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When television programs run their course and finally go the way of Gunsmoke, Andy Griffith, et. al., people mourn their passing like they would a good friend. A number of sitcoms have, or are preparing to, exit the television scene. A number of them I have only seen maybe once or twice and couldn't tell you more than the main character or one of the main characters, such is my interest.

Seinfeld is one such program. I know Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer. But I couldn't recount a particular episode if my life depended on it. I watched maybe three episodes and have no idea…  ( Click for more )

In the difficult span of a week a man I met recently went through a torrent of problems, some of his own making, in which he said he lost all but one of his friends. That one friend called me and asked me to meet with him just to talk. She briefed me on the man's situations and gave me his phone number so I could call him and set a time to meet.

When the man and I got together near Florence, Kentucky, he didn't talk immediately about his problems. He wanted to talk about his friend. When news of his problems got out several of the people he felt closest to called him and told…  ( Click for more )

I am, perhaps, the most individual individual you may ever know. My friends have told me that as have my wife and children. Anytime people preface something by saying, "Tom, you're the only person I know who could get away with that," you know that they think you were the reason the mold was destroyed and not just broken.

I hear young people today saying that they want to be an individual. So they wear a certain kind of jean, get multiple piercings and start amassing tattoos. And they look like all the other people their age who want to be individuals who have begun wearing…  ( Click for more )

Having grandkids has built a fresh new understanding about growth in my mind. With my grandkids now a month old we have a benchmark of how they are doing. Grace Lynn was four pounds and five ounces at birth while Sean Patrick was four pounds two ounces at birth. Grace is now six pounds and nine ounces while Patrick is six pounds and eleven ounces. That's over two and one half pounds for Patrick in his first month.

There is a term attached to these wonderful children; premature. They came into the world before they were supposed to according to the calendar. They were six…  ( Click for more )

From the bottom of the hill... Bet you weren't expecting to see that again. Living in the Georgetown area has removed us from the Waco area by about an hour's drive. However, my doctor is still there. We have not yet made a change from the one in whose trust we have placed our health for these past five years. As a result, when I need to see the doctor I return to the Waco area, Moberly actually.

I had finished having some blood drawn for a blood test and was hungry having not eaten yet that morning. I decided breakfast at the Waco BP Food Mart would be good. So I went to…  ( Click for more )

I remember warm summer weekends with my father back in Jeffersonville, Ohio. He would have a project and I would be his co-worker. We would start early in the morning, right after breakfast, and work until lunchtime or beyond if needed. Dad always wanted to get something done rather than leave it for even the briefest of pauses.

He and I have built sidewalks, workshops, picnic tables and cabinets. When we got done we knew that we were not the best at what we just completed, but we had done it right and it worked. And we had done it together as Father and Son. No matter how…  ( Click for more )

My good friends, I hope that your day is one in which you can relax with the knowledge that God has blessed you immeasurably. Take comfort in the safety of your family, consolation in what health you possess and encouragement in the fact that you are able to care for yourself and those around you.

Most of all exalt the God who gave His only Son to die for you in a war fought in your heart. Give thanks for the victory that has been awarded you through His blood and the great promise that is yours by His sacrifice and resurrection. In gratitude, recognize the spiritual strength…  ( Click for more )

Kurt Lewin once said, "If you want truly to understand something, try to change it." That works in many areas. As a NASCAR fan I wondered along with everyone else what the head honchos thought they were doing when they put in the "Chase for the Race" or "Race for the Cup" or "My Cup Runneth Over" or whatever they called their season ending blitz of twenty races which focused on the top ten drivers. But I now understand NASCAR a lot better than I ever did even though I had nothing to do with the changes.

However, there are two areas of life that Lewin's adage doesn't affect.…  ( Click for more )

The entire incident couldn't have taken more than just a few seconds but, at the moment it happened, it seemed like an eternity. Thoughts flashed through my mind at a rapid rate. I was thinking about my family and friends, my church. Would I ever see them again? Would somebody be coming from the other direction whose life would be lost along with mine? An automobile accident is a frightening experience.

I came up over a short rise and then down into a curve where I could see that the road was wet. My speed wasn't that great so I was unconcerned about the wetness on the road's…  ( Click for more )

Having ministered to a number of churches I have, over the years, developed a sincere appreciation for Godly leaders, especially elders. There have been those whose leadership has been lacking and those whose spirituality has been neglected. There have been those who ruled with irons fists and those who had no rule at all. Then came the elders of the Minorsville Christian Church; my church.

I don't know about any of the "super" churches as to the elderships there, but I do know that the five men with which I am currently sharing ministry are men of deep faith, intense spirituality,…  ( Click for more )

While living in Bellville, Ohio, in 1991 we rented a place on Main Street that had a side porch that was screened in. I asked my landlord if he would mind if I converted it into a golf shop. He said that he had no problem with that so I did. Christian Custom Golf opened to very little fanfare but several customers. After a few weeks the shop was doing reasonably well. People were enamored with the concept of custom fitted golf clubs.

Each week someone would come in and ask that mundane question, "How much will a set of clubs cost me?" I remember looking at one particular…  ( Click for more )

This past weekend was a landmark for me. After begging for several years for a friend of mine to come down and play some golf, he finally made it. I have had the pleasure of Rod and Mariann Wright's hospitality for a number of years and have been after them to come down and spend some time with my wife and me. Rod made it and brought Mike McCoy, who has been here several times before, with him.

Mike and Rod are the two men I am closest to from my graduating class. The odd thing is, we never spent much time together in high school but for some reason feel the need to do so now.…  ( Click for more )

In having to replace my computer I decided to replace my inkjet printer from a Lexmark to a Hewlett Packard. When I bought my new printer I did not buy replacement cartridges for it for that first time when I ran out of ink. I tried to rectify that by going to WalMart and buying the cartridges there. Just yesterday I got a real surprise when time came to replace my used cartridges.

I opened the tri colored cartridge first. As I opened one end of the package I noticed that the flap was glued tightly shut. When I examined the contents of the package, which clearly looked like…  ( Click for more )

As a new grandfather I am now experiencing an entirely unique set of emotions. I am feeling things I never knew I would or could feel and now understand what my dad meant when he told me to have my grandkids first and then my kids. There is a completely different package of appreciation, love and interest attached to grandchildren than there was with my own children.

As such, when my daughter-in-law expressed concern over taking the twins by herself to their first doctor's appointment I decided that I could sqeeze the time out of my schedule to help her. We loaded Gracie and…  ( Click for more )

The college football season is winding down rapidly. Just three weeks of college football left before the most whacked up method of choosing a national champion in a major sport will take place. The pollsters will determine who's number one in college football just in time for post season bowl games to be determined and the Bowl Championship Series to be set to determine who will be crowned as national champs.

So, who's number one in baseball? The Boston Red Sox. How? Because they beat the two teams everyone else was saying were the number one teams. They did that, not by…  ( Click for more )

One North American mammal that has always fascinated me is the opossum. It is the answer to the age old question, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" To show the opossum that it could be done. When you see an opossum lying on a road surface you can reasonably be sure it is dead in spite of the popular story that opossum's "play dead" when they are frightened. That just isn't the case for one on the road.

When an opossum is confronted by an enemy, most likely a predator (opossums are more likely to consider something that will eat it an enemy as opposed to something that just…  ( Click for more )

One thousand miles south of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean lies a tiny island that has been named the Palmyra Atoll. As tiny islands go it is fairly large encompassing the grand total of some four and one half square miles. And, as tiny islands go, it is uninhabited. For some reason no one wants to live on an insignificant speck of land stuck a thousand miles from civilization. Small just isn't attractive and desirable when it is that remote.

Even though this tiny island is so insignificant it became a welcome port when the American ship Palmyra was blown off course and forced…  ( Click for more )

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 )