A SAFE PLACE
Some years ago, I used to see Project Safe Place signs. Perhaps you have seen them too. They were most often displayed on houses along residential streets, or on fire stations, or even on public library buildings. They are diamond-shaped with a yellow background and a black logo,
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Presbyterian/Reformed
CONTAMINATED
I'm all thumbs when it comes to band-aids. I know you're not supposed to touch the pad, the part that compresses the wound. If you do, then you contaminate it, and you run the risk of infection. And, of course, you don't want to do that. So, every time I use a band-aid, it's something
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Presbyterian/Reformed
HAPPY FAMILIES
Leo Tolstoy opened his novel, Anna Karenina with this line:
"Happy families," he said, "are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
I don’t know if that’s entirely true, but, of course,
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Presbyterian/Reformed
FIRST PHIL AND FIRST PHYLLIS
Some years ago, I asked the leaders of our church to do a little exercise with me. I fabricated two imaginary people, one a man and the other a woman. Since this is First Presbyterian Church, I named the man "First Phil" and the woman "First Phyllis." I suggested that
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Presbyterian/Reformed
AFRAID
I was all alone. I lived with four other guys in a huge, old house just off the campus of Baylor University, but I was the only one home. I must have been twenty-one or twenty-two – a grown man, practically a college graduate – but I was afraid. There was usually a surplus of noise in the
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Presbyterian/Reformed
WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW
They say, "What you don't know can't hurt you." But it's not true, is it?
Suppose your house is invaded by termites that are eating away at the studs and beams and rafters, and you don't know it.
Suppose you are on an extended trip but you left water boiling on the
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Presbyterian/Reformed
CHILDHOOD REMINDERS
When I first came to Wichita Falls, Joe and Eloise were living over on Hursh, and I remember going to call on them one day. The front door cradled a lovely stained-glass window. When I asked about it, Joe said, "It’s from the old church in Vernon." Every time he entered and
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Presbyterian/Reformed
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COMFORT FROM WHERE?
When Jerry’s mother died, the loss was almost unbearable. But Jerry was determined to be strong for the sake of her family. John, in fact, asked her how she could be holding up so well. It was the God on whom she relied that stabilized her in the midst of that
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Presbyterian/Reformed
HARRY POTTER: TEMPTATION
Every great story has great characters. And in truly great stories, the characters go through significant change. This change is called a character arc.
For example, if you’re familiar with the Harry Potter series, you know that Harry starts off in the story as an
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Presbyterian/Reformed
OUR LOVE SO FAINT, THINE SO GREAT
The great hymn writer, Isaac Watts, once asked in a hymn: "Dear Lord, and shall we ever live at this poor dying rate? Our love so faint, so cold to Thee, and Thine to us so great?"
Likely so, unless God himself startles us and shakes us free from our complacency.
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Presbyterian/Reformed