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Thursday, April 19, 2018
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Every fall, the TV networks start hyping their new shows. And usually, they have a couple that feature some well-known star. You can be sure that those headline shows and those headline stars, won't be on at 2:00 in the afternoon or 1:00 o'clock in the morning. No way. They will air sometime in the heart of the evening, like 8:00 or 9:00 o'clock. What do they call it? Prime time! You know you've made it when you've got a show on prime time. Even though a lot of what's on in those hours doesn't seem very prime to a lot of us, to the networks it's their best. Stick the reruns and the less popular shows to the off-hours when not as many people are watching, right? But prime time, hey, that's reserved for the best.
Thursday, April 12, 2018
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There's this one experiment I remember from my grade school science class – no, it was not dissecting a brontosaurus. Our science teacher had this little hand-crank generator wired to a light bulb. And we'd turn that little crank, and it managed to generate just enough juice to light the light bulb. That baby generator was fine for the limited demands of Mr. Light Bulb, but I'd hate to try and run my whole house on it! Bye-bye stove, microwave, refrigerator, computer, lighting, and heat. No way that puny power supply could handle all those demands!
Thursday, March 22, 2018
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Well, we've been wrong. Yeah, our science books tell us that there are 100 billion galaxies. We look at our Milky Way, and we see the one galaxy we're in. We're all excited because we've been able to get an unmanned spacecraft to the edge of our solar system! Hey, Hey!!! Our solar system is just one small part of our one galaxy, and they're still counting galaxies. They did say there were 100 billion. Now, with the Hubble telescope, they're saying there may be as many as two trillion galaxies. Don't even try to comprehend what God has put out there.
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
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Look, people were confused about it for centuries. They looked at the sun rising and setting every day and they reached a seemingly obvious conclusion: the earth is the center of everything and the sun revolves around the earth, right? If you say "right," you need to go back to third grade science. Actually, if you think the sun revolves around the earth, well, did you know you agree with about one out of five Americans in a recent survey? Well, that's a good thing to get right. I mean, what's in the center and what revolves around it.
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
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Every once in a while we think someone left the floodlight on in the backyard, so I look outside the window to discover the floodlight isn't on-the moonlight is! It's one of those really impressive full-moon nights. The most beautiful one that my wife and I had, was when we were on vacation in the mountains, I think. Our cabin was nestled in this quiet valley next to a gentle little stream. Not long after dark, I noticed that the valley was ablaze with light! The full moon was rising in the eastern sky and it was casting this celestial glow over everything. It was perfectly positioned in the sky to just totally illuminate the valley we were in. But then, something made me realize what I was really looking at, and I said as we stood on the porch in admiration, "You know, that moon really isn't producing any light at all. It's just reflecting the light of the sun."
Tuesday, February 6, 2018
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I was a little boy. I'll never forget the day when my Dad took me to Riverview, the big amusement park then in Chicago. We had a ball until he insisted on taking me - against my serious objections - on "The Bobs." See, that was Riverview's biggest roller coaster. Oh, I had seen the people on the TV commercials screaming like death was near, but he persuaded me to go. I was not a happy camper. I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I didn't do anything. I froze! I gripped the safety bar, I stared straight ahead, never blinked, never spoke the entire ride. My Dad was frantically trying to get me to say something. I could not. It was a long time after before I ever rode a roller coaster again. I was so glad to get off.
Thursday, February 1, 2018
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Our family of five voted - and the vote was four to one. I lost. The issue was whether or not we would get a pet. See, I grew up in an apartment and the only pet we ever had were like...well, we had some cockroaches. But I went along with the vote. We started down Pet Avenue by getting a gerbil and I took a liking to him. There's something a little strange, though, about those furry little guys. If you could interview a gerbil, let's say, only I would even think of that, and ask what he was anticipating for today, he'd say, "Well, the same as yesterday and same as the day before." "Well, what's that?" "The wheel." And so Mr. Gerbil climbs on his wheel and starts running. Come back later, he's still running on the wheel. I don't think he realizes what's going on. Well, there's a whole lot of activity, but he's not going anywhere.
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
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As the Hutchcraft kids were growing up, we had an interesting system of government in our house. I had one big vote, and theoretically, my one could count more than the other. Well, theoretically that is. In reality, that didn't happen too often. One technique our children mastered in our family decision process was very skillful lobbying. For example, the kids (let's say) got wind of the fact that Mom was planning to have casserole for dinner. But they wanted pizza. So they would send our youngest as the sacrificial lamb to ask me about pizza instead. Overruled! Right. Pretty soon, I had two sons in my study asking, with their big sister, of course, managing this campaign behind the scenes down the hall. Again, "Nope! No pizza. Casserole it is." But then they would all three come together, telling me how much all of them wanted pizza. After consulting with Mom, I'll bet you know. We got pizza.
Friday, November 24, 2017
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Mike is a follower of Jesus Christ, and he's an executive with a large printing company founded on Christian principles. They had worked for two years to land this contract with a major publisher, and they got it. Mike told me about the day when their new client brought in their first job. It was exciting until he saw what it was about. It was all about horoscopes. Mike looked at his Sales Manager who had worked with him so hard to sign up this big company. Then he slid the manuscript back across the desk and said to his client, "I'm very sorry, but we can't print this. See, we try to run our business by the Bible, and this would go against what the Bible says."
Monday, November 13, 2017
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John and Becky were gone when this huge windstorm hit their neighborhood. Although no one could be sure a tornado was involved, the winds were clocked at 70 miles an hour. John and Becky told me that when they returned later that day, their street was closed. A huge pine tree had blown down, and it fell right across the road. Now other kinds of trees had lost some branches, but the wind had actually totally uprooted this evergreen. Well, a neighbor explained to John that it really isn't that hard to uproot a pine tree – no matter how big it is. Because even though it's a big tree, it has shallow roots. So, it's relatively easy to bring it down.