The answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined See what you think:

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‘When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore.
So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.’

Rebecca- age 8
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‘When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different.
You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.’

Billy – age 4
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‘Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.’

Karl – age 5
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‘Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.’

Chrissy – age 6
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‘Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.’

Terri – age 4
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‘Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.’

Danny – age 7
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‘Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss’

Emily – age 8
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‘Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.’

Bobby – age 7 (Wow!)
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‘If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,’

Nikka – age 6
(we need a few million more Nikka’s on this planet)
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‘Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.’

Noelle – age 7
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‘Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.’

Tommy – age 6
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‘During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling.   He was the only one doing that. I wasn’t scared anymore. ‘

Cindy – age 8
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‘My mommy loves me more than anybody
You don’t see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.’

Clare – age 6
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‘Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.’

Elaine-age 5
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‘Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford.’

Chris – age 7
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‘Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.’

Mary Ann – age 4
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‘I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.’

Lauren – age 4
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‘When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.’ (what an image)

Karen – age 7
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‘Love is when Mommy sees Daddy on the toilet and she doesn’t think it’s gross.’

Mark – age 6
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‘You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.’

Jessica – age 8
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And the final one

The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife.

Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there.

When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said,

‘Nothing, I just helped him cry’
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A lead foot could cost you some gold.

On the Road:
The faster you go the more gas you will use. The optimum speed for saving gas will vary from car to car but usually it is between 50 and 60 mph. Obviously you don’t want to drive 50mph on the interstate and get run over but try to keep your speed around 65, which is the speed limit in most states. Also, unless you are on very hilly terrain turn on the cruise control and it will help with your gas mileage as well.

In Town:
Although it often feels like it the person who gets to the stoplight first is not the winner. Leaving the stop light first doesn’t get you any prizes either. Hard acceleration does more than waste gas, it shortens the lifetime of almost every part on your car. Smooth steady acceleration is the key. If you can feel the acceleration as a pressure on your back it is probably too much. The same with breaking, if you brake too hard you will wear out your car at a much faster than normal rate. Of course if you don’t brake hard enough you could hit the guy in front of you. Which could wind up costing you a lot.

Air Conditioning – On or Off?
Like everything else, it depends. There are two schools of thought and both are correct. The first is by putting the air conditioning on and rolling up the windows the air resistance is lowered so the engine doesn’t work as hard to maintain your speed. Which offsets the demands of the air conditioner. On the other hand there are those who believe the air conditioner itself taxes the engine more than the reduced air drag can compensate for.

As I said, both viewpoints are correct. At slower speeds (under 35mph) wind resistance is just not enough of a factor. If you turn the air conditioner on at those speeds you will use more gas. At highway speeds however the situation changes. Modern cars are designed to run with the windows up. By leaving the windows down at higher speeds (45mph+) you will rob your vehicle of both performance and fuel efficiency.
[smartads]

If we are honest with ourselves we have to admit we don’t have the facts to prove the world is 7,000 years old. We are not going to convince someone who wants to argue the ‘facts’. All the scientific facts available say the Earth is 5 billion years old and the universe 15 billion.  The sad truth is we will lose if we try to argue creation against evolution based upon available data – things we can see, measure and test.

The only evidence we have of God is our faith.  Whenever I hear people debating Creation vs. Evolution Hebrews 11:1 immediately comes to mind

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

When I first came to God it wasn’t because I believed the bible. I came to believe the Bible because I knew God. I wasn’t convinced of God’s existence because of a brilliant ontological argument. Quite the contrary, arguing with someone is possibly the worst thing you can do.

Aesop illustrated the point very well with his fable, The North Wind and The Sun.
The Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger when they saw a traveler coming down the road. The Sun said: “I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause that traveler to take off his cloak shall be regarded as the stronger. You begin.”

So the Sun retired behind a cloud, and the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveler. But the harder he blew the more closely did the traveler wrap his cloak round him, till at last the Wind had to give up in despair. At last the North Wind said, “I will try no longer, but you, Sun, can do no better.”

The Sun said nothing, but came out from behind the cloud and smiled down upon the traveler. The Traveler no sooner felt his genial rays than he took off one garment after another, and at last, fairly overcome with heat, undressed and bathed in a stream that lay in his path.

 The more we attempt to force our beliefs on someone the harder they resist.  I think we have to ask ourselves, which is more important – to win an argument or introduce another human being to God? Does God require that we memorize verses or listen to his word? In Ephesians 4:17,18 Paul writes,

This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; (New King James Translation)

To me Paul often comes across a little harsh.  But what he is saying in those verses is very true, quit thinking small. When we start arguing carbon dating and dinosaurs we have darkened our understanding. The most important verse in the creation story is the first one - In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)   Further we cheapen the Bible when we try to use it as history book.  The Bible does contain a lot of history but that is not it’s purpose. The Bible is the story of mans fall from grace and eventual salvation.  That is the message that needs to be told.

So the next time someone wants to argue evolution versus creation remember these words
from Proverbs 15:1, A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. (NKJV)

However, in modern enterprises, because the objectives of management are often illogically focused on the performance of a particular horse rather than rationally on the completion of the journey, other strategies sometimes have to be tried, including, but not limited to the following:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Threatening the horse with termination.
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Lowering the standards to include dead horses.
7. Appointing an intervention team to re-animate the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase the rider’s load share.
9. Re-classify the dead horse as living-impaired.
10. Change the form so that it reads: “This horse is not dead”
11. Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
12. Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Process map the current and future route of the dead horse.
14. Introduce a conformance policy which clearly indicates accountability of riders for the health of their horses.
15. Do a time management study to see if lighter riders would improve productivity.
16. Introduce an incentive scheme to encourage dead horses to run faster.
17. Declare that a dead horse has a lower overhead and, therefore, performs better.
18. Form a quality focus group to find ways of improving the efficiency of dead horses.
19. Rewrite the expected performance requirements for horses.
20. Promote the dead horse to a management position.

My wife and I enjoy going to the Illinois Indian Powwow held annually in a nearby park. Last year our granddaughter joined us. She and Grandma spent over an hour at the craft tent creating a beautiful beaded hair clip with a feather on the end.

One Saturday not too long ago my wife and I made plans to take our grandaughter birthday shopping. So we picked up B from her parents and off we went with B wearing her beaded hair clip.

After looking at toys, clothes and more it was time to check out. My wife took our purchases to the checkout line while B and I went to get a frozen drink. We met beside the store’s northern exit after Grandma had paid for the presents  and walked outside with B carrying her drink, my wife carrying B and me carrying our purchases.

“Where is my hair clip?” asked B.

My wife asked her if she remembered where she had left it.

“I hung it on the cart” replied B.

“Oh I’m sorry”, my wife said, “lets go see if we can find it”.

So we went back into the store, searched all the carts but the beaded hair clip was nowhere to be found. We promised our granddaughter we would go to the Powwow again this year and she could make another hairclip. A little sadder than before we left the store, again by the north exit and started walking back to our car.

We were just steps from the southern entrance when I noticed a shopping cart someone had left beside the door. Suddenly a gust of wind pushed the shopping cart past us, towards the roadway and into the incoming traffic. Instinctively I jumped out, grabbed the cart and pulled it back on the sidewalk.

Not wanting to leave the cart on the sidewalk I pushed it inside the large double doors to where the carts are normally stored. My wife looked around and exclaimed, “I don’t know what I was thinking, I didn’t leave the cart at the other entrance, I left it here”. Once again we searched the shopping carts for B’s hair clip. And again we didn’t find it.

As we were preparing to leave a store employee asked, “Are you looking for a beaded hair clip with a feather on the end?”

For the second time in the last five minutes an angel had spoken to us.

“Oh yes”, said my wife, “Have you seen it?”

“It was hanging on the side of a cart”, the angel replied. “It looked too nice to just leave there so I took it to the lost and found”. We thanked her and went to retrieve B’s beaded hair clip from the lost and found. On the way B turned to Grandma and said. “I think an angel pushed that cart in front of Grandpa so we would come in here and find my hair clip”.

“I agree”, Grandma replied. “Angels look after us in all things”.

Both my granddaughter and my wife have a much stronger faith than I. B’s faith is that of the simple innocence of a child, my wife is grounded in the years experiencing His grace. It seems most of my life is spent going through the motions waiting for a grand gesture from God. I fear there are many like me; we keep looking for God to sweep us off our feet and miss His gentle tap on our shoulder.

I know the old saying goes, ‘the devil is in the details’ but I believe God is in the details. It’s not always the big things; God may not cure cancer despite our fervent prayers, countries still go to war and people continue to hurt themselves and others. More often than we realize, however, God will touch our lives in small yet very significant ways.

Perhaps it is a shopping cart blown into our path leading us to a store employee  angel who directs us to where we can find a lost object so a child can point us to the truth – Angels look after us in all things. A sequence of events that helps us realize God does work in our lives. We just need to listen.

And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake:

And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
I Kings 19:11-12

Click here to view the embedded video.

Noah’s Ark lands on Mount Ararat, according to calculations by James Ussher, Archbishop of the Church of Ireland. I’m not sure how accurate that is or what it means to us today but I thought it was interesting.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Cold fall leaves, so carelessly tossed,
lay brown and withered by morning’s frost.
Discarded scraps of natures poetry
so carelessly tossed. Cold fall leaves
in winters wind, ending natures grace.
The wagon waits for hibernal face
to lay siege upon this land again,
ending natures grace in winters wind.
And every truth I’ve known, all that I believe
is in the red wagon, covered now with leaves.
Where once behind tiny legs there used to roam
all that I believe and every truth I’ve known.
For I am but a man, so little do I know
of wagons and winter and children when they’re grown.
To my sorrow I may never understand.
So little do I know, for I am but a man.