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Thursday, August 1, 2013

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When you play high school football, you learn to play another game too. It's called Impress the Coaches. Of course, the coaches decide who plays, who starts, who sits. All summer long players show up for weight lifting in this steamy, hot weight room. Now, they come three times a week. Why would guys want to come and sweat and strain? Because the coaches are there. You can't help but ask how many of those fellows would show up if, well let's say the coaches suddenly announced they were taking a week off, "Fellows, you keep coming. We just won't be here all next week, okay?" I have a feeling the attendance would really go down in the weight room.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

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My wife and I took a trip to the mountains and, in a way, to her childhood. We visited an old Smokey Mountain community that the Park Service preserved over the years. It's called Cades Cove. It used to be inhabited by a lot of mountain folk. Now, my wife grew up in a Yankee family who lived in the Ozarks on a farm. So she experienced both.

Friday, June 28, 2013

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Man, having watched the old Superman TV show and some of the early movies, it's got to be tough for Clark Kent. You know, these days. I mean, it's getting harder and harder to find a phone booth to change in. But He always manages to change his identity to Superman. That's the important thing. You can't be a super hero until you change your identity. When you think about it, most of our super heroes over the years don't become heroes without that change of identity, whether it's Clark Kent changing to Superman, or it's Wonder Woman, or it's Batman. Now, that's okay for the comics, but in real life, the heroes are the ones who never change their identity.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

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I remember the time that my son got in real late. And I remember because that really wasn't his usual style. And, of course, I was waiting calmly and patiently for him to get home and, you know, waiting to hear his explanation; except for the hand cuffs and the bright light that I greeted him with. Now, he had good reasons. There were car problems, and there were people who really did have to be dropped off before he was, and, oh yeah, they got lost. It all checked out, but I was still an unhappy father for one important thing that he missed. Can you guess what it is? Uh-huh, "You didn't call!" Every parent knows, and most teenagers learn that you're making a big mistake when you don't call home.

Friday, May 24, 2013

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I remember the last time I bought a house. It was a while ago, but I still remember that nervous feeling of stepping out on a limb that night to say to the owner, "We'll buy it." I was thinking, "Where in the world are we going to get the money for this?" And then the hand shake, the signature on that document that committed most of my working life to paying for it.

Friday, March 8, 2013

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My next door neighbor in our dorm in college always wanted to preach like Billy Graham. I mean he really wanted to preach like Billy Graham. He would tape Billy Graham on his radio program, and then he would listen to the tapes over and over again. He would copy everything, including even the inflections of Billy's voice. And then he would watch Billy Graham. He studied his gestures; he'd try to get them down and gesture just when Billy Graham would. He'd hold his Bible like Billy Graham. Now you are going to think he was really a fanatic, but this really is true. He told me he even counted the words per minute that Billy Graham averaged and tried to get the same pace. Wow! That's a crazy way to approach ministry, huh? Well, it's more common than you might think.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

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At first, Rob's friends thought he was avoiding them. They'd ask him to go somewhere and he'd say, "Sorry, I can't." Eventually he told them why he couldn't go. He had something much more important to do. He would just say, "I've got to go to my meeting." Not too many teenagers would choose going to a meeting over going with their friends, but Rob made a good choice. See, Rob is a teenage drug addict, and he's being rehabilitated through a 12-step program modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous. One important key to fighting his problem is attending that support group meeting several times a week.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

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I guess it's possible to get lost in a computer. I'm lost as soon as I turn on a computer, but that's not what I mean. What I'm describing happens to people who really understand computers. There was a Newsweek article a while ago that talked about how some business leaders were complaining about this emerging problem with some of their computer people. They were talking about computer technicians who just kept going deeper and deeper into programs, and spending lots of time on sophisticated functions that didn't really have anything to do with getting their job done. One of them had an interesting name for it - "the rapture of the deep" they called it; lost somewhere in that computer; making the computer an end in itself rather than what it's supposed to be, which I think is a means of getting a job done. You know, some people get lost in the Bible too.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

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Now, as a good football coach prepares his high school players for the season, he's going to bring up the dangers of what he will call playing tentatively. I know no one's anxious to get hurt, and so there's a natural tendency to hold back a little in a contact sport; to hold back when you hit, when you block, when you tackle. But the coach is going to tell you that the best way to get hurt is to play tentatively, half-heartedly. Either give it all you've got or don't play.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

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I was reminiscing with my son the other day about when he was four and learned to play baseball. He was standing there in his little shorts, and he had his Wiffle bat and his Wiffle ball. (I mean when he was little; not the other day.) And I stood just a few feet away from him and I gently threw the ball underhanded. And he would sort of chop at it like an ax, and I didn't know if he'd ever learn to play.

                

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

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