in this situation?"

September 21, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

Okay, as a city boy, I have a lot to learn about the country. I remember the time when I was a teenager and our youth group played this hide-and-seek game on a farm. This one other kid and I crawled under this piece of machinery, where we had to stay for about a half an hour. I didn't know what it was. After we were stuck there, my nose and I wanted to know what we were hiding under. My friend said, "Oh, this is a manure spreader." Hmmm. Well, in recent times, I've helped out a friend who has some horses, and part of taking care of equine pets is what they call "mucking out" their stables. Now if you've been a farmer your whole life, please don't laugh at me. Be kind. But I was dealing with manure more in those months more than I had in all my life up until then. And, frankly, I wasn't fond of it.

September 20, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

"Go to your room!" No, I'm not telling you that personally. I'm just saying those four words are some of the most dreaded words in a family. What it does, is it takes the family law breaker and consigns that person to that awful punishment - being alone. Now, on a more serious level, that same punishment is used when someone has been a severe offender in prison. What's the worst thing they can do to them to punish them? They put them in solitary confinement. "Go to your room, and stay there alone." More sadistic people have used aloneness as a form of torture to help break a person's resistance. In fact, there's not one of us who doesn't know from personal experience the awful feeling of aloneness - one of the darkest feelings there is. You've felt it. Maybe you are right now. And there isn't one of us who doesn't need the antidote.

September 17, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

The other day one of our team members shared a discovery she made during the remodeling of her kitchen. The counter top had been removed, and as she looked into this little 6"x8" drawer by the sink, she saw that it was completely stuffed - with like "stuff!" She realized that for 24 years she had been sticking things into that drawer: twist ties, rubber bands...you know, everything. There were some useful things in the back, but they were inaccessible because of all the "stuff." It had been a long time since the drawer had been opened very much; our friend just crammed things into it and occasionally pulled it open an inch or two to use something out of it. (I can relate to this.) But looking down on it all from above, she was surprised to see what was in there. Almost everything in that drawer could be thrown away, but it had been accumulating for years. And that drawer was much more useful now that it was emptied out.

September 16, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

I had been watching the news and they were talking about doomsday, and it made me sad. Oh, not because I'm nervous about Jesus fulfilling all His prophecies about earth's final chapter. But because millions were laughing about something that they desperately needed to take seriously.

September 15, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

If you made a list of the million dollar ideas of the twentieth century, you'd probably have to include something called the Polaroid camera. Now, you might be too young to remember that. I could take you to the museum, but it was a great invention in its time. What was the worst part of taking pictures then? It was waiting for them to be developed. The Polaroid concept introduced the revolutionary idea of developing your photo right on the spot, and then you would know whether you got what you shot. That was way before cell phone technology of course. So with the Polaroid, if you cut off everybody's heads when you took their picture, you can take it again and they could have heads in the next picture. We're naturally impatient to see what the result of our effort is with our pictures, right? And with people.

September 14, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

Yeah, I'm just not used to news reporters referencing the Book of Revelation. But, you know, in recent times I've heard some of them doing it. These aren't ordinary times. They've been referring to statements in the Bible about things like earthquakes and disasters, and references to what the Bible calls "the last days." They keep using the word apocalyptic. You know, you think about what's been going on in our world, and nature, and in governments, and between people, and you can understand why people are starting to think Bible a little bit. The Bible talks about these last days - the last days of human history - the days before the personal return of Jesus Christ who will change things forever.

September 13, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

It was probably one of the greatest adventures in American history - the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The size of the United States doubled overnight and President Thomas Jefferson picked his aide, Meriwether Lewis, to lead a group of about forty men to explore a route from St. Louis to the Pacific. The journey took more than two years, covered thousands of miles, meeting with some fifty Indian tribes, and charting a vast area, largely unexplored by anyone other than Native Americans.

September 10, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

Rick Rescorla was a decorated Vietnam War hero. But his greatest acts of heroism happened years later, on the job at the World Trade Center. As head of security for Morgan Stanley, one of the largest employers in the Twin Towers, he began to take special measures after the Trade Center bombing that happened back in 1993. Suggesting that there might be another attack, possibly coming from the air, he became known as the man who predicted September 11. He began regular drills for Stanley's 2,700 employees in emergency evacuation procedures. Morgan Stanley had offices from the 44th to the 74th floors of Tower Two. When Tower One was hit on that awful September 11, there seemed to be no reason to get out of Tower Two, except for Rick Rescorla's training.

September 9, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

It seems as if every summer there are raging fires in the American West that destroy hundreds of thousands of acres of timberland, and sometimes homes, businesses, and sadly, even lives. When a major fire broke out near an Indian reservation that our Native team had ministered on only a few months ago, I paid pretty special attention. Sadly, that fire spread to parts of the reservation, consuming the very timber that's a major part of their already impoverished economy; along with homes and property outside the reservation. I knew it was going to take a long time to recover. You know what the cause of that very costly fire was that made the whole thing even sadder? It was started by a government firefighter who was hoping there would be a small fire that would give him some work.

September 8, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

We were scheduled to fly to a national staff conference for a youth ministry I was with, when one of the women on our staff came to me and said, "Ron, I'm afraid to fly." Well, the conference was so far away we didn't have much choice. She said, "I want to talk to somebody on the staff about flying, and I decided I would talk to you." And I said, "Well, how did I become the lucky winner here?" She said, "Well, you go up and come down so many times in those things, I figured you'd understand." She was seeking out someone who'd done it a lot. Well, I mean, we had 23 people on the staff she could have talked to, but she said, "I'm going to go to the person who's done this a lot. I want to hear from someone who's been there."

September 7, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

My dad was a great man, and I still miss him, even though he's been gone for a lot of years. I'll often think about his laugh, his favorite sayings, his great personality, his fun sense of humor, and his unconditional love and support for me. Because he's buried in a place where I don't often get to go, it's been quite a while since I've been able to visit his grave. But I did not too long ago. And I was impressed with the simplicity of what, besides the dates of his birth and death, is engraved on his gravestone. It just says, "John Hutchcraft, husband and father."

September 6, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

Okay I'm pretty much a dummy when it comes to taking care of growing things, I admit that. I have to be careful laughing at what a cousin of ours did therefore. Oh, it was a nice thing. His wife was gone for a couple of weeks; he volunteered to take care of some of the household jobs she was leaving behind. Including watering her plants. Yeah, he did. Including this good-sized ficus plant. Now, I don't know what that is, but I can still tell the story. Right? He watered it faithfully every day. He proudly reported that to his wife when she got home. That's when he learned a revealing fact about that ficus plant - it wasn't real. He had been faithfully watering a lifeless plant.

September 3, 2021

Download MP3 (right click to save)

OK, I'll confess. I can drive by the candy store. I can drive by the ice cream shop. I can pass up the pizza place, but it's very hard for me not to stop at the bakery. Yeah, bakeries are my weakness, and it's a good thing I don't work in one - I'd weigh 500 pounds I think. Now most bakeries have this discount stuff, you know, in a corner; it's like the day old baked goods. Oh it's cheaper, but there's a reason. There's a big difference between day-old and fresh baked. That line at the bakery early in the morning; no, that's not for yesterday's goodies, let me tell you. Those folks are there to get the doughnuts or the bread that just came out of the oven. And I might just be at the head of the line.

Subcategories

Your Hard Times

Your Relationships

Page 45 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