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October 6, 2021

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Our dog, Missy, was easily entertained. We just threw her a plastic bottle. That was accidentally discovered one day when a two-liter soda bottle fell on the floor in the kitchen. She pounced on it, grabbed the bottle in her mouth, and shook it viciously. You could tell from three rooms away she was fighting with one of those bottles, because she'd throw it in the air and then she'd try to catch it with her nose. And then it ended up bouncing all over the kitchen. Are you imagining this? You should have seen her ten minutes later. She's sprawled lifelessly on the floor - a blob of fur, totally exhausted from that fight with a plastic bottle. It's amazing how much energy she put into a battle that didn't matter.

October 5, 2021

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Actually the TV news report was a little amusing. These individuals came into the store, waving a piece of paper indicating they had just won a free DVD player, and they were coming to claim it. What they didn't know was that notice had been mailed by the police to their last known address. See, these people were wanted, but they had disappeared. But when they checked their mail, they had news of having won that DVD player. The amusing part came when the police arrested them on the spot as some of them were actually laughing at what they thought was a joke or some kind of a TV stunt. It was no joke. They were going to jail.

October 4, 2021

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Ten pounds, ten ounces! Our grandson was born and weighed in at that weight. Man that's a lot of boy! Just ask his mama! And even though he wasn't our first grandchild, there was still something breathtaking and amazing about the arrival of a new person in this world, isn't there? I couldn't help but think of when his daddy was born. I was there in the delivery room when he arrived, and I'll never forget what the doctor said. Now keep in mind, this is a doctor who's, well, seen thousands of deliveries over a long career. As I held my newborn son, the doctor said, "You know, this is the greatest miracle known to man." He got no argument from me.

October 1, 2021

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A visit to a Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream Shop - that's one of life's simple pleasures. We used to have one near our house, and the kids always enjoyed going there as a treat. And we'd look at all those unusual flavors and then we'd have to make that stressful choice: which one shall I get? Well, several years ago I was in a city to speak, and the committee member who picked me up stopped by his store with me on the way back from the airport - his Baskin-Robbins store. It was closed, so he took me in, pointed to all the cases of ice cream with all those great flavors and said those mind-blowing words, "Take whatever you want!" Oh boy! Not just a single little scoop of one little flavor; it's all available to you, boy! Go for it!

September 30, 2021

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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"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

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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

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"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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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