Year
2017
70 articles published this year.
1 Day to Christmas: JESUS
The richness of Handel's Messiah rolled over me in crescendoes. It filled my house with its heavenly music. Christmas isn’t Christmas without it. “Mom, we lost baby Jesus again!” my frust...
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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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3 Days to Christmas: WAY
A dirt road led to the house I grew up in. I loved that road. Impassible in winter, a mud pit in spring, and like the dust bowl in summer. No other house sat on that road. It was the way...
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4 Days to Christmas: VINE
I used to stuff little arms into sleeves like a turkey at Thanksgiving. But somewhere between the years of babies and grand babies, the art went south. I’m all thumbs, trying to capture s...
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5 Days to Christmas: Unchangeable
My Christmas list looks like a paper war zone. I have crossed off, scribbled over and shifted names and gifts until there isn’t much space left to write, and no I am not done yet. I am no...
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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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7 Days to Christmas: Son of the Highest Lk. 1:32
No one is higher. “He will be great, and will be called Son of the Highest” Luke 1:32; NKJV, the angel told Mary. He is as high as high gets. Son of the Highest is like the title God Most...
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8 Days to Christmas: RULER-Shepherd
“For out of you (Bethlehem) shall come a Ruler who will shepherd My people Israel.” Matt. 2:6; NKJV. I love the idea of ruler-shepherd. It’s almost an oxymoron, two impossibles joined tog...
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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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10 Days to Christmas: OMEGA
“I AM the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the End,” says the Lord. Jesus had a birthday. Just like us, from the day He drew His first breath, time moved toward His death. Alpha and...
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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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12 Days to Christmas: MAJESTY
So the bad dude king, Herod, called his chief priests and scribes together for a little pow-wow, a sneaky set-a-trap-for-the-baby kind of meeting. “Where is He who has been born King of t...
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13 Days to Christmas: LIGHT
Christmas lights are evil, my friend wrote on a facebook post. I know what she means. Tangled strands that don’t light are irritating. But the original Christmas lights were a different s...
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14 Days to Christmas: KING OF KINGS
“Where is He who has been born King of the Jews?” Matt. 2:2. “For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.” Growing up, our family put up our tree the day after Tha...
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15 Days to Christmas: JESUS
Picking a baby’s name is a big deal. Seriously. Our third daughter was three days old before we agreed that Charity she would be for all eternity. Mary and Joseph didn’t have that dispute...
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16 Days to Christmas: IMMANUEL
One of my dearest friends lay in the cold Kansas soil. November winds blew the tree limbs outside the window where we sat. My husband and I listened as the grieving spouse talked, his sor...
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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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18 Days to Christmas: GOOD SHEPHERD
I’ve often wondered why the good news came first to shepherds. They weren’t influential or powerful. They had a hard time keeping the Sabbath because sheep needed constant protection. She...
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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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20 Days to Christmas: ETERNAL
“and of his kingdom there will be no end…” the angel told Mary. Luke 1:32-33; ESV. “This takes forever,” my husband complained, scrutinizing his blank computer screen. Forever is a very l...
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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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22 Days to Christmas: Creator
One tiny fist stretches high above my newborn grandson's head. Like a miniature superman ready for take off he poses against the soft blue blanket where he lies. He uncurls his legs, elon...
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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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24 Days to Christmas: Ancient of Days
God is always on time, yet I often wonder why He waits so long. I tilt the scissor's blade against the length of bright red ribbon. Curls slither through my fingers in tiny ringlets where...
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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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One of our Veterans is missing today
(My husband Phil writes about his father.) There were those who went before us to battle against a great evil in our world decades ago. There are fewer and fewer of those World War II vet...
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Thanksgiving Despite Unhappy Circumstances
Thanksgiving tangled with unanswered prayers. I slumped against the antiseptic tiled hallway. My stalwart, “Hang on and hold it in,” gave way to unrestrained tears like prisoners let free...
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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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Unconditional Finds Its Way Through a Child
Ps 78:5-7 “…That they should make them known to their children; That the generation to come might know them, The children who would be born, That they may arise and declare them to their...
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There Is No Spiritualizing This One
And it came to pass in those days, the wife was harried, and the husband bombarded. Time was ticking like a clock, calendar pages flipped like a fan and a list of one million and two thin...
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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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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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Silvery Words
My children had some hefty arguments when they were young. Words became darts. “She said,” “He said” often spiraled into something I had to step into. I needed to... Read the full devotio...
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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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Three things Harvey and Irma Teach us About Prayer
“…He does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.” Daniel 4:35; NKJV In anticipation of what could be one of the worst storms of modern history...
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When Blame Hits the Fan
It hits my life again. That inevitable desire to connect my circumstances with the actions of another and search for blame. “That woman you gave me,” Adam complained when confronted with...
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What's Hiding
I walked around the room with a rubber duck in my hand. I laid it in plain sight on a shelf of the book case. It’s classic yellow face and orange bill pointed to the door where my daughte...
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Are You a Good Lover?
I’m not a good lover. Let me pause before you think I just handed you more information than you care to receive, like a bad Facebook post. Here is what I mean: I don’t know how to love li...
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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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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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What’s Good About Good-bye?
From the back seat window the countryside slid by. Green grape vines draped across wooden stakes like outstretched arms. The road ahead curved to the left, I knew it well. A hen, halted m...
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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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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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MY SON WAS THE BABY OF THE FAMILY AND HAD FOUR MOTHERS
After three daughters, it was only natural that our youngest son should have four mothers. I just wasn’t expecting how tight those sibling-mommy bonds could be. When one of them forgot to...
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When I Asked to Know You
There is a sudden ache in my gut, like I’ve been kicked. As much as I prepare for hospital-sterile, IV’s and blinking lights, the moment I enter my daughter’s room I cannot stop the sudde...
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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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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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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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Soak It Up
Sometimes being a mommy was like the ocean that disappeared into sand. Vast and unmeasurable, mommy-hood was never completely accomplished or satiated. Its demands drained, yet its beauty...
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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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Mom and The Week of the Goat
“The week of the goat,” I will label it. It began the day I came home from school to find a goat tied up in our yard. For a thirteen-year-old it wasn’t cool, and as the bus came to a stop...
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Lovingkindness
Lovingkindness. I linger over the word like a morning cappuccino. I lean my head back, close my eyes, and savor it. “Let me hear Your lovingkindness in the morning; for I trust in You” (P...
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Nobody told Me to Bring a Rocking Chair
“In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” Isaiah 30:15; NKJV. When Phil and I left for Italy with a two-year-old, a four-year-old and...
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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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When It's Too Heavy
They watched the One they loved suffer agony and succumb to a tortuous death. It was the greatest event of history, but they likely didn’t realize it. To experience exceeds preparedness....
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When the Troll Sings Russian
My name is Sylvia and I am technophobic. Technology scares the crud out of me. “Hover,” my husband advises. “Just hover and see if it is a good site or one that will eat your computer ali...
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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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Meltdown Dread
I plunked her diaper-padded bottom into the shopping cart and directed two little legs into the slots. The mission began. I had one hour, one child with me, two others at home, and a whol...
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Spring Cleaning
Spring Cleaning My hands immersed in suds, I stand at the kitchen sink and gaze at the aura of green tinging the trees against blue sky outside my window. Buds are beginning to open. A hi...
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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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Citizenship
“For our citizenship is in heaven…” I hold the blue covered booklet in my palm. Lines of weary travelers are long. They hold passports in green, maroon, and brown, irreplaceable identitie...
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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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In the In-Between
In the In-Between I sat on the cold window ledge and leaned my forehead against the glass, looking out at the hospital garden. Brown earth, dried and brittle, had replaced the green of mo...
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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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Shelf Life
For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. I woke up this morning and felt like I’d lasted longer than my shelf life. I’m tired, weary and it is the just the first month of a...
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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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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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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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