When God Has Other Plans
“Then the Lord said to Moses, “Tell the people of Israel to turn back and encamp in front of Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-zephon; you shall encamp facing it,...
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Christian Living & Obedience
103 articles gathered under this theme.
What is Our Tower of Babel Today?
When many were saying, “Next thing you know, they’ll be listening to us in our houses,” my dad was carefully picking up the receiver on our wall party line to listen to our neighbors. Eve...
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Who Gets the Credit?
You’ve worked hard, poured yourself into the project, sacrificed and finally it’s done. And it turned out good. No, even better than expected. In fact, you feel down right euphoric about...
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When Christian Living Fights a Battle With Compromise
“Owwwwwch!” I moaned to no one but anyone who might be so inclined as to listen. Making the bed has its risks. Working from left to right I consistently stub my toes on the hard edge of t...
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Do You Love Love?
The ring’s been on my finger over 50 years. When he gave it to me, I was afraid it would slide off and I’d lose it because my finger was so slim, so small. It’s kind of grown onto me now....
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Winter’s Damage Reveals the Soul
Whiter than snow, Lord, whiter than snow. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Wherever you live in the USA, you’ve been aware of the great snow storm. You have likely been part of pr...
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Can We Step Off the Pedestal, Please?
“He hit me first,” little arms cross in defiance, and little legs plant firmly. No retreat without a struggle. These are days grown ups brawl and pick sides, while firmly clinging to thei...
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Clean Slates And New Beginnings
A white board hangs on one of the walls of our basement. On it scribblings mark the agenda of the day, that is, those perceived as most important through the eyes of the last grandchild t...
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A Christmas Search for Jesus
Every year for the last five years my three youngest grandchildren have come to our house in December for Starry Night. The idea birthed in 2020 when the “Christmas Star” appeared. It was...
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What Message Are You Giving?
What is it about autumn that calls all gnats into my kitchen like the plagues of Egypt? And woe to the one who leaves out the banana peelings. Jesus’ message in Matthew, chapter 23, seem...
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Autumn’s Dappled Light
It’s been a long yawn to full Autumn in Virginia. Trees have hesitated to blush but few have succumbed to their eventual fiery reds and yellows. This season seems hesitant to drop its lea...
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Can God Change Your Character?
“The temperature will be 94 degrees Fahrenheit, but it will feel like 104,” says the weather man. And I smile. That is my world. He is describing me. It’s kind of a faulty default. My act...
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What Is Your Calling?
A friend recently phoned me and began our conversation with, “Are you bored now that you are retired?” My four children are in various throes of raising our grandchildren. I watch them an...
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The Greatest of All Miracles
You know the type, right? The one who must correct every statement another makes. Someone who can wax eloquent on just about everything, and does. That person. The one who knows it all. T...
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Is This Too Trivial For God?
Sunshine bright with glory bathed our tiny backyard. Blue sky beckoned. Winter months had been long for our four-year-old son, and he was ready for play. “If you need me, I’ll call you,”...
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How Do I See Others?
I tilted my head a bit to look for myself in his stick figure drawing. I wondered is this truly how he saw me? “Is that me?” I asked. He nodded. He held a felt tip marker in a small hand...
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Are you sure you have the right address?
We started married life in an upstairs apartment of a small house in a small town. Below us lived our landlady and her son. I always heard her puttering about in the kitchen. She puttered...
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God’s Holy Ways Shares Sorrow
There were days, dark and bare. Black and silent. And though those days are mostly past, sometimes even today, when I least expect it, the veil, which holds suffering inside, seems to eva...
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Are You Eating Solid Food or Milk?
“Eat your peas and carrots,” turned out to be a big order for one of our daughters. Solid food, that big step of introducing all manner of foreign texture and flavor into a baby’s mouth w...
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Patterns of Life
I am sitting in a waiting room again. Waiting…’cause, that’s what people do in a waiting room. Wondering…which goes with the territory. Worried…it’s part of the package too. It will be a...
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Beyond What I See
I’m sitting inside and watching the perfect snowfall out our Virginia window. It came at a most inappropriate time, when our plans had to cancel, and schedules had to be re-scheduled. But...
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February And Life Snowballs
It’s a snowball of sorts. Little things turn into bigger things, the list of to-do’s explode until there is simply no way to accomplish all of it, and a minor set back becomes a nearly im...
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What Do You Do?
Somewhere in the middle of dodge ball tag and baking cookies with three grandsons, my youngest grandson cocked his head to the side and asked, “So Grandma, what do you two do here all day...
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A New Year, A New Self
We make promises. We plan, envision, re-calibrate, and define goals. We look ahead and behind. We hope, determine, and anticipate. We look forward to a white page, a whole year ahead, wit...
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God’s Beauty On The Journey
It’s a crisp November day outside. Up until now the warmth of late summer has hung its hat on Virginia’s autumn. But, fall chill descended last night and the breezy gusts feel polar in co...
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Be Imitators of Me
Three of my grandsons love baseball. And that is an understatement. Growing up they lived it. They chewed wads of gum, memorized plays, and spit. Yes, those little guys could spit with th...
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The Reward of Achievement
If you were to walk the streets of Bologna, Italy during a spattering of months out of the year, you might see a confusing sight. Now and again whether in a crowd or walking alone, amid A...
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How Edgy Are You?
My dad used to have some succinct sayings to get his points across, as in, “ain’t got the brains God gave a goose.” This pronouncement, often hurled at politicians, portrayed a questionab...
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And School Begins Again
His big round eyes followed me. His little face filled with confusion, fear, and betrayal. I read his silent plea as if the words had been spoken, “Don’t leave me.” As I turned from the c...
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Grandsons, Scooters, and Laying Down the Law
“Put me in jail, put me in jail,” our six year-old grandson shouted. “Put me in jail, Gramma,” The boy’s scooters whizzed by, daring me to move out of the way, challenging me to capture l...
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When God Seems Remote
I was my big brothers’ TV remote. I can still hear their call. Through the bleaching heat waves of Kansas, over the baked and cracked ground, their summons reached me. Underfoot brown far...
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Are You Barely Hanging On?
“Just hang on,” he told me. I was at the wrong end of a washing machine stuck cattywampus in the stairwell half-way down to the basement. The heavy metal box towered above as I tried to h...
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Demolition Day is Like Party Time
If you are a fan of home improvement networks like I am, you are well acquainted with the satisfaction some people get from Demolition Day. It’s like party time. However, although I enjoy...
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God Moves Behind the Scenes
We all have them, markers of good and bad in our lives. April marks our spot. It’s another anniversary of when life altered through our daughter’s illness. I often wish I could box up our...
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The Victorious Crown of Thorns
We call them “thorny situations.” They describe something we’d usually rather avoid. Because thorns hurt. Because a situation wrought with barbs and little wiggle room is bound to bring p...
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Numbers, Math, and Green Beans
“Eat the green beans first,” I told my homeschooled grandson. He grinned. He understood immediately what I meant. It really had nothing to do with vegetables, but everything to do with th...
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Who is My Wonderful Counselor?
“For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Princ...
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Light and Peace in a Dark World
How dark it must seem to walk in the thick dust of bombed buildings and destroyed lives. How thick would be the despair of cruelty, death and loss. And how desolate feels a future built f...
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How Old Are You?
“How old are you?” my grandson asks again. It’s a regular question which I try to regularly dodge. “How old do you think I am?” I ask back. His little forehead wrinkles as his eyebrows dr...
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Who Are Your Wise Guys?
Calling all wise guys. Only what if they aren’t? Remember that old advertisement, “let your fingers do the walking?” It promoted a thing once upon a time called the yellow pages, which wa...
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Handling Behemoths, Leviathans, and Those Other Monsters of Life
In the shadows of the farmhouse where I grew up, monsters dwelt. They hid in the barn after dark, in the upstairs midnight hallways, and most certainly underneath my bed. Big, hairy, but...
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Kings, Prophets, and You
If I say, “Micaiah,” what comes to your mind? Nothing you say? Well good. But, I hope you never say that again after you read this post. Let’s just start with: Incredible Bravery. Immovab...
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Is Your Life On Mission?
Tiny baby puffs of air caress my cheek. Her dark hair, fuzzy and soft, tickles against my neck. What can be sweeter than those barely heard snores and the soft breathing of an infant warm...
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Lazy Little Cheats
I confess to cheating. I eat a few stolen calories I don’t add to my count. I spend money on an outfit and hope it goes unnoticed. Oh and another really bad one…I cut my walk by skimping...
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The Tipping Point
Life holds a succession of pivotal moments. They distinguish themselves with phrases like, “from now on,” “if I had it to do all over again, “never again,” or “I’ve made my decision.” But...
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Finding Balance When the Lava Flows
“Don’t step on the lava!” It’s a chorus of young and old watching little bare feet hop, skip, and jump from pillow to pillow, over and under chairs. My youngest grandson just turned four....
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Red Hearts, Chocolates, and Five Bible Verses About God’s Love
Growing up my bedroom faced a dirt road. A small gravel circular drive half-mooned just feet in front of my window. I watched the mail man drive up in a cloud of dust. He was as punctual...
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Is It Too Difficult For God?
“I am so ready for an angel to come,” Phil said that morning. I’d been thinking the same. I got up from my cot next to our daughter’s bed and joined my husband where he stood at her side....
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Four Questions from the Christmas Story that Could Transform Your Christmas
Four different Biblical characters in the Christmas Story point to answers which might change the way you see Christmas. 1. “How can I be sure of this?” (Luke 1:18 ESV) Zechariah the prie...
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Whatever State You are In Today
Whatever State You are In Today “Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content.” Philippians 4:11 NKJV So what state did you wake up in? Red...
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What Are You Wearing Today?
My husband wakes up every morning and makes a decision. “What class clothing is this day?” What he does during the day determines what he wears. When he used to go into an office, the dec...
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Finding Courage and Resolve When a Line In the Sand Demands It
If Humpty Dumpty and I sat down for a heart to heart, I think we’d find we have a lot in common. The first and most obvious is the state of our brokenness. The thing about the king’s hors...
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Would You Rather Be a Bullfrog And Other Important Questions
“Would you rather be a bullfrog?” I ask my grandsons. My finger dramatically lands on the big green bullfrog leaping across the left side of the page. The book with the same title, by The...
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How Harvest Time Points to God’s Impeccable Timing
The blue-overall-clad farmer plucked a bearded head from its white stalk. His form blotted a black silhouette against the bright sky. I squinted in the sunshine. A shadow lay across me, i...
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God Sees The Whole Picture
As a child I loved working with dot to dot pictures. I pondered them before I put pencil to paper, trying to form in my mind the whole picture, wanting to unravel the yet unknown. With a...
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Enviable Comparable Endings
Asaph, King David’s talented musician had issues. He agonized over life’s inequality and unfairness and fell prey to a common problem. “For I was envious of the boastful, when I saw the p...
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Going Home
The scenery changes outside my window. From tree covered mountains to patchwork plains. I’m going home, although I’m not even sure where that is anymore. I’ve called so many places home....
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Seven Verses To Remind You God Goes Behind, Before and All Around
I saw them in a lush green park, a family three-some. Sandwiched between mom and dad, a little girl with pudgy legs, light-up shoes and brown pig-tails lifted her legs high. I stopped to...
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Is the Devil Really in the Details?
“The devil is in the details.” I’ve often seen the validity of that phrase in politics. It makes perfect sense when reading the small print at the bottom of a contract, or if one is faced...
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Does Putting Ourselves First Come Naturally?
“Putting ourselves first doesn’t come naturally,” a glossy magazine lay open on my lap. I said aloud to absolutely no one, “Well that’s a bunch of bologna.” The article continued in the s...
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Little Boys, Escape Artists and Cunning Hearts
We have an escape artist in our family. The kind that scales double safety gates across the stairway, the type who climbs out a crib in a sleep sack, through open windows and sneaks out l...
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Don't Touch
“Uh, uh, uh,” I hear the warning in three short grunts. I turn quickly to find out what my not-quite-two-year-old grandson is doing. My quickness is due first to fear for his safety and s...
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A Time For Renewal
Another year has passed. No wait a minute, I hear you say, not just any year. 2020 is behind us. But like a nightmare that drags its headache into the day, we feel its shadow as 2021 begi...
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My Break For The Day
Somewhere between the I-can’t-do-everything-around-here and the it’s-easier-to-do-it-myself syndrome I hear the whisper, “Don’t forget Me.” But the day is full and fragmented. A tiny face...
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Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?
“Can’t we all just get along?” she asked. Watery pools gathered at the bottom of her eyes ready to splash over, waterfalls of reflected blue. Life as a thirteen-year-old had become invade...
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How to Have 2020 Vision in This Strange Time
Every morning I take a walk in the city and pass a spot where I can see a massive field of grain. As I top a hill it’s there. My entire vision fills with gold. Day by day whiter, riper, f...
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Walk With The Wise
“She’s my friend,” my daughter said with a nod. “She doesn’t cheat.” My head shot up. “And some of your friends do?” I asked, thinking at least my six-year-old was on the right side of th...
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When It's Just Easier To Do It Myself!
“It’s easier to just do it myself,” I mutter. A dishtowel hangs from my hand like a tail swaying against my hip. Chores, those supposedly helpful contributions are about to be my undoing....
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Follow the Rules for Goodness Sake
“No, no, no,” he said. He held his little hand like a stop sign. His voice raised a breathy octave. “Let’s not play it like that, let’s say if you want to move ahead on red, you can.” He...
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What a Thorn Patch Teaches About Marriage
Anybody who grew up barefoot on a Kansas farm knows about stickers. A flat lying torture-in-waiting plant with seeds like tiny wooden barbs. They spread viciously, looking for tender skin...
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Even Bathroom Stops are Wonderful in the Eyes of a Child
I heard the truck-stop bathroom door squeak open from my perch inside the painted wooden stall. “Oh Momma!” A little voice said full of wonder. “It’s pink.” Pink was an understatement. It...
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Hidden Things
A rubber duck accompanied my walk around the room. I laid it in plain sight on a shelf of the bookcase. Its classic yellow face and orange bill pointed to the door where my daughter would...
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Is your practice helpful or harmful?
My dad, talented in all things musical, had a sharp ear and an equally sharp tongue. His pitch was perfect. He judged without apology. “Should have been a B-flat not a B-natural,” he burs...
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An Audacious Crown of Thorns
“Are you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate. “You have said so,” Jesus replied. (Mark 15:2; NIV) Easter mornings looked like new clothes and smelled like ham baking. It culminated with E...
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The Art of Talking Back
One of my daughters, might have had the advantage of most lawyers at age two. By the time she turned ten, she could befuddle my brain to the place where not only did I forget the point of...
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What the Fig Leaf Won’t Cover
Well, the first lesson should be, never, absolutely never engage in conversation with a serpent. That is where everything started to go downhill. Because where else would Satan strike but...
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How Wet are Your Feet?
They come, like the Israelites in Joshua 3-4, instructed to stick a foot into the water, and trust God for the next step. Testing, poking and prodding Jesus’ calling on their lives, they...
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Superpowers, Heroes and Wrinkles
My grandson screeches around the room, his dark blue cape flies like a flag behind him. “Quick,” he says in a flutter of little feet and hands, “on the couch.” Because of course everyone...
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If You Need Me, I'll Call You
Sunshine bright with glory bathed our tiny backyard. Blue sky beckoned. Winter months had been long for our four-year-old son, and he was ready for play. “If you need me, I’ll call you,”...
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That One Perfect Moment Will Rescue Us Today
The sun streams through trees, dappling its light across the deck. Its brightness bathes my upturned face in warmth. I sigh, and the sound is a whisper of praise. It is a perfect moment,...
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Is God Still Good When...?
I trace my finger over the outline of her baby portrait. Dated and a bit color-bleached, I gaze at my daughter’s sweetness staring at me from behind the glassed frame. I mark her wide eye...
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2 Days to Christmas: YAHWEH
“Who is this King of glory?” David asks in Palm 24:10. “The LORD…” YAHWEH. The Existing One. Yahweh is the proper name of the one true God in the Old Testament. Without vowels in its orig...
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11 Days to Christmas: NAME
I peeked at the little form of my granddaughter. Black eyelashes quivered against pale cheeks as she kneeled at the bedside of her mommy. “Jesus, peeease help her move again,” she prayed....
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17 Days to Christmas: HOLY
Mary the maidservant of the Lord found herself in an unimaginable situation. A child grew within her, Son of the Highest, without human father and apart from the curse of sin. Fully human...
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21 Days to Christmas: Deliverer
Christmas commercials, jingles, and reindeer are pleasant interruptions to sour evening news. Current events shine stadium lights on our culture's rampant sin. World rulers add a sense of...
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23 Days to Christmas: Bread of Life
Flour whitens the front of my shirt like snow. I brush at it fruitlessly with a hand sticky with wrinkled bits of dough like hanging chads. My counter space, with its strict no fly-zone i...
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The Truth About Grief
“Teach me,” my words stumbled out. “Teach me how to lose my daughter.” Surely this godly woman who’d lived through the horrific murder of her son could tell me how to keep from drowning i...
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When the Dots Don’t Line Up
Sometimes the dots line up, and we connect one to the other and the picture is clear. We see what God was trying to do and we say, “Oh, I get it. That’s why that had to happen that way.”...
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Redefine Your Roses
We are celebrating forty-three years of marriage. All you math people stop it. Just stop. It is a long time, that’s the point. I have spent forty-three years trying to figure out that “ma...
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What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
The seconds tick at the cash register. We shake out our Italian, like a moth-eaten shirt, and blink away the fog of jet-lag. Everything is a de-j-vu of having been and done long ago. Phil...
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Unmoored
Japanese rubbish took over five years to hit our shores after an earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan’s shores in 2011. Everything from house parts to car parts, about 20 million tons...
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Recalibrating Life
Generations, like peanut butter and jelly, are layered lavishly one upon another at the tables. Like a train of blessing, bowls with steam rising and platters overflowing, pass from big h...
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When my seas are stormy
“You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them.” (Psalm 89:9, ESV) There are storms and then there are STORMS. On the scale of 1-10, ten being hurricane level, I rem...
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Baal with a Pinch of God on the Side
“So Ahab sent for all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together on Mount Carmel.” (I Kings 18:20; NKJV). Let me paint the scene. A range of mountains, called the Carmel r...
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Take a Right at the Llama
I pull a faded black suitcase, it’s wheels rumble over the sidewalk, a grey path between verdant green. The rhythm of smooth concrete broken by lines reminds me of the clickety-clack of a...
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The Good Life, Arrogance and Audacity
“For I was envious of the boastful, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.” Ps. 73:3 (NKJV). Asaph, King David’s talented musician had issues. He agonized over life’s inequality and unf...
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Check Your Words At The Door
Check Your Words at the Door, Please “…From the same mouth come blessing and cursing, My brothers, these things ought not to be so.” James 3:10 (ESV) I remember the gagging rancidity of s...
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Good Hate
“What did Dad give you that for?” my son asked when I pulled out a bright yellow circular sander from a beautifully wrapped box. “I asked for it!” Bewilderment drew his brows together int...
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Can thankfulness really be commanded?
Can thankfulness really be commanded? “In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thess. 5:18 (NASB) Well, yes, apparently it can. It is the season of g...
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God beggar
“I am a God beggar,” I think, looking down into the hopeful eyes of my two-year-old grandson. I reach down and pull the tiny dimpled arms from around my leg, hold his chubby hands in mine...
Read ArticleRoot canal
It is root canal morning. I hate root canals. I’ve got teeth that crumble like coffee cake, fortunately, my dentist is pretty good. I climb into the dental chair and the hygienist recline...
Read ArticleThe Blog Thing
To be honest, I’m going into the whole blog thing with a bit of kicking and screaming. Blogs come and go like the national debt ticker. I have technological deficits within my brain that...
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He Knows
Recently I talked to a friend armed with a list of bitter accusations. She began what soon became a blame saga with the words, “You’ll never know…” Since that conversation those words hav...
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