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When my son was in college I think his favorite Christmas song was "I'll be Home for Christmas." That might be every college student's favorite song. He started counting the days, the hours, and the minutes until it was time to go home. But none of our kids have ever experienced anything like what my wife calls her loneliest Christmas.
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The short story writer, Bret Hart, gives us a story out of the Old West about a town called Roaring Camp. I think it's a story that brings the miracle of Christmas into very sharp focus into our lives today and I want to share it with you.
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In some ways I'm glad the three little Hutchcrafts aren't little any more. When they were, the day before Christmas always meant assembling some "easy to assemble" toy. I hate those words! It wasn't easy to assemble. Oh, and the day after, oh that's nice. It usually meant fixing what was not easy to assemble in the first place. It seems like the day after Christmas there was always something was broken. Actually, there's some fixing that needs to happen before Christmas.
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We were trying to teach some young leaders the importance of teamwork. One of the exercises I used was to have them put together a puzzle. (I thought it was a bright idea.) You tear off a page of a magazine, tear it into pieces, dump it into the middle of each small group, and see who could put their pictures together first. It didn't work too well. See, I forgot one little thing. I forgot to give them a copy of the complete picture so they could see what it should look like when it was all together. Duh! Now, I've tried to work on one of those big, many-pieces puzzles myself, and I've had the same frustration because I didn't know where the top of the puzzle box top was. It was really hard to put the pieces together when the complete picture wasn't there.
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Christians that were in Russia anytime during the 1950s to about 1990 were familiar with the voice of Nick Leonovich. For decades before the Iron Curtain came down, Nick had been faithfully broadcasting the gospel in Russian to his people. When the doors began to open, and Nick would travel through Russia and meet those Russian believers finally, a lot of them would stop him and they'd say, "Hey, I know your voice! You led me to Christ." Wow!
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The occasion was a citywide art contest. They had been told to paint paintings with the theme "Peace". Well, the judges were understandably attracted to this beautiful pastoral scene that a local artist had painted. It was a green pasture, puffy white clouds, a beautiful blue sky, a little boy going by with his fishing pole over his shoulder, and a quiet brook and some birds. That got second place.
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When I was in junior high school, we usually bought one copy of the local newspaper every day. Until the day I won the County Spelling Bee! Yeah, I can do autographs later. I'm sure you're very impressed. Well, that day my parents bought about twenty copies of the local newspaper. What was the difference? Well, my name was in it this time!
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Christmastime is kind of like time to get things in shape; especially around the house. Most of us become very motivated when December arrives in terms of getting things cleaned up. We dust corners and clean areas that haven't been touched for like eleven months. Trouble spots in the carpet that had gone unnoticed, suddenly we notice them and we work on them. That wall in the kitchen that needed some touch-up paint, it becomes a priority. We begin decorating things! Houses are suddenly in better shape than they've been in all year, especially since last Christmas. Christmas is shape-up time for houses…and people.
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Communicating across the miles these days is amazing and occasionally frustrating. Not too long ago, you would just call someone and if they weren't there you'd try later. And you'd have to do that from a land line. Well today, we've got smart phones, and laptops, and Face-Time, you can text, and leave a voice-mail, video chat.
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You know, flying commercial airlines isn't as much fun as it used to be. I mean it's more of a hassle. A lot of people who have to fly seem to agree with that. There are overbooked flights, and long lines at security, and cancelled flights, and crowded flights, and equipment problems, and all kinds of frustrating delays. Now if you don't like something about the way the airline is performing, guess who usually gets all the grief? I've seen it happen in the airport over and over again. That poor ticket agent.
