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My daughter wanted to put her fingers in the fan. Oh, she was a very little girl at the time. I said, "No." She cried. I think she thought I didn't love her and if I loved her I'd let her put her fingers in the fan. She really wanted to check it out!
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I just can't get this little four-year-old girl out of my mind. Even as I was preparing this, her story just hits my heart again.
She and her family only had moments to prepare before the F5 tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri not long ago. Now, Mom and Dad battled fierce winds; they were desperately trying to shepherd everyone into the safest corner of the house, but not quite everyone. Somehow this little four-year-old daughter of theirs got separated from them, and these winds were so strong that it was impossible to look for her any more. So, they huddled together as the tornado made a direct hit on their house. When they looked up, it had leveled everything almost instantly.
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It was some years ago, but I remember when they closed our local airport. Yeah, there was a violent storm at Newark airport, and thousands of people had their plans suddenly changed. Storms have a way of doing that. Did you ever notice that? There's a snow storm, for example, and schools and businesses oh, they all had their plans made for the day, and suddenly all those plans are out the window. Meetings that had to be today are amazingly rescheduled. Planes and ships are diverted or blown off course. You see, a storm is a classic embodiment of that familiar phrase, "Due to circumstances beyond our control..." Maybe you're in the middle of a storm right now. Your life, your plans are being blown around, and it seems like everything is out of control. I've got good news for you today.
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Let's say that someone steps on the wooden backstairs of your house. Imagine what they do when all of a sudden one of those stairs caves in. Okay, whose fault is it the stair caved in? Well you could blame it on your friend and say, "'Bout time you went on a diet, isn't it buddy?" Or could it be that it wasn't their weight that really made it collapse? Could it be that those little bugs got in and ate it from the inside; and it was already weakened? In fact, even a skinny friend might have made it cave in.
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Now, if you're a night person, there is nothing more aggravating than a bright-eyed morning person who's trying to get you to be a morning person along with them! And one of the great, interesting, fun things about God is He tends to kind of put those kind of people together in a marriage. Maybe so there's a night shift and a day shift. I don't know. Maybe you have the other kind of metabolism; maybe you're a morning person. Well, then there's nothing more aggravating than a raring-to-go night person who's trying to get you moving when you're ready to put it away.
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Well, we've visited a few Colonial restorations in our day as a family. My kids would always go, "No, not a tour!" But it's interesting if you get involved with some of the craftsmen. You can pretty much judge what it will be like before you get there.
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Oh, it was a great time to be traveling out East! I got to be there at cherry blossom time this year. I was where those pink beauties were popping out everywhere we were traveling. One of the gals on the Weather Channel was broadcasting from Washington, DC, and she had this beautiful backdrop of these exploding cherry blossoms at the Jefferson Memorial.
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I remember the night I was asked to speak at an adult couples thing at our church. And they did this auction sort of deal; in fact it was sort of a "Let's Make a Deal" game. I think some people call it a White Elephant Auction or something. It's the kind of game where you go to your garage and you get something you really want to throw away, and then you wrap it up in real pretty paper and you bring it to the auction. And what happens is this: One person goes up and has to pick one of those packages, and they open it and then they have it. From that point on everyone can either take an unwrapped package and take their chances on that, or they can trade for something that's already been unwrapped that looks interesting.
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I was on an airplane flight and I overheard a conversation in the seats behind me. Okay, I eavesdropped on the conversation behind me. All right! In any case, there was this little boy flying with his Dad and he was full of questions...the little boy that is. He said, "Daddy, what are all those lights for? Daddy, why did part of the wing go down? Daddy, why is it called Lake Erie?" See, the pilot told us the name of it, but he didn't necessarily tell us why.
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In all the years we were raising our family, we didn't have a dog at our house. One big reason is that dogs have a non-negotiable need to be walked. We've had some fish. Our fish never needed to be taken for a walk. We had a parrot. It's very hard to walk a parrot.
