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Tuesday, October 23, 2018

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"They were our pilots. It was our aircraft. The aircraft should not have been on that runway." That's what an executive of Singapore Airlines told reporters after their Los Angeles-bound jumbo jet crashed on takeoff from Taipei, Taiwan. It snapped into three pieces and it burst into flames. Eighty-one of the 179 passengers aboard died in that crash. It was a crash that never should have happened. The pilot somehow ended up on a runway full of construction equipment. The resulting collision was obviously deadly. The pilot had warnings; preflight briefing papers and two big signs indicating the number of the runway he mistakenly went down, but it didn't matter. He was on the wrong runway.

Friday, October 19, 2018

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So I heard this comedy routine that suggested some humorous ways to finish this sentence: "You're having a bad day when..." Well, I heard on the news about a man who might be a finalist for the "baddest day of the year" award, and there's nothing humorous about what happened to him. There was years ago an Avianca Airlines plane that crashed on Long Island. It was a flight from Colombia to New York. This particular Colombian man was seriously injured in the crash. Well, that's a bad day; I mean that's a really bad day. They rushed him to the hospital where it was determined that they'd have to do abdominal surgery. And when the surgeons opened him up, they found little plastic bags in his stomach full of cocaine. He was a drug courier, and he had ingested those little bags of cocaine to smuggle them into the country. So after he crashed and then was operated on, he was arrested. Now who would have ever thought he would be found out? He was.

Monday, October 15, 2018

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Our friend is in the flooring business; actually that's wood flooring. He had been tearing the old floor out in this house he was working on, and before he threw it away, he decided to call us and see if we might have any use for it. (That was nice.) Actually, we were pretty excited about his call because we were in the middle of a project where we'd be needing a floor. He said, "I do want you to know it's actually pretty ugly, but it's a good solid maple wood."
Now we got piles and bucketfuls of that wood and our friend was right. It really was pretty ugly. Those old floor boards had several coats of paint on them, they were really dirty, some were gouged out, kind of beat up. Frankly, it looked like it might only be good for firewood. But our friend pointed out that that wood was an inch thick-and he assured us he could sand off all the damage and still have plenty of wood left. And you know what? Eventually I was holding in my hand a sample of what he could do. It was a piece of that old ugly wood that he has restored-and there was no trace of the damage-it was this smooth, beautifully stained piece of wood. The restoration was amazing and I was, you might say, floored!

Thursday, October 11, 2018

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Smoking is bad for humans and for mountains. When a mountain is smoking, it usually means it's about to blow its top, as in volcano erupting. One of the most dramatic American eruptions in our lifetime, of course, was the one on Mount Saint Helen's in Washington State. It devastated and really recreated the landscape for many square miles. It literally blew a major portion of the mountain away. Not that you could exactly call it a surprise. For two or three months in advance, the mountain kept sending out smoke and eventually a big lava dome began to form at the top. Everybody knew it was going to blow, including a colorful old lodge owner with the colorful name, Harry Truman. But when everyone evacuated the area, Harry refused. He stayed right there on Mount Saint Helen's, no matter how many times he was warned about what would happen. When the smoke finally cleared from that volcano's massive eruption, there was no trace that would ever suggest that lodge or that man had ever been there. The tragedy of something like that is really obvious; someone died who didn't have to die.

Tuesday, October 9, 2018

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It really wasn't fair. But some friends of mine in youth ministry used to carry out these dreaded Saturday morning raids on teenagers from the local high school. By the way, those raids got those kids to an event that they eventually ended up enjoying, but they didn't enjoy how it started. A few leaders would show up early on Saturday morning at the house of one of their student leaders. When a parent came to the door, they would tell them what church group they were from and asked the parents' permission to "kidnap" their son or daughter to a "come as you are" breakfast they were having with student leaders. Most of the parents actually went along with it with a bit of amusement. The invaders went to the door of that teenager's room and gave them one minute to throw something on before they came in for them. Sixty seconds later, people of the same sex went in to that room and snapped a picture of the Saturday morning self. This was back in the days with those Polaroid cameras before digital. Those pictures were of course posted at the breakfast to the horror of those kids, especially the girls. No makeup, bad hair, real skin, they didn't seem to be too excited about everyone seeing what they really were like.

Friday, October 5, 2018

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There's this unforgettable drive above the Hudson River; in fact, the highway just kind of hangs out on Storm King Mountain. (I love that name.) It's a few miles north of New York City and as you look down on the Hudson River you get this incredible view. Now every time I've been able to catch a glance down there at this view of the Hudson, I've been fascinated with this castle. It sits right in the middle of the river on an island. It's kind of like a Robin Hood type of castle. Well, some years ago my wife and I got to take a cruise along the Hudson River and I could take an extended look at that castle. We went right past it, and our tour guide said, "That's Bannerman Castle." Mr. Bannerman, apparently, was an arms dealer for many, many years, and over many decades there are a lot of very interesting stories about people coming and going for weapons all through the wars and all kinds of things. Then in the 1960's there was a large explosion there on the island. What about the castle? Well, I was surprised to learn the truth about that castle.

Monday, October 1, 2018

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Our three-year-old grandson was turning out to be quite an engineer. He was loving to figure out how things work and to build things that do. When he was at Grandma and Grandad's house, he would play with our Lincoln Logs. One day he had built a couple of cabins in the middle of our living room and we noticed he'd stopped and he was just lying on his tummy with his head cradled in his hands, studying the pictures on the Lincoln Logs container. When his mom asked him what he was doing just staring at that container, he said, "There are some pieces missing here." And he began to point out exactly what pieces were pictured on the can but missing in front of him. 

Friday, September 28, 2018

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I'm a city boy. Where I grew up, kids were about the only things that grew. We didn't even have grass in the backyard of the apartment building where I lived-just dirt. So over the years I've had a lot to learn from the farm girl I married, as well as my many friends who are farmers. I was traveling in the heartland with one of our leaders, and he had spent many years in farming, and he taught me a pretty memorable lesson as we were driving down a country road just past a cornfield. He was explaining how a farmer harvests his corn and how the end row may get knocked down when he turns the corner from one row to another. That leaves some corn stalks knocked down, lying horizontal and broken. And they're often in the shade of a stalk that's still standing near it. But don't count that stalk out. No, not just yet! The pollen from the overshadowing corn stalk filters down onto that broken corn. And amazingly, that plant that has everything going against it starts developing another crop and eventually you'll be able to pick corn off that old boy! (How about a city boy telling you that!)

Tuesday, September 25, 2018

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While I was speaking at a conference, our hosts gave my wife and me a picturesque cabin to stay in, right on the side of this beautiful mountain. I was unusually motivated to get my exercise there, because it involved hiking up this scenic mountain all the way to the top. As I headed back down and neared our cabin, I had this notion that it would be nice to make the last stretch a romantic walk with my honey. There's a song I used to whistle to her outside her dorm window. (This is the place you go "Ahhhh!") Yeah, we were in college and we were engaged-a song we later had sung at our wedding. It starts with the words, "Because you come to me." Lapsing into romance mode, I started whistling our song. Little did I know my wife wasn't there! So no one came. I walked alone. 

Friday, September 21, 2018

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It was centuries ago, when all of North America belonged to its Native people. One nomadic Indian tribe in the Great Plains, according to the story, was blessed with a chief that was beloved and respected by everyone who knew him. He was known as a man who deeply loved his people and he showed it. And he was a man of absolute justice and fairness and he showed that. One day some braves brought a very troubling report to him; there had been several mysterious thefts from people in the tribe. The chief wanted to nip this kind of stealing in the bud so he announced a pretty severe penalty for the thief. He would be tied to a post when the sun was high, his back laid bare, and he would be beaten with a whip twenty times. Then the chief set a trap. He asked two of his trusted braves to leave some animal pelts in front of a teepee one night and to watch all night from another teepee. It was the middle of the night when one of those braves awakened the chief with the news, "We've caught the thief." "Then bring him in," the chief ordered sternly. 

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