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We have become a nation of cynics. We expect the worst and usually are not disappointed. We lump people together in the most disdainful of fashions and say, "I told you so," when they perform as we predict. However, every now and then you hear a feel good story that reminds you of the good side of human nature and testifies to the fact that we really were made in the image of God.

A young man named Jason Powell worked on a farm near Corvallis, Oregon that grew grasses on a commercial scale for export, not just to the balance of the United States, but also the world. At the…  ( Click for more )

My home state of Ohio has some rather marked firsts. First men in flight. First man to set foot on the moon. First concrete pavement in North America. There is one item that I have never seen before in all my travels. I do not know if it is a first, but it is the first time I have ever seen it anywhere. South America has Christ of the Andes. Ohio has, what I call, "Arms Reaching Jesus."

It is basically a statue of Jesus from the waist up with His arms reaching upward toward heaven. The statue is ivory in color and has a rough hewn appearance to it. Resting in front of…  ( Click for more )

Over the years there have been many men and women who have perpetrated hoaxes for their seeming benefit. Most of them have been found out. The reason I say most of them is because those that haven't been found out yet are not yet known to be perpetraters of hoaxes. Get the picture? One I would like to share with you is Wilhelm Voight.

Voigt was sent to prison in 1891 in Germany for robbery and released in 1906. As a result of his imprisonment he had lost his identity card and passport and was penniless. But he had his wits. He remembered how he used to mimic the Prussian…  ( Click for more )

Today is the first Tuesday of November in the good old U. S. of A. That means that today is Election Day. And not just Election Day but Election Day when the President of the good old U. S. of A. is chosen as well as a number of other officials in federal, state, county and city elections. Late tonight there will be any number of people who will be celebrating while there will be others who will be dejected.

My concern is for you. Those of you who are registered American voters, I urge you to vote. I am not coming at this from the attitude of "if you don't vote don't complain."…  ( Click for more )

My wife and I had wanted to make the trip to see our oldest son in Wisconsin for quite some time. We had lacked opportunity. We finally decided that any opportunity we would have would be of our own making so we made the opportunity and went this past weekend. We learned two very important things not to do in going to see our son, John.

The first is, don't go through Chicago on a Friday evening right after rush hour. Rush hour in Chicago is improper nomenclature. It is rush evening. It begins somewhere around 3:30 and continues until about 8:00. It consists of various "teasers"…  ( Click for more )

This is from the "strange but true" files. There is a man named Peter Maxwell who owned a urethane manufacturing plant in Chino, California. Not only was he the owner but he carried himself on the books as an employee for an annual salary of $10,000. One day, while in the plant helping out, his sweater got caught in a machine and he was injured severely. This is where it gets bizarre.

He hired an attorney and sued himself for negligence. Of course, he had to defend himself so he hired another attorney for the defense against the lawsuit. Not wishing that a lengthy…  ( Click for more )

Is he back? Isn't he back? Probably. This week has been a difficult one for writing a column. If I was one of those guys who has all the toys, laptop included, I could have kept up. But I don't, so I missed Monday morning (on the road to Florida) and Wednesday morning (on the road back home to Kentucky). I am at home today and tomorrow.

Yesterday was an interesting day. I left my nephew's home in Melbourne, Florida, around 7:10 A.M. I had figured that I could drive the entire thirteen hour trip and take enough stops to stay fresh. My target time to be home was 10:00 P.M.…  ( Click for more )

My apologies for yesterday's absence. I was overnighting in Walterboro, South Carolina on my way to see my nephews in Florida. Today's message is much later than my normal time and, for those who are used to it being there when you awake in the morning, I apologize for that as well. I felt that a visit with my nephews would be a good thing. Their mother, my only sibling, died this past August 24 of cancer. They felt like they had lost their foundation.

En route to see my nephews I came my usual route down I-75 out of Kentucky to Knoxville, Tennessee and then East from Knoxville…  ( Click for more )

Benjamin Spock once said (or was it Mr. Spock on Star Trek), "Trust Yourself. You know more than you think." Many people panic when the pressure is applied for them to perform from the depths of their knowledge. I remember my first time delivering a speech before my Toastmasters club members where I had to have the speech memorized. My heart pounded, my pulse raced, my mind cluttered and I just about backed out of the speech.

Anxiety can deflate people very quickly. Just recently I saw this in two of my church members. One is preparing for a life change with a new job while…  ( Click for more )

Not long ago I told a good friend of mine that we were expecting the pitter patter of little feet around our house late this year. Knowing my wife and I to both be in our mid 50's he cocked one eyebrow and asked, "So, are you getting a Chihuahua?" "No," I responded, "we're expecting our first grandchild sometime in December." He was elated over the news.

As time went on we were anxious to know the sex of the baby whether it is to be a boy or a girl. I remember the day that Jennifer, our daughter-in-law, was to go to the doctor for the thingamajiggy that would tell her and Sean…  ( Click for more )

There we were, along with twenty-five other teams, hoping that it would quit. Surely it wouldn't continue for the rest of the round. Surely it would stop. I mean, this is for a good cause. We're benefitting a quality mission organization here. Someplace along the way we have to get a break. At every next tee it was the same frustrating story. It was still raining.

This past Monday some twenty-six teams gathered at The Peninsula Golf Course near Lancaster, Kentucky to play a scramble event to benefit Teen Mission, USA. Several holes into the event it started drizzling. …  ( Click for more )

Spending a weekend in Ohio is usually fun for me. I get the chance to see people I haven't seen for some time and spend time with some really great friends. This past weekend was one of those fun weekends with one exception. Everyone was talking about the Ohio State Buckeyes football team now mired in a three game losing streak.

The Buckeyes are one of the premier collegiate football programs in the nation. They are coached by one of my all time favorite coaches, Jim Tressel. Tressel was formerly the coach of Youngstown State in Ohio and had won national championships in Division…  ( Click for more )

"He's a snappy dresser." "He looks very dapper." "He has that GQ look." These phrases are associated with men and how they look in their clothes. The idea of a snappy dresser could be a man in a worsted wool blazer in a bright summer color with a freshly pressed and starched dress shirt. Someone in a tweed jacket and a pair of corduroys might look very dapper. A black tee shirt worn under a double breasted pinstripe suit could elicit the "GQ" comment.

Books have been written about it as well as nurmerous articles. People make their living designing and fitting clothing to…  ( Click for more )

Rising straight up out of the water is the Lorain West Breakwater Light near Lorain, Ohio. It is a simple frame structure looking more like an old house than a lighthouse. The light tower protrudes from the front left corner of the structure as a straight column that projects some ten feet above the roof level. The structure is painted white and the roof is red. It is unmistakeable.

While browsing at a Hallmark store recently I noticed a model of the Lorain West Breakwater Light sitting on a shelf. I had been wanting to add this to my collection and was very excited to see…  ( Click for more )

Not long ago someone asked me what I would do if I were ever given a comb. For those of you who have not seen me in some time or who do not know me at all, I am, well, follically challenged. I am bald. What hair I have is trimmed very short. So when faced with the above mentioned question I responded very solemnly, "I would never part with it."

Some people love to give and receive gag gifts. You know what I am talking about. The dress tie for the man whose wardrobe is mostly tee shirts. A Jeff Gordon bobblehead doll for a diehard fan of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. I can remember…  ( Click for more )

I'm back. Bet a lot of you didn't even realize I was gone. I did receive a number of phone calls and, from what I heard from some close friends, some e-mails asking what happened to me. Truth be told I got caught up in the swirling mass that is the internet. I was swept away by the impersonal manner in which some Internet Service Providers (isp) dealt with their clientele.

America Online, good old AOL, busted me for sending what they called "objectionable material" over the internet. This was early in my life with Study Light. The "objectionable material" was too many e-mails…  ( Click for more )

My very first car was one that I had taken a number of rides in during my teen years. It was a 1956 Chevrolet BelAir two door hardtop with a 265 cc. V-8 and black rolled and tucked interior. I bought it from my grandfather for the princely sum of in the summer of 1970. I put a lot of miles on that car in a short period of time. It was the car I took with me to Kentucky Christian College which was three and a half hours from my home in Jeffersonville, Ohio. It was the car I drove to my preaching assignments which were always at least 90 miles from KCC. I drove it to my fiance's…  ( Click for more )

The ability to communicate is what has made civilization fluorish. Man has the ability to accomplish great things, and has, but those things would have been frustratingly difficult were it not for the ability to communicate with others. A verbal and written language enables us to share ideas and concepts which have been of immense importance for the development of what we call a civilized world.

However, not all communication is either written or verbal. Sign language is a system of communication which transcends language. While there are different dialects of sign language,…  ( Click for more )

I remember a lot of my years playing Little League baseball in my home town. I remember the kids and even some of the coaches. I remember Don Morrow telling us to count the hops on ground balls. Not so we could actually know how many times the ball hopped, but so we would be concentrating on the ball enough to field it without missing it.

I remember one particular practice where Mr. Morrow was hitting ground balls to us infielders. I was surrounded by my friends; Bobby Thornberry, Terry Baker, Todd Johnson. We were all working at the thirdbase side of the infield. Mr. Morrow…  ( Click for more )

Commercials can be absolutely the most entertaining part of TV or they can be the most disgusting and vulgar. There is one little slice of life that I have seen recently about a boy and a garbage bag. His mother fills the bag in front of him, even to the point of pressing items inside the bag that stretch the sides rather alarmingly. The little boy is bug-eyed. Then dear sweet Mom tells the boy that he gets the happy privilege of taking the loaded to almost bursting garbage bag down to the trash can. The boy begins carrying the bag but ultimately winds up dragging, flipping,…  ( Click for more )

Have you ever been reemed out for going the right way? No, seriously! Have you ever been going the right way and had someone just absolutlely take you to task for doing so? The other evening my wife and I were going to our local WalMart. As we entered the parking area we were ready to go down the proper lane of parking when, lo and behold, an older woman was coming the wrong way against the traffice arrow for the parking lane. As I pulled to the side to allow her to get out of the way I noticed that she was shouting things at me through her closed window. I can only imagine…  ( Click for more )

Just the other day, while coming back from Lexington, I saw a bumper sticker on the back of an SUV. It posed what, I'm sure, the driver thought was a rhetorical question. In other words, the answer to the question was so obvious that it was a slam dunk the reader would get it right. The question was, "Who would Jesus bomb?" A "no brainer," right? I mean, after all, Jesus came "that the world, through Him, might be saved. (John 3:17) Why would Jesus bomb the very people He wants to save? Add to that, the very nature of a bomb blast is so inhumane that…  ( Click for more )

Just this past evening I followed a woman with a car full of people and a rather dubious bumper sticker on her rear bumper. "If you think Education is Expensive - Try Ignorance!!!" I then watched her as she made her way across Long Lick Road. Long Lick Road (State Route 32) is a meandering highway that is rife with hills and dips. Blind rises abound and passing zones are all but nonexistent.

As I followed the woman I began to realize that she was taking her own bumper sticker to heart; she was trying ignorance. The very root of the word ignorance is the concept of struggling…  ( Click for more )

Back in the late 80's I attended a seminar in which the leader asked a very interesting question. "If you know everything that other people know who are successful in their fields could you do their job?" He proceded to show us a number of examples which illustrated that even to the point of shoving a straw through a potatoe. He then demonstrated a very important truth.

The word "try" should not be in our vocabulary. He set a chair in front of us and called a volunteer to come and help him. He then stood and looked at the chair and told us, "This is not picking up a chair."…  ( Click for more )