How Can We See Clearly In A Blurred World?
My husband and I hurried through the airport , to make our connection while dodging and squeezing between other fliers and their bags. It was the last leg of our flight back home and we m...
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Scripture & Truth
96 articles gathered under this theme.
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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The Measure of My Days
I hold one end of the measuring tape while my husband walks backward. The metal unwinds until he reaches the spot he wants marked. His thumb stops at the line and he bends the tape toward...
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Do You Recognize Jesus?
I stretch my arm in waking fogginess. My fingers begin a walking search for my glasses. I am not a morning person. “Not” in an extreme sense. I get up at neither an insanely early hour no...
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The Relevance of Truth
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, it turns out that its value may be much less. Fake photos on social media showed captured U.S. Soldiers and Tel Aviv in shambles. They...
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What’s Good About That Put Down?
I had a little unintended smackdown. Probably well deserved, but still…it kinda stung. And the entire time, I chided myself on one thing. I knew perfectly well that it shouldn’t have both...
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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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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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What Does Practice Make Perfect?
My dad, talented in all things musical, had a sharp ear and perfect pitch. “Should have been a B-flat not a B-natural.” He could be working the back forty, but when I struck a wrong note...
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Have You Been Living A Scammed Life?
A message on my phone encouraged me to contact a certain Margaret. It seems she wants to recruit me for a job. I have great potential to earn an amazing amount of money. In fact, my name...
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Keeping Your Balance In An Imbalanced World
She toddles toward me, hands outstretched. My eyes are wide, excited and inviting, “Come on,” I urge with a half whisper. A foot lifts, and then another. A wobbly sort of drunken-sailor-t...
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Does Jesus Always Answer What We Ask For?
“If Jesus wanted to,” my little seven-year-old fellow classmate declared, “He could flatten my thumb and make it big enough to go around the whole world.” He held his thumb inches from my...
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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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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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Who Wants the China?
We sat in the old farmhouse dining room, around the table where my mom had hosted generations of family. And we divvied up the old pictures, bits and pieces of written history, and trinke...
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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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What Is Your Heart Carrying Into the Holiday Season?
I love the Holidays. Always have. Hopefully always will. Yet, as seasons pass, new challenges arise and I find at times a sense of melancholy seeps into this time of year. I recognize how...
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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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Are You Thick Skinned but Thin Hearted?
“Gotta be thick-skinned to survive ministry,” advised a pastor to my young husband. “I’d never have continued if I’d let every criticism get under my skin.” As a pastor’s wife and mother,...
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Do you Worry about What Might Happen?
So, my husband moved the big trash container outside, you know the move-once-a-week hunker on wheels? It’s a job he accomplishes without thinking much about what might or could happen. We...
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Nothing Can Eclipse God’s Glory
In August of 2017 an eclipse marked our path in Kansas City, Missouri, where we lived. I wrote about it on a blog then. Today, we live in Virginia, not smack in the center, but still near...
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How Balanced Are You?
Balance. It’s a thing. She toddles toward me, hands outstretched. My eyes are wide, excited and inviting, “Come on,” I urge with a half whisper. A foot lifts, and then another. A wobbly s...
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How Mature Are You?
“Who do you want to be when you grow up?” I used to ask our kids. I liked to hear all the ideas. Their aspirations swung wildly. Everything had its season, from astronaut on Mars, to arch...
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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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Who Really Owns My Time?
“I don’t have time” is one of those ridiculous things we say pretty much all the time. As if time can be owned. As if we could take charge of it, I mean really, “who’s got the time?” Righ...
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What Appetite Are You Feeding?
My grandsons are going through the picky eating stage. I’ve watched all fourteen grandchildren hit it along the way, and it never fails to bring back memories of my own children’s fussy e...
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Are You Spiritually Limping or Confidently Walking?
When one of our daughters was in second grade, her school teacher mentioned an issue that she’d observed. Our daughter had begun to limp. She complained about her leg hurting, especially...
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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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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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What Offends God?
I don’t often sit around begrudging my past. Shoot, it’s difficult to remember what happened yesterday, but I admit, there are some offenses that are more difficult to forget than others....
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A Light to My Path
When the sun streams into my kitchen window, it cheers my soul. Everything literally seems brighter. Its brilliance however, illuminates more than just the room. Particles of dust flicker...
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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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Who Do You Trust?
“Ahh! Salaam and good evening to you, worthy friend. Please, please, come closer,” our tween-aged daughter motioned with her hand. From the movie Aladdin, she knew every word, every gestu...
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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 Blame Game
Today my best friend is writing a guest post. He’s been around since high school, and I’m honored to have been married to him for almost 49 years. You may not realize how much Phil alread...
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When Insignificant Connectors Pave the Way To Important Truths
This morning I woke up feeling like it was time to go to bed, like every year of my life creaked and groaned somewhere or someplace in my connections. Purpose felt dried and brittle. Piec...
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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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Does God Hear Me?
My blender is revving up with its loud whir when the door bangs open and my grandson runs in from outdoors. He puts on the brakes barely past the threshold, stops, and covers his ears. I...
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Are We There Yet? Finding Purpose in the Miles
“Are we there yet?” little voices once asked from the back seat. Years slipped by, like miles passing underneath. Complaints changed, the questions grew more sophisticated, and the voices...
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True or False: You Only Live Once
“You only live once,” she quipped. Laughter followed that flippant remark. I turned away from the screen. I’ve used those same words to justify indulgences from purchases, to a risk, and...
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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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To Share or Not to Share
Have you ever wondered what to share, how to share or even if you should share something? I have. We see this paradox in Asaph. He authored Psalm 73 with a conflicted heart. He admits to...
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Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Ah, Spring. You’ve been a long time coming. The day was perfect as I walked the neighborhood. The depth of the sky’s blue called me. Azaleas bloomed in vibrant bush bouquets. Every bird’s...
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How Good Do You Think God Really Is?
Between believers, a high-five of “God is good,” covers a lot of ground. It is inspired by a happy outcome, good grade at school or maybe a really good deal on a new pair of shoes. How co...
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Taste, Smell and Spiritual Sense
“It has no taste,” I told my husband last summer, disappointed the meat on my plate was not cooked right. But once the words came out, I recognized them as significant. My sense of taste...
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What Do You See?
“I no see it,” he says. His little spying eyes are squinted almost shut, focused on finding the far away airplane I point towards in the blue sky. “There,” I say to my three-year-old gran...
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What About Unanswered Prayer?
“What?” he asks. Only it’s not so much a question as a two-year-old’s bold reaction to just about everything. His forehead draws together, his questioning mouth opens and his head jerks a...
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What’s Your Power Source for the Storms of Life?
“We are ill prepared for living here,” I told my husband on the third day of a power outage. He’d been shoveling the driveway, bringing wood into the fireplace and fire burning stove, and...
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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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Bitter Roots
I yanked and pulled until the weed snapped, its root still intact like a vein under the skin of the earth. I’m not a great gardener. I might even be a lousy gardener. Roots like those, wi...
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Do You Really Wanna Be Full?
“I wanna be full,” my grandson says. Tomato red rims his mouth, like the ring around a bullseye. Sauce lies draped down the front of his green shirt. A whole lotta food didn’t hit the mar...
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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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Are You Looking High Enough?
Are you looking high enough for connection? You know that wonderful feeling of finding someone with your same interests, passions or thinking? “She gets me,” you say. Or “he knows exactly...
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Slow Food, Fast Food. What’s Your Spiritual Palate’s Recipe?
“How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” Psalm 119:103 ESV When fast food started flipping burgers in Italy, it raised a commotion. Protests and picketers l...
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How to Combine Sincerity, Love and Others
My acquisition of the Italian language really doesn’t reflect the amazing teacher I had in Florence, Italy, or the excellence of her skills. Like Michaelangelo she chipped away, always co...
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Do You Know How to Define Your Terms?
“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” -Bill Clinton. Every time my husband and I round a particular corner, political signs crop into our sight like spring tulips. The law...
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What impact will my life have in the future
My husband has a carpenter’s chalk line. He rolls it out, squints down its straight line and lifts it slightly between thick fingers, then lets it snap. It leaves a distinct chalk line ma...
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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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When You Struggle to Understand, Reach for the Light
Dad always wanted lots of light for reading in our old farmhouse. There were never enough and they were never bright enough. I remember well his hand, freckled with age spots as he settle...
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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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What to Do When Life is Miserable
“What to do when life is miserable,” I suppose there are those of you out there that don’t know what I’m talking about. You’ve never had a miserable day in your life. I will not tell you...
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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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So You Want To Be Clean?
A round robin family letter, the kind meant to keep families connected in normal times when coronavirus has nothing to do with being apart pops up in our inbox several times a year. Cousi...
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God Does Not Social Distance Us
Last night I dreamed I was in a crowd of people in a store. We were pressed together in a small space and I knew I was too close. Too near. I woke up wound tight like a mummy and with a h...
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It’s Time to Grow Up
My husband and I stayed in a motel in Nashville two nights before a tornado ripped through the area. We watched the destruction on television and wondered at the fact that we were just th...
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Love, Social Media and Noise
In the love month, my challenge to you is to read what is called the love chapter in the Bible. 1 Corinthians 13 always convicts me of straying tentacles of my heart strings, and is alway...
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A Timeless Christmas Priority
It’s crazy how much time it takes to make the season perfect. The ratio of hot chocolate and cookies to lights and greenery is only outdone by the numbers on my gift list. What should fil...
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The Armor, Your Battle and His War
They come, a little bewildered, some heralding children yapping at their ankles and running in circles, some almost newlyweds with blank-slate futures while others brave it alone. Obedien...
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You Don’t Want to Tear Down That Wall
“First,” my husband said listening to my remodeling ideas, “I need to see if it’s a load bearing wall.” My face fell like a house made of cards. In the back of my mind, from the day we pu...
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Where Common Sense Meets Brains
“Ain’t got the brains God gave a goose,” Dad muttered, shaking his head. He sat in his chair in front of the big old Zenith. Encased in a piece of furniture that fit the previous TV, the...
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Who is that Baby in the Manger?
Every year, of my childhood, the first Saturday after Thanksgiving, Christmas pageant practice began. The characters were the same every year, the players different... ...In all the sweet...
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How One Honest Admission invited a Myriad of Support
“So far so good,” I text to a friend when asked how my husband is doing after surgery. The crazy thing is he may be doing ok, but, I am so far from so good. It is a terrifying ride for me...
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Straining Gnats and Swallowing Camels
Ugg, this time of year I fight a big battle with a tiny creature. What is it about autumn that calls all gnats in the Kansas City area into my kitchen like the plagues of Egypt? Woe to th...
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God Doesn't Mind Your Issues
"She has, you know…issues.” I hate having “issues.” The dreaded connotation underlying the word implies different, problematic, maybe even burdensome. I hate burdensome. Yet the reality i...
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Building A Family Legacy One Bedtime Story At A Time
I was transported. Seriously. When our kids were small we always read a Bible story before they went to sleep. Sometimes we read different books first, but the last story they could alway...
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Those Conjunctions in Our Lives
Suddenly prepositions and conjunctions are popping up in my Bible everywhere, because in fact, they are everywhere, joining words and clauses. I’ve overlooked them. What are little insign...
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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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6 Days to Christmas: Truth
There is a whole lot of happenings that go before the birth of a baby. My soon-to-be-born grandson’s nursery took shape with a coat of paint, a baby bed, changing table, and rocking chair...
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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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Can anything eclipse God’s glory?
So, we are in the "path of totality," dead center for the total eclipse of the sun. It’s a little crazy. Major interstates are closing, people are camping out, hotels are full, and busine...
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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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God Goes There
I am into the fear of God. It seems to neon-light itself at me throughout Scripture. People have turned it into an undesirable emotion, but the fear of God is a good thing. The book of Pr...
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True Worship Has Nothing To Do With Those
I wedged myself half onto my daughter’s hospital bed. The other half rested uncomfortably over the gap between my cot and Charity’s paralyzed body. I’d prayed every possible prayer in eve...
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Thanks for your tip driver
My husband and I get a kick out of mistranslations, written instructions or explanations into English from another language. Perhaps it's because we have been on the other side. Language...
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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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Strength Clothed
We met in the living room. Two couples. Older and younger. Married and about-to-be. My husband and I, the older and married pair, sat on stuffed tweed chairs across the coffee table from...
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I Hear Knocking
After a weird night of outside noises, my foggy early morning Bible reading arrives at Revelation 3:20. The familiarity of its long ago memorized words steal into my heart immediately lik...
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Politics and the Real Life
I confess. I yell at the TV. I’ve even thrown a pillow or two. Watching media news at our house looks much the same as watching a football game, albeit a very depressing one. Why watch yo...
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Put It On Pause
My family drives one another crazy with the pause button on the TV remote. We pause to go to the bathroom, we pause to get something to eat, and we pause because someone didn't catch on a...
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Become is a process
From the back of the car, three kids sang with megaphone voices. “Keep your tongue from evil, keep your tongue, Keep your tongue from evil keep your tongue.” The melody echoes in my memor...
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Needing Jesus
Scenes of carnage replay across the screen. Footage shows people running, crying, bleeding, images of devastation and grief. Brussels, Paris, even Hesston Kansas, fifteen miles from where...
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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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Tools
To perform certain tasks well one needs the right tools. My husband informed me of this when to my starry gaze a bedroom remodel looked like Pinterest, Wayfair and HGTV all blended togeth...
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Living in the Projects
Living in the Projects The upstairs of our house is down to its studs. A major project is underway. Between now and the vision of a new bathroom and bedroom is a gorge of unimaginable pro...
Read ArticleGetting the Splinter Out
(guest blog by Philip Schroeder) I was cleaning out old wood. I've worked with wood and construction since my teens years and am fully aware what the smallest of splinters can do to my ha...
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