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January 29, 2021

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I don't believe in ghosts - for the most part. There's one kind of ghosts that are all too real. They talked about those "ghosts" in the movie, "Amazing Grace." That movie told the story of the 18th Century British political leader, William Wilberforce. He's really more than any other man, responsible for the abolishing of slavery in the British Empire. And that was at a time when African slaves played a critical role in the British economy and slave-owning interests controlled a lot of members of Parliament. The battle took 20 years, but ultimately thousands of slaves went free. Wilberforce's spiritual mentor was actually the man who wrote America's most beloved hymn, "Amazing Grace." In his early years, John Newton had been a slave trader, capturing and carrying thousands of Africans to slavery in Britain and the islands. Conditions were so brutal that many didn't even survive the voyage. Then John Newton discovered how Jesus Christ could forgive and change a man. In the movie, John Newton is going blind but he's still pastoring his church in London. And he believed in "ghosts" you might say. As he dictates what he calls "My Confession" to a scribe, he says, "I have lived for years with the company of 20,000 ghosts - those I made into slaves. Their blood is on my hands."

January 26, 2021

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There's this picture that hangs on the wall in our living room. It has meant a lot to me in recent years. Just like an identical picture did was I was four years old. That's when my baby brother died suddenly. My grieving dad, who was not a churchgoer, decided he should take his surviving son to church somewhere.

January 25, 2021

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Our kids gave it to my wife and me as a gift, and we had a great night together with dinner and a show. The show is in the same place as the dinner; there's this large, indoor arena with long tables that encircle the show floor down below. During and after dinner, we watched an impressive show of trick horse riding, dramatic spectacle, and rodeo style events. There's one part of the show I'm not going to forget. A rider actually stands atop two horses, one foot on each horse. They begin to gallop around the arena with the lights down, except for the torches in the middle and a giant ring of fire. Amazingly, the rider and his two horses leaped through that ring of fire together! I'll tell you, the emcee called it "a demonstration of three-way trust." Yeah, I guess!

January 19, 2021

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Just another day on the subways of New York. That's what Wesley Autrey thought it was going to be as he waited for the next train with his two young daughters. There it was - the light of the approaching subway. Suddenly, a young man near him stumbled off the platform and fell onto the tracks below. Later, that 19-year-old's family said it was because of a recurring medical problem he had. With the subway approaching, Wesley Autrey made his choice. He literally dove on top of the fallen man and rolled him into the drainage trough between the tracks. Then he threw his body on top of the young man, forcing him to stay down. It was too late for the subway to stop. The train ran right over the spot where one man was literally laying his life on the line for another man. The subway missed them by two inches.

January 15, 2021

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I thought I was going to gag on the smell. I was a little guy, my mother used to drag me with her to the beauty parlor where she got her hair done. I'm not sure what chemicals they used back then, but I obviously must have done something horrendous for my mother to subject her precious little boy to nasal torture. And I wasn't sure what was going on when they put this hood-like machine on my mother's head. For all I knew, it was some kind of mechanical brain-sucker. I didn't know what was going on. Well, Mom used to come away with what they called a "permanent." Now, today, the chemicals don't reek like they did back then, and they've abbreviated the name of all that curly hair to "perm" - short for permanent, which they're not. They weren't when it stunk getting it done; they're not today when the process is much nicer. Let's get real here, perms should be called temps. They don't last.

January 12, 2021

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Our grandson was on a very limited diet - just mother's milk or baby formula for his first six months. But something then happened in weeks that followed. He suddenly became fascinated with what the rest of us were eating. Fascinated, as in staring at the food on our plate, the fork going down to get that food, the fork coming up to put that food in our mouth, and our mouth as it was chewing that food. Then repeat the exercise as the fork goes down for another bite. You could tell by the longing look in his eyes, he wasn't content with that milk or formula anymore. No, he wanted some of that good stuff. If he could have talked, I think he might have said, "Hey! I've been made for more than what I've been getting!"

January 7, 2021

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She was only days old when she was abandoned by her parents. The lady who found her took her to an orphanage where she spent the first year of her life. It was a caring place, but of necessity, it was unheated. So she was too bundled up most of the time to fully develop her motor skills, and she was one of some twenty infants in tiny cribs in a small room. She got to play sometimes in their playroom, but it was pretty small, too. Small is the word, I guess, that would really describe her whole world. Then one day a couple from America came and her caregiver placed her in their arms. That day, she had her first ever ride in a motorized vehicle and her first view of the world beyond the orphanage. Since then, there's not a day that goes by that she doesn't have some new experiences that just keep blowing the walls off her world. She's not an orphan anymore. She's home!

December 31, 2020

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So many times, the latest technology becomes a great blessing and a great curse. For example, are cell phones a blessing or a curse? Yes. It's great that I can reach anyone or they can reach me basically anytime or anywhere. And it's terrible that people can reach me anytime, anywhere. How about e-mail? Fast, efficient communication from wherever you are to wherever they are. But then there's "spam" - the email equivalent of junk mail. You can wake up to dozens of new emails, including a bunch I really don't want. But there's this button on your computer that really comes in handy. It just says "delete." If you don't like what you're getting, delete. If you don't want to keep something, delete. If you write something you decide you don't want to send, delete. One key stroke and what you don't want is gone.

December 25, 2020

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A lot of us have it just about memorized - but it's still a Christmas classic - the Charlie Brown Christmas special on TV. You maybe hear that familiar piano theme in your mind even now. Huh? Can you hear it? Charlie's efforts to find the meaning of Christmas are, of course, repeatedly frustrated by Lucy's big mouth and Snoopy's garishly decorated doghouse. But then there's Linus on stage, in the spotlight, reciting the story of the first Christmas from the Bible. And Charlie Brown's Christmas tree, of course! It is, of course, the last tree on the lot: it's bedraggled, it's broken, and it's pitiful. But Charlie insists on giving that miserable little tree his tender loving care. And by the end, that tree, fully decorated, has become the beautiful center of the whole gang's Christmas celebration.

December 23, 2020

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When my friend Rich was about seven years old, his parents really splurged on his Christmas gift. They got him a big boy bike! What a moment that Christmas morning. Can you imagine? They'd been holding on to this, waiting to surprise him. They wheel it into the living room, and Rich says, "Thanks, but I don't want it." That's the truth. It really is. Can you imagine? That boy rejected the best gift his parents could give him. He's not alone.

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