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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.

August 24, 2021

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You see them in motel rooms, most public buildings, and you should see them on the ceilings in your house - smoke detectors. Those little plastic monitoring devices that sound an obnoxious alarm when there's smoke in the room. Just ask me; I proved it the day I left my English muffin in the toaster oven too long. The smoke detector did its job; a job that can actually save lives. You want an alarm to go off when there's smoke in your house, especially if it's warning you about something that could do major damage.

August 23, 2021

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There have been a lot of changes in the space program over the years, but I'll tell you, I like thinking back to those original pioneering flights to the moon. Those are pretty heroic deals - the Apollo missions. It was mind-blowing to think that we had reached the point where men like us could actually walk on that moon that had just been that distant light in the night for millennia. It really was a big deal!

August 20, 2021

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I'm not sure who "Simon" was, but I know a lot of kids - including me - have had to play his little game. You know, "Simon says." Just in case you were lucky enough to escape Simon, it goes like this. One person, often a grownup or another student, stands up in front and gives you commands. "Simon says stand up. Simon says sit down. Simon says hop on one foot. Simon says wave at all the girls in the class." The trick is that in the middle of all these commands, the leader slips in one command without a "Simon says." If you obey that command, you're out. You're only supposed to do what Simon says.

August 19, 2021

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Sometimes something happens in the news that just leaves images you just can't forget. For me, one of those is that massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan. That was one of those. Those images of that inescapable wall of water consuming everything in its path! I mean, those are moments that are more than impressive. They're moving! Sometimes even the usually dispassionate reporters get caught up in a story like that.

August 18, 2021

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Tyler's story really touched me and showed me what makes someone a hero. In this case - an eight-year-old hero. Since he didn't have school on Martin Luther King Day, Tyler went to stay at his grandpa's trailer for the night. He wasn't the only one. Nine people slept that night in that little trailer.

August 17, 2021

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It was my first overseas trip, and I mean trip. Ten thousand miles to Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and there we were at Kennedy Airport. Me, my wife, our three young children facing three weeks of Daddy being gone. We'd never had that before. That's a long time when you're a little kid. Actually, it's a long time when you're the Daddy of some little kids. Well, I headed down the jet way, and I smiled and waved goodbye. Rounded the bend to the plane and then I wasn't smiling.

August 16, 2021

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I was on one of those early-morning airplane flights that's packed with business people. And as we landed that morning, we had one of those "two for the price of one" landings. We bumped and jumped along the runway as we landed. A lot of fun! And suddenly that commanded the attention of all us passengers who are usually numb from frequent travel. I thought, "I wonder what the flight attendant's going to say? I mean, this wasn't in any way a routine landing." Well, the attendant simply got on the sound system and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, now that I have your attention, I'd like to make a few announcements..." Man, did they have our attention!

August 13, 2021

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It was several years ago now, but that last earthquake in Haiti; I think the images of that quake will be with us for a long time. For a while there they were looking for any hope they could get, because it was just all about so much death and disaster. You remember that when it seemed that no one else could still be alive in all those collapsed buildings, a boy thought he heard a voice from the rubble of a bank building. The husband of a woman who worked there had been frantically trying to find his wife. When the boy told that man about what he had heard, that husband went for a nearby rescue team from California.

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