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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.

September 8, 2021

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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

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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

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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

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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.

September 2, 2021

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So I went into the gas station to prepay for a fill up and suddenly found myself in Crazyville. There was a long line in this little store, all talking about what they'd do if they won. Yeah, I had inadvertently walked into Lottery Fever.

September 1, 2021

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A friend of mine and his son love to take off backpacking along the beautiful river they've got near their house. And they've learned some interesting "tricks of the trade," I guess, to make sure they have clean water to drink without the weight of having to carry water with them all the time. They take iodine pills with them on their hikes. Apparently, they can collect some water from the river, dissolve iodine in it, and the water comes out clean. But then who would want to drink it? Iodine-flavored water? I don't know. It's not exactly the taste sensation that's sweeping the nation, right? But that's where the Kool-Aid comes in! Yeah, they put in some Kool-Aid and It actually makes that bitter water sweet. Or so they tell me!

August 31, 2021

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Little Cindy had been a bad girl. She'd been sent from the dinner table to her room. After a little while, Mom and Dad thought the point had been made. They knew that children, of course, need to be assured of our love when we've disciplined them. So, Daddy went upstairs, opened the door to Cindy's room. Found her in bed, under her covers, snuggling with her arm wrapped tightly around her favorite dolly. Her father sat on the bed and he just gently said, "Cindy, I love you." Then he held out his arms to hug her. For a moment, the little girl just looked straight ahead and she hugged her dolly closer. But that couldn't last. Very soon, Cindy dropped her dolly and grabbed her Daddy in a big hug. Because a dolly is no substitute for a daddy!

August 30, 2021

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There's usually a political battle when the government wants to establish a toxic waste dump somewhere. Not too many people have been excited about having radioactive or otherwise toxic kind of material buried near them. The American government established what they called a "Super Fund" to pay for the cleanup of some of those areas, because they can be hazardous to people's health. I'll tell you what. I'd sure want it cleaned up if there was a toxic waste dump near where I live.

August 27, 2021

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Sometimes if you're a commercial flyer, maybe it's best if you don't watch the news. Because there could be, you know, some plane incidents that are kind of disconcerting. I remember one where there was a hole in the roof, and then they found cracks in other planes like it after that. Then there was the plane with the bullet hole in it.

August 26, 2021

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We were eating with friends at a restaurant, and my wife unobtrusively gave me "the sign." She brushed her upper lip with her fingers. I know what that means - it's not romantic. No, some crumb of my dinner has managed to escape going in my mouth, and it's on my mouth instead. If we're alone when that happens, I usually tell her, "Oh, I'm saving it for later." I don't know why she didn't just let me embarrass myself. That's called love, isn't it? I mean, I have no way of knowing I'm carrying something that's going to embarrass me or make me look bad because I can't see myself. But she could, and she loved me enough to tell me.

August 25, 2021

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I meet a lot of single people in their twenties and thirties, and of course, a lot of them would like to be married. Either they haven't found the right person yet, or they found someone with like commitment phobia who hears wedding bells and runs the other way. Our mate selection process, as you may know very personally, is a little uncertain and sometimes messed up, actually.

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