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Wednesday, January 16, 2019

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Our friends Marv and Annie were with us at a convention in Chicago. They're from Denver; I was in my hometown. Annie's doctor had let her make the trip to Chicago even if she was eight months pregnant. Well, we had a reception our first night at the convention downtown. I jokingly told her, "Hey, if the baby decides to come tonight, just call our room. This is my city, girl. I'll take care of everything!" Yeah, well, it didn't turn out to be a joke. The call came in the middle of the night, and minutes later we had a lady in hard labor in our back seat. Oh, my goodness! I thought we'd have time to get out to our obstetrician in the suburbs. Not a chance! I had no idea where downtown hospitals were. I never needed one. Oh, boy! I finally found one - a veterans' hospital. No maternity ward! Well, eventually I found a hospital with great facilities - just in time. Today we all laugh about it, but it's certainly not one of my proudest moments.

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

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Sometimes these commercials crack me up. You know, the weight loss commercials, you've got this eating program, and this movie star type lady comes up and says, "I lost 50 pounds. You could look like me." I don't want to look like her. Oh, and then they've got the guy's version of it. Yeah. Oh, and then the pharmaceutical commercials - all the drugs. Yeah. And you see these happy people coasting through life, jogging, out running, biking, and then the last two-thirds of the commercial come along and tell you of the many ways you might die by taking that drug. But the point is, they all tell you all these great things that will happen to you if you buy their product. 

Monday, December 31, 2018

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Ted's an ex-Marine. I guess once a Marine, always a Marine. Right? You know - halls of Montezuma, shores of Tripoli, and semper fi. Since his days in the Corps, Ted's gone on to become very successful in business, but he keeps getting invited back to talk to Marine recruits as an inspirational speaker. And in the process, he tells them about a rescuer who came for him in the Marines and saved him - Jesus Christ. And I love what he tells them - "One thing about Marines - we always go back for our own, and that's why I'm here today. I'm going back for my own."

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

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It's the Christmas season, and everywhere you go these days you see those brown trucks-it's UPS running everywhere, delivering Christmas surprises to people. Those UPS drivers work really hard this time of year. I mean, they get a lot of long hours to get everything where it's supposed to be in time for Christmas. I expect they sleep pretty well at night. Even though they have a big job, at least they don't have to go out and buy all those packages. Their job is just to deliver what someone else has paid for.

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

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It was one of the most compelling television documentaries I think I've seen. It aired on an anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The stories of rescuers and survivors, told first-person, literally took the viewer into what that day felt like for the people who really lived it. One story I just can't shake was told by this British young woman who worked in a brokerage firm high up in Tower Two. She recalled with remarkable composure the confusion in her office on whether or not to evacuate the building. She's alive today because she made the right decision. But many of her coworkers never made it out. She actually broke down for the first time as she talked about her good friend in the office. All she could say was, "I keep thinking, 'I should have asked him to go with me.' I can't get that out of my mind."

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

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I was teaching at a national seminar on how to communicate an unchanging Christ in our rapidly changing culture. Well, at the end of a session, a pastor from Kentucky came up to tell me his story he thought really illustrated some of what I had been saying. He said, "When I was a young man, we used to have some big tent revivals in my community. Each night an invitation was given for folks to come forward if they wanted to be, well as this country preacher would always say, ‘borned again.'" The pastor went on to describe how some of the deacons would actually go out into the audience and go row-to-row, and shall we say they were "encourage" folks to make that choice. Near the back, one of the deacons came to a young man who gave him an honest and memorable response. The deacon said, "Son, do you want to be borned again?" To which the boy said, "No." The deacon pressed the point, "Why don't you want to be borned again?" The young man answered in all seriousness, "Cause I'm afraid this time I'd come out as a girl!"

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

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They're just pieces of cardboard, but some of them are worth hundreds, even thousands of dollars. We call them baseball cards. Actually, our son got interested in them when he was a little guy, and pretty soon they became a pretty serious investment for him. He really knew how to, well like they say on Wall Street, buy low and sell high. Because he watched up-and-coming players, then he would get the rookie cards of some of those players who later became major stars, and there aren't many of those rookie cards out there. So they're rare and they're valuable. Lest we trivialize the baseball card business, I want you to realize that it helped pay a significant part of our son's way through college. I remember when he told me as a teenager, "Dad, I know my room is a mess, but there's one thing I take care of-my baseball cards." That's true! His valuable ones were neatly organized in these plastic folders in these carefully guarded notebooks. And the reason most of those cards were high value was very simple. You know. They were rare!

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

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Jeremy was a young man who worked in our office every year after he got out of college, and then he became a veteran of our On Eagles' Wings Native American team. But something was different this particular year for him - a woman! Yes, a woman in Jeremy's life! And, believe me, it was no secret. He started telling us all about her as soon as we saw him again. The romance had just developed in the weeks preceding, and there was nothing he would rather talk about. She lived quite a ways from where we were, and the more he talked about her, the more he wanted to be with her. At first I was kind of amused by this young love, until I remembered that was me not so many years ago, telling anyone who would listen about the woman I loved. By the way, I still like to talk about her - I do.

Wednesday, November 7, 2018

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O.K., let's put away all the junk food snacks for a minute and reach for a healthy snack today. Yes, it's time for some fresh fruit. It could be an apple, an orange, a pear, but the next time you eat one, would you look for the example on the inside? There is one. Oh, I wouldn't recommend you eat that entire apple; you'll probably want to stop when you get to the core. But notice what's there in the middle of that apple. Yep, seeds that can make another apple!

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

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She was one of the most admired women in the world-Mother Teresa, that angelic woman who devoted her life to the least of the least in the slums of Calcutta, India. The world's greatest leaders wanted to meet her and to experience her love and her moral authority. And actually, she was just a diminutive woman who made such a difference in the world. Some years ago, a young man wrote a letter to Mother Teresa, asking her how he could make his life count as she had with hers. He waited six months for a reply from this very busy lady. When it came, it was just a postcard with just four words on it-four very powerful words-"Find your own Calcutta."

                

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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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