My Great Expectations
By the time I post this, our big family-grandson-wedding-get-together should be a thing of the past. Hopefully it will be laced with precious memories. At this stage with kids, grandkids,...
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Hope & Encouragement
92 articles gathered under this theme.
Listening to the Voice of Direction
“You are over the speed limit,” the friendly but slightly mechanical voice says. I smile. She’s my friend, a companion who takes care of a little piece of driving worry. And, I like that...
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That Last Glimpse Prepares Us For A First
It might have been at our little town’s parade, or maybe at the State fair, but I have a faded memory from childhood of a cart with balloons floating above it. They were bunched together...
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In Awe and Wonder of How Great Thou Art
Slowly the crowd came to its feet. Some laboriously used the row ahead for leverage. Over the attendees, silver glinted, like imperfect halos, caught by the lighting above. Although the g...
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Learning to Laugh Again
A notice comes on my phone. A picture of my great-grandson pops up. I open the app and find a video of his mommy talking to him, leaning over his little tummy and digging her head into hi...
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Has Truth Stumbled in the Public Squares?
A steaming cup of coffee warmed my hands. My husband lifted his tiny Italian espresso cup in salute. Outside the patio doors, cement like layers of snow-ice, shone so bright, we squinted...
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Will There Be Peace in the New Year?
When we lived in Italy, going to the American Embassy was always kind of a big deal. We needed to have papers and identification in order. We prepared. Despite our home country’s flag and...
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Is Your Accent On the Right Thing?
When we moved into a tiny Italian village, we gained immediate notoriety as, The American Family. In fact, we were the only Americans in the area. We were an anomaly. I could feel the ten...
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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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The Upkeep No One Sees
There is a whole lot of unseen upkeep in life. Changing sheets, mowing lawn, washing laundry, servicing the car, making meals, planning groceries, unplugging drains, buying supplies, fixi...
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My Blessing of Struggles
I’m so excited to share with you something from my daughter Charity. As a result of a mass on her brain stem when she was twenty-six, Charity lives with incomplete-quadriplegia. She wrote...
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What Is God Teaching You?
“What’s God been teaching you through His Word?” I ask as we settle in, past the mundane of life. We’ve left behind kids, jobs, routines, and the cycle of activities that spin our lives....
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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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What Are you Steeping In?
My British friend with her lovely accent once said to me, “Americans have been putting tea into the water since the Boston Tea party, and from then on they’ve kept right on doing it the w...
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Are You a Quitter?
When my daughter woke up on the day which changed all of our lives, it started pretty much like every other day. She felt a bit dizzy. She checked her temperature, but she didn’t have a f...
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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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Of His Kingdom There Will Be No End
How many times have you said, “there’s just no end to this?” Paperwork, bills, middle of the night feedings, late at night work shifts, or maybe it’s simply the dirty pile of dishes in th...
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What Pillars Do We Stand On Today?
It’s Wednesday morning. I am writing this blog five days before November 5. Election Day, 2024. Likely, a winner will have been decided when it pops up in your email or feed. Your world w...
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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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We Laugh and We Cry
The words stop me when I come across them, … “the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people…” They make me pause and close my eyes...
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Ode to the Nine Foot Tomato Plant
Oh tomato plant that towers many feet above my head. Where is your fruit? I grew up on a farm in Kansas, and at the risk of embarrassing all my Kansas friends and relatives who put into c...
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Safely Shadowed Under His Wings
A shadow, long and wide, interrupted the sunshine for just a moment and then glided over the bright green foliage. My grandson and I squinted into the blue above us. We saw the outstretch...
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Who Holds Your Heart?
One of our teenaged granddaughters spent a few days with us recently. She came loaded with gift cards she’d received from Christmas. We spent a day shopping and she had a day of bliss. Bu...
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2024 is Ready, Are You?
A much younger me studied the face that stared back from the mirror. Outside of the bathroom, where I’d taken refuge, a squalling hurricane had erupted. My toddler daughter banged her fis...
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Is Jesus the Prince of Peace?
“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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Look Beyond Your Own Table
Long before America created an overflowing and beautifully sophisticated Thanksgiving table, thanksgiving was a thing. Before pilgrims gathered around a rough wood hewn table, or a sweet...
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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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Now What?
Have you ever hit a fork in life when you have asked, “Now what?” You might be thinking of the last time you put together a 1,2,3 step project out of the box. Only it didn’t turn out so s...
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Where Do Your Tracks Lead?
One of my missionary colleagues gave me an illustration of life in the jungle. It held a punch that I hope I never forget. South American roads at times are little more than frequently tr...
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Did God Show Up?
“…for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’” Hebrews 13:5 ESV Recently I was asked how I feel now about God’s response to our daughter’s illness in the past. We prayed fo...
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It's Not Fair
So, my grandson who is four years old beat me at a game of memory. There are a lot of reasons this happened. The cards, for example had some sort of out of this world superpower heroes. I...
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Jesus’ Ascension: What Makes This Good-bye Different?
“See that Momma?” a little voice by my side questioned. His face tilted up toward the sky. His eyes squinted against the brightness. I followed the line from where his finger pointed to s...
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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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Are You Walking In the Mire?
Mud, thick red goop clumped his little shoes like melted cheese oozing out of a sandwich. Hunks of it fell in globs I tried to avoid as I scooped him up. Briefly his legs swung from side...
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Do You Carry More Than You Should?
Oh my goodness, how I loved my three older brothers. With a number of years between us, I looked up to them like heroes, as if the sun rose and set in their background. And in spite of be...
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What Do You HAVE TO Worry About?
There is a lovely little addition behind our house so covered in Virginia woods I didn’t even know it existed until the leaves dropped. The first autumn we lived here, I saw a light from...
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Measure Your Heart of Thanksgiving
“We will be measuring your daughter for a wheel chair at 3:00 this afternoon,” the nurse told me with a cheerful smile on her face. Befuddled images traced vellum pages on my mind. A brid...
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Are Your Eyes on the Right Goal?
Lined up side by side, ready to take off, my grandson’s restraining arm shoots out across his little brother’s stomach. “Go!” Big brother shouts. They take off across our grass. It’s a du...
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How to Activate Triple A When You Need Help from God
Today I’m delighted to introduce you to Jeannie Waters. Besides being an accomplished writer, she is always ready to help and encourage me in my own writing journey. Jeannie is an award-w...
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What’s in Your Suitcase? - Three Treasures to Pack and Three Attitudes to Leave Behind
Do you go on vacation with more than just what’s in your suitcase? This week you’ll find me at https://www.jeanniewaters.com/blog/. Today it’s my privilege to be Jeannie’s guest blogger....
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What Will You Find In the Darkest Tightest Folds of Your Soul?
When my husband and I travelled to visit-and hopefully encourage-global workers around the world, I confess, some countries got more prayer than others. The prayers usually had to do more...
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Defining Peace When We Have None
If you have been disturbed by current events, you aren’t alone. We’ve had weeks of images difficult to forget. Wouldn’t it be so nice to turn on the TV and find the world at peace, evil c...
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The Biggest Reunion
“…looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne o...
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What Are Your gods of 2022?
“And when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place.”...
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How To Bring Glory Into Your Christmas Celebration
I’ve had Christmases without snow, gifts scarce, and family missing, but I’ve never had one without Handel’s Messiah filling my airwaves. When I think of Christmas glory, it is always wit...
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What Kind of World Did Jesus Enter?
“And it came to pass in those days” Luke 2:1, “that there went out a decree from Caesar Augstus that all the world should be taxed.” (KJV) What were “those days?” If your feet walked the...
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The Purpose of Suffering
Almost three years had passed, since our daughter’s illness, but the pain hadn’t lifted. It wrapped around me like a lead blanket. Peter, Jesus’ disciple and I were buds. “While walking b...
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How Was Your Day?
One of our grandson’s started first grade this year. He is the first of our son and daughter-in-law’s children to begin first grade. It is a shell shocking experience for all parents. And...
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Hope for the Worrier
Recently I wrote a requested article on the subject of worry. It caused me no end of worry. Worry is my middle name. I’ve been put to the test in a crazy worrisome situation in the last f...
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What My MisMatched Shoes Taught Me About God
I wore mismatched shoes to the Doctor today. It’s taken us a year with the COVID backup and restrictions to establish a base doctor in our new town. I finally had my first visit after mon...
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When Heads Come Together
Two heads are better than one the saying goes, but besides the obvious intellectual melding of minds, a much sweeter truth is communicated when two heads come together. A mommy rests her...
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Recognizing You on Father’s Day Even Though Your Hair Is Gray
“I didn’t recognize that gray haired man,” my husband and I squinted together at the photo on his camera’s screen. I saw him immediately in the group picture. He wasn’t so ready to claim...
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Going Beyond Clouds That Hide the View
I’m a cloudy kind of person. Something in my soul shuts out the light inside me like clouds that hide the view. But when the shadow passes suddenly it’s as if the glory of the sun explode...
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Resurrection Hope Moves the Stone Away
Things had begun to get dicey. Fame’s two sided coin’s darker side threatened. Not everyone was a fan of Jesus nor of those who claimed to be His followers. Jesus laid out coming events,...
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Do You Want to Change Course?
“…my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.” Ps. 73:2 (ESV) I feel like a lot of us are walking into a log across our path, or maybe on quick sand. The Psalmist Asaph writ...
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How To Not Drag Old Anxiety Into The New Year
It happens every year. It’s like trying to finish off the Christmas cookies, fudge and eggnog so I can start dieting in January. It’s such a burden. But perhaps none quite so marked as th...
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I Never Thought of It Like That
It was the usual mayhem of opened plastic totes, lids tossed aside and Christmas decor spilling onto the floor. A just decorated tree and mantel already changed the entire look of the roo...
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My Life Has Not Turned Out the Way I Expected
A year ago, before the shadow of Covid darkened our skies, my daughter wrote a guest post. As we look for the light at the end of the 2020 tunnel, it relates to our lives now even more. T...
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Have We Lost Thanksgiving?
Proclamation 118—Thanksgiving Day, 1864 October 20, 1864 Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November...
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How to Find Peace When You are Unsettled
“So,” she asked, “are you beginning to feel settled yet?” How do I answer that, I wonder? Should I mention we haven’t even carried our furniture up from the basement because first we have...
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Sorting away the Bad, the Good and the Ugly
“Pick me up,” my grandson says. He reaches little arms high, and his mommy leans down, puts her hands against his solid tiny body. Her brown hair swings forward and covers the smile I kno...
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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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Is There a Smile Hiding Under Your Mask?
Like puzzle pieces of an entire, we can only guess what’s behind the mask as we pass in a parking lot, at work, or in a store. But if eyes are indeed the window of the soul, we should be...
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How Do You Want COVID-19 to End?
The long marble hallway stretched like a tunnel ahead. I remember the wavy lines narrowed to another corridor where doctors and nurses passed like a hospital thoroughfare of workers inten...
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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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Life Will Never Be The Same
The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. Proverbs 16:1 (ESV) “Life will never be the same,” I told my friend. “No matter how this turns out, li...
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When Clouds Hide the View
I’m a cloudy kind of person. Sometimes something in my soul shuts out the light and then the cloud passes and suddenly it’s as if the glory of the sun explodes inside of me and everything...
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Delight and Desire
Fire darted from blue eyes. “I don’t want to go.” White ruffles flounced around her squirming legs as we clicked the strap into her car seat. She crossed her arms, defiant. A frown like a...
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There is Always Hope
The hospital room where my twenty-six-year-old daughter lay against snowy sheets grew quiet as a tomb. Her husband sat next to her. He leaned his back against the wall, holding her hand,...
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Strengthen the Souls
She sat in front of me a crumpled mess. Not a particularly deep conversation quickly turned into infinity pools of tears. Words halted and poured like the start and go of a sputtering fou...
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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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Whatever Makes My Child Happy is Not the Right Answer
“The things I do for my kids,” I thought with a half eaten Big Mac in one gloved hand, and piece of wilted lettuce in the other. “But this tops them all.” I stood on a stool leaning into...
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9 Days to Christmas: PRINCE OF PEACE
“…and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6; KJV. When Isaiah penned those words, Israel was being decima...
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19 Days to Christmas: FATHER
Baby Luca cries that heart wrenching pierce of a little soul in despair. It stabs my own as I jiggle him up and down against me, that continual parental dance. My grandson’s body melts in...
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Losing Thanksgiving
Proclamation 118—Thanksgiving Day, 1864 October 20, 1864 Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November...
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When Faithfulness is Truly Great
The crowd raises to its feet around the auditorium, a representation of a myriad of countries. Former missionaries who served in Brazil, Mali and Russia stand to sing. An elderly man, his...
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Can you find joy in what you don’t enjoy?
Tired and worn after a difficult meeting, I’m eager to be home. The sight that greets me when I open the door is a dirty pan and a dish with lunch scraps. “At least he could have.... Read...
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Comforting arms of hope rescue from a snarled life
I watch my grandson knee high as he bumps from one trousered pair of legs to another across the crowded room. His vision fills with legs knee high. Unless he looks up, they are like a for...
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Get Me Out Of Here
Back in the day when “missionary” brought to mind pith helmets for the men and polyester ruffles for the women, my husband and I took three little girls away from their grandparents and e...
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Mother Bear-ness
The sun was shining. Blue sky filled the kitchen window. My eight-year-old daughter played in front of our house with friends. I could hear voices, a mixture of laughter and children’s bo...
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Generations: God's Legacy
The car doors slam, and we slide into opposite sides. We look at one another, then sit silently and think over the last hour. The question comes again: “Will we be like that?” As our car...
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Bye-Gones
“…if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV). Backgrounds. Everyone has them. They are the backdrop of our...
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Fake News, True God
Herod the Great ruled Jerusalem and its surrounding villages with cruelty and deceit. His ruthless murders made him almost as famous as the magnificent building projects he instituted. Du...
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That Time
It may be that Christmases have sped up, maybe they really do come more often, or possibly it’s time warp of aging, but it is that time of the year again. I have a billion things to do, a...
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Five Things to Repeat on November 9
I am writing this one week before the American election. I figure I will need to read it to myself after the election. Several times. Repeat after me. And the prize goes to… Romans 13:1-2...
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Sfoons, forks and miracles
“Thank you for the sghetti,” my daughter prayed. Her little fingers entwined into a ball were folded against the edge of the kitchen table. Her forehead puckered and her eyes squinted. Th...
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Do you have Holes in your net?
My net has holes. “While walking by the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.” Matt...
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Great Expectations
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”Hebrews13:8(NASB) Phil and I watched the series, Great Expectations over the holidays. I read the Charles Dicken’s classic in hi...
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Growing Golden Gracefully
Have you ever wondered if someday you would be like the elderly person in front of you at the cash register? I wrote an article that appeared in an issue of Just Between Us about living a...
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Expectations
I’m hacking into the New Year. Struck down on Christmas Day with a cold and fever, and pushing through the fog ever since. From my sick bed, I watch the New Year roll into New York City....
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Shepherd to shepherd
On November 26 our twelfth grandchild entered the world. It occurred, appropriately, just hours before Thanksgiving. Our son sent a picture of our brand new grandson cradled in his arms m...
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Late Bloomer
Call me a late bloomer, but pushing senior citizen status is really late for deep-seated rebellion to raise its obnoxious head. I’m not having some sort of delayed reaction to restrictive...
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