Subscribe  

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

My wife and I like Mexican food. Actually, I just like food, but she likes Mexican food much hotter than I do. She likes the salsa, the hot sauce - the really hot stuff. I like wimp sauce on mine actually. But not even she can handle what our friend from Mexico goes for. He doesn't just like hot sauce on his food. He likes molten lava. Even the candy he eats has chilies in it. It brings tears to our eyes, but he pops it like we do M&M's. Recently, he told me about a Mexican pepper that he had never tasted before. Some friends recommended it to him. He took a big bite out of it and really enjoyed it. It wasn't hot, it was actually mild. He enjoyed it so much, he ate some more. No fire, no burn, just a nice taste experience - until a few minutes later. Here's how he told it - "Suddenly, my mouth burst into flames!" Now, when he thinks something's hot, it's on fire, man! But there was no hint of the fire when he was biting into it. I loved what he named this particular pepper. He calls it "The Liar."

Thursday, March 24, 2005

You can have some say in what seat you get on an airplane. In fact, I usually reserve the kind of seat I want in advance. But you don't have any say in who your neighbors will be. Like the children who were in the seat behind me on one flight. My first clue that it was going to be an interesting flight was their squealing and crying before we ever took off. Mom just didn't seem to have her young daughter and her younger son under control, but she was trying. As we took off, I heard her tell her daughter loudly, "Don't squeeze your brother's head!" That sounded like a reasonable request to me. Then she gave a reason, "You know he's got a fever and he keeps throwing up!" Oh, great! For some strange reason, I instinctively ducked. The way I figured it, a straight trajectory would carry anything that came from that boy's mouth right to my head. I looked at the passenger next to me and we both just kind of shrugged and bent our heads down. Well, nothing terribly gross happened, but all during the flight, I kept thinking about those flu germs flying all around me and I hoped I'd taken enough Vitamin C that morning!

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Our sons both played linemen positions on their high school football team - which means they had to take their share of jokes about being big and dumb. Linemen's numbers are usually like 70-something, and they were number 75 and 76. So the word was that linemen wore their I.Q. on their jerseys. It's probably a good thing most of us were never told what our Intelligence Quotient is and really a good thing it wasn't advertised on our jersey! But after all is said and done, there's a measurement of your capabilities that's far more important anyway.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

While our Ministry Headquarters was being built, we had a problem. We were soon moving out of the space we had rented in another area, and we had no space to move into and the ministry couldn't stop in between! That's when my wife began to take a second look at the one structure on the land that we were about to build on - an old pole barn. At first glance, it looked like a good storm could knock it over. Someone jokingly suggested that it was still standing only because the termites were holding hands! But my wife has this incredible ability to see potential in something that everyone else would tend to give up on. She persuaded me to consult with a contractor friend, who affirmed that, surprisingly, this was a building with a good foundation and solid rafters. So we went to work. Within weeks that old barn became a wonderful temporary office building, roofed with donated shingles and covered with donated siding. Today, it still houses some of our Team and it serves some vital purposes in our ministry. And when visitors come, they can't figure out why we keep calling it "the barn." We know what it was before my wife saw what it could be!

Friday, March 4, 2005

We just had the wonderful joy of a visit from our son, his wonderful wife and our awesome little granddaughter. She's two, but I think she has the vocabulary of a five-year-old. Besides being unexplainably beautiful (being my granddaughter, that is), she really knows how to communicate - with words, with gestures, facial expressions. We love our time with her, and she seems to love her time with us. But this isn't home. They live many miles from here. She needs to be home ultimately, sleeping in her bed, playing with her toys, being around the people she loves there, and enjoying her personal world. This is where she visits. That's where she lives. She was in the car with Mommy and Daddy, all strapped in her toddler seat and ready to pull out of the driveway to head home. But, oh how she cried! She begged me to get in. She begged me to sit down. Her crying broke a grandparent's heart. But she's home now, and she's loving being where she lives. It's just that leaving is so hard.

Monday, February 14, 2005

We were nearly three thousand miles from home when my wife was hit by this agonizing attack of gallstones. The situation was so acute that we had to get her to a hospital where it was quickly determined that she would need surgery to remove the stones. From what we understood, it could take six weeks for her to be able to travel back after the operation. Back home a cure would have meant this invasive incision. But God, of course, had this planned all the time. The hospital friends directed us to just happened to have on its staff one of the premier laser surgeons in the country. He zapped those gallstones with a laser beam and they were history. My honey was good to go in two days! Last week, a friend of ours lost his glasses - for good. He had a laser procedure on his eyes, and almost immediately his vision deficiencies have been corrected, and who needs glasses! Gallstones gone, vision corrected - with the power of a laser - with the power of focused light.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

In every war, battles take the names of previously little-known places and propel those places into the history books. In the war in Iraq, Fallujah will be such a place. As a center for insurgent activity and hostage executions, it became a major combat focus for the U. S. military, and like all such places, a spawning ground for heroes. Sgt. Rafael Peralta was one of those heroes. Before Fallujah, he had already built a reputation for putting his Marines' interests ahead of his own. USA Today reported that, as a platoon scout, he actually was not assigned to the assault team that entered an insurgent safe house near Fallujah. His assignment allowed him to avoid that danger, but he asked the squad leader if he could join their assault team. Sgt. Peralta was, in fact, one of the first Marines to enter that house. Rifle fire wounded him in the face, and he fell to the floor. Then an insurgent rolled a fragmentation grenade into the area where Peralta and the others were seeking cover. Then they made a break for the door - which turned out to be locked. They pounded frantically. That was when Sgt. Peralta grabbed the grenade that would, in a moment, threaten the lives of his comrades. He cradled it into his body and took the full force of the explosion. The squad leader later said, "He saved half my fire team."

Friday, February 4, 2005

He's been a phenomenon on the American scene for over 50 years - Dr. Billy Graham. Again and again, decade and decade, more than any other individual, he has appeared on the list of America's most respected men. In the twilight of his long ministry, his crusades have taken on a great sense of poignant significance. His crusade in Los Angeles near the end of 2004, attracted tens of thousands to the Rose Bowl, and many thousands to begin a personal relationship with the Savior Billy Graham has proclaimed all these years. His message each night was translated instantaneously into 26 languages, including sign language. Interpreters fed their translation to groups of people sitting in their language groups, hearing the translation via headsets tuned to appropriate low-wave frequencies on their little radios. Billy Graham's Crusades have been translated since 1980, but never into so many languages as in Los Angeles. The translating coordinator explained that it was important that each person hear the message in his own "heart language."

Friday, January 21, 2005

It's an old Asian parable with a lot of "right now" wisdom. A little boy had been trying for many days to capture one of the little birds that snacked in the family fields. He had tried over and over again to hide in the bushes and surprise one of those birds enough to get his hands on it. Finally, after many failed attempts, he captured his prize. And he couldn't wait to show his mommy. He wrapped his hands around that little bird and he ran all the way to his house. As soon as the little guy saw his mother, he proudly extended his cupped hands and said, "Mommy, I got a bird! He's really cute!" But his joy didn't last long. As he slowly opened his hands for his mother to see, he noticed the bird wasn't moving - or breathing. It was one heartbroken boy who cried, "Mommy, I was afraid I'd lose him. But I held him so tight, I crushed him."

Thursday, December 30, 2004

The funeral plans for Matt were in the works. The Park Service had announced that Matt was one of five people who had been killed in a plane crash on a mountainside in Montana. The funeral never happened. Suddenly, Matt's bereaved parents heard the stunning news: although he had been badly injured, their son, along with one other Forest Service worker, had just been rescued alive, miles from the crash site. Rescue workers at the scene of the crash had concluded that the charred wreckage and the scattered human remains indicated that the crash had been "insurvivable," they said. But amazingly, Matt and his fellow worker hiked for 29 hours, often in subfreezing temperatures, until they reached a highway where a motorist picked them up. One news magazine called it, "A Miracle in the Snows of Montana" (Newsweek, October 4, 2004).

Subcategories

Your Hard Times

Your Relationships

Page 370 of 426

A Word With You Categories

                

GET IN TOUCH

Hutchcraft Ministries
P.O. Box 400
Harrison, AR 72602-0400

(870) 741-3300
(877) 741-1200 (toll-free)
(870) 741-3400 (fax)

FIND OUT MORE

Home / About

What We Do / Resources

News / Blog / Store

Contact Us / Privacy Policy

Donate

STAY UPDATED

We have many helpful and encouraging resources ready to be delivered to your inbox.

Please know we will never share or sell your info.

Subscribe

rhm-logo-white Copyright 2024 - All Rights Reserved - Hutchcraft Ministries

Back to top