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Five Things You Need to Know Today to Get Through the Five Things You Need to Know for Today
I reach in the darkness, tap the snooze button, and close my eyes hoping 9 more minutes will make a difference. If I’m to start my day in the best way possible, after 9 minutes I will immediately open my heart and mind to prayer and sink my teeth into the Word. If I’m to start my day in a less than best way possible, after 9 minutes I will tap the screen on my phone and immediately open my heart and mind to the world, reading the words in the headlines which often start like this, “Five things you need to know for” such and such day. The things…
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In All Seriousness, Laugh
He will yet fill your mouth with laughter, and your lips with shouting. Job 8:21 Thoughts roll through the inner web of my mind something like this, question, quick question, maybe, why, what about this, perhaps it is this, question, hmm…, I don’t think that is the answer, question again. Not quite as chaotic as a small metal sphere inside a pinball machine, but yeah, kinda close. Let’s just say at any given moment, I have probably got a question. Sometimes I have a question about Jesus. Well actually, lots of times I have a question about Jesus. And sometimes He gives me an answer. For whatever reason my mind…
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Leave Fine Behind; Letting Go of the Fine Facade
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gently and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:28-29 ESV I’m fine. We’re fine. Everything’s fine. Only we’re not. Not only our default answer to the dreaded inquiry but secretly the response we are hoping to receive when asking a fellow human how they are, how their family is, and how their life is progressing. A global lot of fines walking and breathing through a world that’s gone amuck. We maintain our fineness even when the…
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Expect the Unexpected; When God Doesn’t Fit in Your Box
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9 ESV It is a tidy thing to put God in a box, limit his grace, his mercy and his love not just for us, but also for others, by our own understanding. We pray tiny whisper prayers, with specific outcomes in mind, and find ourselves fumbling in the land of disappointment because our prayers have not been answered. Again. Well, what if they have been answered but our thoughts…
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Heartache and Hope; Opening the Box of Remembrance, A Single Momma’s Perspective
We sit on the carpeted floor, surrounded by boxes holding treasures manifested as paintings, drawings made with markers, papers penciled with misspelled letters, stories, and construction paper cards cut out and pasted for holidays. Each creation is marked by a child’s name and a date. We count backwards to bridge the year, with the teacher, an age, and a pre-divorce, post-divorce designation. The dog interrupts, wanting to plant herself in the middle, asserting her belief that floor time signals play time. I remember my own childhood, sorting through similar treasures, printed photographs, wanting to remember and touch the tangible evidence of my own existence. It’s like this with my girl.…
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The Scarred Savior; Permanent Marks of the Lamb
The other disciples told him, “We have seen the LORD.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the mark of the nails, and place my hand into His side, I will never believe.” John 20:25 There are multiple entries on pages of tattered journals where I describe what I believe my heart to look like, scarred and twisted, marked deep by hateful words and actions, ugly. This image haunted me for a long time as I wondered if a heart like that could be loved, could possibly be softened enough to love others. Walls hide hearts like that, built to keep others out, to keep others…
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More Like Falling in Love
Give me rules, I will break them. Show me lines, I will cross them. I need more than truth to believe. I need a truth that lives, moves and breathes to sweep me off my feet. It’s gotta be more like falling in love than something to believe in. Jason Gray- More Like Falling in Love If you have followed this blogging journey for a bit, we’ve stepped, climbed, run, shoveled, hoped, prayed, wondered, and even wandered. But we haven’t yet fallen. Someday, we’re gonna have to fall or we’ve missed the entire point of the journey. How exactly do you fall in love with Jesus? The God man who…
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When we Cannot Trace His Hand, Trust His Heart
After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” Genesis 22:1-2 Let’s take a walk with Abraham. He has the legs and the spine of an elderly man, and moves cautiously up the mountain. His son Isaac is with him, carrying the wood for the offering upon his young back. This son, Abraham and Sarah’s delight, a gift of youth given in the last years of…
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Engaging in a Prickly World
“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33 ESV It seems the world is a bit prickly lately. Perhaps this is my observation and it only applies to southwest Michigan, but for some reason, I’m thinking it’s endemic. Plenty of confounding reasons for humans to be wound a little tighter than days past, so many in fact, I am not even going to list them. You can find them for yourself by typing the letters “Daily News” into your favorite search engine. It is possible to avoid…
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Baby Steps; Discerning the Movement of God
At the beginning of your (Daniel) pleas for mercy, a word went out. Daniel 9:23 ESV Every single breath, a miracle, biochemical pathways dependent upon exact translation of amino acids from RNA, sequenced in order, folded perfectly, matched exactly to a receptor, up regulating, down regulating. Microscopic machines driven by chemistry, and ultimately tiny, tiny waves of energy. We are walking, breathing miracles, always at work, even while at rest. Don’t believe in miracles? Our eyes often scan the horizon of our lives watching and waiting on a miracle, fretting that the God who created us has absentmindedly left us to our own devices. Sixty-four beats per minute, my resting…
