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April 14, 2023

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There are many kinds of artists. My friend, Martha, she made her masterpieces out of thread. She lived in a tiny, sparsely furnished house in a remote corner of the Navajo reservation. It hadn't been an easy life with 11 children and a husband who blew most of his meager income on alcohol. But she found a way to provide at least enough money for her family to eat. She wove Navajo rugs. Now, I've had the privilege actually of being there when she was working on one. She had a loom in her living room where she worked for hours on end, pulling thread from one side to the other. In some ways, it didn't look like it had much promise; no pattern could be seen anywhere. It was all in her mind. But there was something beautiful in her mind that only she could see as she patiently wove those threads back and forth. And when she was finished, she'd produced a masterpiece for which a tourist would pay thousands of dollars in a nearby store. She'd only get a fraction of that, but shame on anyone who ever questioned what she was doing on that loom.

March 9, 2023

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When our sons were playing football, the varsity guys let them know an important factor in impressing the coach. He'll be looking for you in the weight room, not just at practice. Coaches know serious athletes serve their time in the weight room, concentrating on becoming stronger. They're not there because it's fun, it's not. But because it's important to winning the battle. One measure of your growing strength is what the lifters call your bench press. That's not lifting a bench of course, but it's how much you can lift over your head as you lie on a weight bench. I've worked with a lot of football players and weight lifters, but I've seldom met one who's content to keep that amount that they can lift where it is. No, they're always adding a little more weight to that bar. So, if your bench press is 170 pounds, you want to go to 180, 190. If you've been lifting 200, you want to work to get it to 210, 220. You know, you're always pressing more.

March 3, 2023

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During the high school football season, our Campus Life Club used to have a crowd breaker that provided a lot of entertainment for all of us. We had four cheerleaders up front with a box of football equipment, minus the more personal stuff, of course. They raced to see who was the first to get fully dressed in shoulder pads, hip pads, knee pads, helmets, the rest, you know. Well, they each had a football player providing verbal coaching, but the results were still hilarious. Those cheerleaders had no idea what gear went where. But that's okay. They didn't need to know. You can be sure the players knew. Every day, whether it was for a practice or a game, they got that equipment on. They didn't need it all day in school, of course, because they weren't generally being chased, or run into at high speeds, or thrown to the ground. But when it came time to play, the coaches made sure they had the equipment they needed. The coach wasn't about to send them into the battle without what they would need to protect them.

February 23, 2023

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Our grandson's always had an inquiring mind, even when he was little. So he really liked this gift he got for Christmas - a rock tumbler. You'll never guess what it does. Yeah, it tumbles rocks. The rock tumbler is placed in water, and these boring old rocks are placed in the rock tumbler, you turn it on and you let the good times roll! Those rocks start spinning, flying, and crashing into each other as they churn around in that water. All they need is some music so they could have a rock concert. Right? Oh, sorry. The atmosphere inside that rock tumbler is pure mayhem. But after all the rockin' and rollin' and clashin' and crashin', something pretty amazing happens. Before those rocks went through the tumbler, they were just drab, boring hunks of stone. They come out displaying a beauty you'd have never guessed they had!

February 15, 2023

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It was the final event of the men's gymnastics competition in the 2004 Athens Olympics. American Paul Hamm's hopes for the gold medal seemed to come crashing down. He made a lopsided landing and actually toppled into the judges' tables. That gave him a disappointing 9.137 score that virtually doomed his chances for a first place finish. After some moments of what he described as "depression," he decided to fight back with what would have to be the best two performances of his life, just to win the bronze.

February 9, 2023

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OK, I'm a history buff. So my kids had opportunity to visit many houses and villages that are historic preservations or restorations. They might put that a little differently. "We got dragged to all this history stuff!" Our two sons especially got to dreading that word "tour." In fact, you know what? They made it a much longer word. It went something like this: "Oh, we're not going on another toooooo-urrrrr?" Well, one thing that made the tours a little more interesting, were the craftsmen working their crafts. Like the potter, for example. Even the kids enjoyed stopping to watch him do his work. He'd start with this worthless lump of clay and slowly, painstakingly, he would transform it into something really beautiful and valuable. I could tell that by the prices in the gift shop for that pottery.

January 23, 2023

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I was speaking at a Christian conference center in the Midwest; actually, speaking at least three times a day there! Don't feel bad for me. No, feel bad for the people who had to listen to me all those times! After about three days, I decided to grab some break time to do something I had wanted to do since I arrived. I wanted to climb this monster sand dune that's not far from the conference center. It was just sitting there all week saying, "Climb me, Ron! Climb me!" So I grabbed a couple of friends and we started trudging up this huge mountain of sand. At first, we were charging up that dune, all full of energy. But if you've ever climbed a sand dune, you know it gets pretty exhausting pretty fast. After a while, you could hear the huffing and the puffing and you could feel the steps slowing down. My climbing partners were starting to lose their enthusiasm for the rest of the climb - especially when they looked up and saw how far we still had to go. So I encouraged them to stop for a minute and rest, and to look down. We needed to look at how far we had come - not just how far we still had to go.

January 13, 2023

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I think it had something to do with moving a piano. I've been part of moving one of those monsters, and I know what a bear it is to do. Fortunately, we had plenty of guys to share the load. I guess my Dad didn't. Ultimately, he said moving a piano was a major reason he had to have one of those difficult surgeries - actually to repair a hernia. I'd never even heard the word before until my Dad helped move a piano. There weren't enough men to bear the load of that piano that they moved at church. Well, for at least one man - my Dad - the load was too much to bear without major damage.

December 21, 2022

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Buttermilk Falls is a beautiful spot! That's what I had been told, and I was always open for a great new spot to go for a Sunday afternoon drive with the kids. So we drove out to the country and set out to discover the beauty of Buttermilk Falls. I did have to stop and ask directions a couple of times; I guess a lot of people didn't know where this great spot was.

December 9, 2022

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If you've ever had to make a marathon drive over a long distance, or if you just wanted to squeeze every possible hour out of your vacation, you know what it's like to drive all night probably. If you're a long-haul truck driver, pushing through the night, that could well be a way of life for you. For me, that last hour or two before dawn, oh, man, that's tough. That's when you turn on the most obnoxious radio station you can find and you blast it. That's when you start doing aerobic workouts behind the wheel. It's when you roll down the window in spite of the 30-below wind chill and the hurricane force winds. What makes the last hours of the night particularly challenging is the truth of that old cliché, "It's always darkest before the dawn." It usually is the darkest time, right when the night is seeming to be the very longest. Then suddenly, you start to see that glow on the horizon. The glow gets steadily brighter, and it starts radiating light across more and more of the dark sky. And then, there it is - the sunrise! Hallelujah, the long night is over! Just when it felt like it was never going to end!

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