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March 10, 2022

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Okay, we didn't have much of a car in the first place. It was less of a car by the end of the day. We hadn't been married very long, and our used car was pretty humble, but it was ours. We were in heavy traffic in downtown Chicago about five o'clock one afternoon, sitting in the middle of one of those Rush Hour blood clots they call a "traffic jam." I'd stopped for a red light not far from the Art Institute on Michigan Boulevard. I can still picture this. To our right, was a city bus that pretty much blocked my view of the traffic on the intersecting street. The light turned green. I drove out into the intersection. Bam! Suddenly we were hit very hard, stopped cold, and left with a crumpled hood with smoke coming from underneath. A delivery truck had run the red light and into us. Thankfully, we weren't hurt. Our little car was, though! It wouldn't move. So we just went to the curb and stood on the sidewalk, waiting for help to come, and we watched as one driver after another pulled up to this car of ours that was obviously wrecked, unoccupied, disabled, and they honked. Weird!

March 3, 2022

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As we drove through Utah that day I kept "oohing" and "ahhing" at one magnificent view after another. Majestic mountains, and this rugged terrain, fabulous vistas - I loved it! Then my wife reminded me that I'd seen all this before. Oh, more accurately, I should have seen it before. See, I had traveled these same scenic highways on a bus with our Native American outreach team On Eagles' Wings a couple of years before. But much of the time, I had my head down, I was buried in my work or preparation or I was busy talking with one of the team members. In the process, I totally missed some of this country's greatest beauty.

February 18, 2022

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The more I've learned about eagles, the more amazing I find them to be. They mate for life, they build nests that will last a lifetime, and they ride the storm instead of hiding from the storm. There's really only one enemy that is a serious danger to the eagle - a snake. That snake will attempt to climb wherever the eagle nest is and attack the inhabitants, especially the little eagles. But pity the poor snake that gets caught by Mama or Papa Eagle. They will show that serpent no mercy! They may pick it up with their beak and violently shake it to death. Or, better yet, they will pick it up in their talons, take off high into the air, and drop that snake to its death on the rocks below. They are not about to let that serpent have what he came for.

February 14, 2022

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It was a real joy that day to participate in the baptism of some young people in the waters of a beautiful lake. It was a really sacred moment for all of us in spite of the speedboat. Yeah, at one point it went blazing across the lake behind us. It was there. It was gone in a flash, but its wake wasn't. No, for some time after that boat had disappeared, the waves it created kept rolling in on us. And, for a time, it actually interrupted the proceedings. Mr. Boat Guy probably never thought about the wake he was leaving long after he left. Oh, he was just passing through.

February 8, 2022

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Summer heat time is not when you want your car air conditioner to go out on you. No, especially when you're driving a long trip. That's tough! That's when the A.C. decided to die on us. Yeah. Now I know that brave people survived without air conditioning for centuries. I'm not one of them. Somehow that philosophical observation doesn't make me feel any better. No, not as we're speeding along with our windows open and hot air slowly putting the driver to sleep. Oh, but wait! There's more. More than once, belching black exhaust smoke came blowing in our open windows. Then there was the discarded cigarette butt that bounced off the window, narrowly missing the driver. (I wish I was making this up.) We really enjoyed that spider that came in too. Yeah, and the clumps of pollen. They were great. Probably our favorite thing of all was what came flying at us from two tractor trailers that passed us. Now, I'm not going to give you all the gory details but I will tell you that those trucks were carrying cattle. Open window: kind of a nasty trip.

January 11, 2022

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Maybe I'm just too sensitive, but I always feel a little sheepish when I walk into a store, knowing I'm not going to buy anything. I'll just be browsing and, you know, some bored salesperson stands up and starts moving my direction. Maybe what makes me feel bad is her look of hope, of expectancy, of "at last I can justify my existence" - "at last I can accomplish what I'm here to do." So the salesperson pleasantly asks, "May I help you?" To which I answer with the two most hated words in the life of a salesperson, "Just looking." I am such a disappointment.

December 31, 2021

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I'd rather not have to use one of those carts to carry my groceries out to the parking lot. If you take it out there, you should be nice and return it to where it goes. Right? No, I'd rather use the mule approach, carrying every possible bag I can in my arms, my hands, hanging from my shoulders. So here I am, moving precariously toward the door of the store, with every appendage committed. Problem: how am I going to open that door that goes to the parking lot? If I start walking toward it, it remains closed, threatening my bodily welfare and my new treasures when I walk into the door. But if I just stand there, it won't open either. Well, thankfully, you know. Stores have automatic doors. The door remains closed, though, if I stand still, and it remains closed if I only walk part of the way toward it. But as I walk steadily toward it until I'm close to it - voila! - the door opens just before I need to go through it! What a world!

December 20, 2021

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Our ministry summer outreaches in Native America are some of our daughter's most cherished weeks of the year. But the year her first child was due in late summer, there was no way she could get the doctor's green light to travel - especially when the destination was the villages of Native Alaska. Now that's one of the amazing aspects of the first Christmas - that Mary would travel by donkey from Nazareth to Bethlehem in her ninth month of pregnancy. I've traveled the road from Nazareth to Bethlehem by car, not by donkey or foot as Joseph and Mary did. It's a tortuous journey through hills and mountains. It's about 90 long miles. There's no way you're going to get a loving husband to go with his very pregnant wife on a trip like that on the eve of their baby's birth, right? Wrong.

December 9, 2021

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My theory is that inside every man there's a little boy. And when the boy dies, the man might as well. Then the kid comes out at Christmas, you know, at certain amusement parks, and when it snows. Inside most of us is this kid who looks out the window at new-fallen snow and hopes like crazy this will be one of those most glorious of winter days - a snow day! If it is, and you've got kids or grandkids, it can mean an opportunity for one of life's great creative moments - building a snowman! Or snow person, excuse me, as the case may be. Now, when you're done, there stands your personal or team masterpiece - fat, friendly, probably with a hat, a button nose, two eyes (made out of coal?). The problem is that they don't stay those handsome creatures you formed so laboriously. As the temperature rises, Snow Guy or Girl slowly becomes Soft Guy or Girl, slowly losing its shape and identity until it's more like Mush Guy and Mush Girl.

December 8, 2021

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Before September 11, before the World Trade Center, there was Oklahoma City! It's hard for me to even hear those words without thinking of the devastation that occurred there on that April 19, 1995; the day that a terrorist's bomb destroyed the Federal Building and 168 people who were in it. That day the very worst and the very best in people were displayed in Oklahoma City. It was an awful moment, but it united the community in a way like never before. There were so many people who just threw themselves into the rescue effort. There were doctors, nurses, police, firefighters, and everyday heroes, counselors, ministers, and food suppliers. That would be repeated some years later at the World Trade Center. Someone wisely pointed out that suddenly white didn't matter, black didn't matter, Methodist didn't matter, Baptist didn't matter, old, young. There was one compelling need that had incredible power to erase all the categories.

                

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Hutchcraft Ministries
P.O. Box 400
Harrison, AR 72602-0400

(870) 741-3300
(877) 741-1200 (toll-free)
(870) 741-3400 (fax)

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