Contributed by Curry Pikkaart on Apr 7, 2010
IT MATTERS WHICH WAY YOU GO
In Lewis Carroll's classic story Alice asks the Cheshire Cat, "Which way do I want to go? Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where" says Alice.
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Contributed by Curry Pikkaart on Mar 30, 2010
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A PLEASING AROMA
There was a factory in northern France where lavender for use in perfumes was produced. Each evening as the workers would head for home and walk the streets the little town, the whole village would be filled with the sweet aroma of lavender that had clung to the workers.
That's
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Contributed by Curry Pikkaart on Mar 30, 2010
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THE BIGGER MIRACLE
Pastor Steve Yeschek lost his sister, Judy, after a five-year battle with cancer. She was a woman who, as Steve described her, was a party animal—-a big drinker with a self-contented lifestyle. She was someone everybody loved, because she exuded excitement and a thrill for life.
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Contributed by Curry Pikkaart on Mar 23, 2010
The psychoanalyst Victor Frankl and his friends were imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. It was winter. They had been marched off to work in the morning, spent the day at hard labor, been given only a little thin soup to eat, and then staggered back to camp in the late
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Contributed by Curry Pikkaart on Mar 23, 2010
"Consider Cornelia, a woman imprisoned in a work camp in Romania during the hard years of Communist occupation. One night, being too tired to undress, she fell exhausted on her bed and immediately went to sleep. She began to dream of a beautiful field full of flowers. There was a soft humming sound
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Contributed by Curry Pikkaart on Mar 23, 2010
TABLE PREPARED ON 9/11
Will and John were firefighters called in to do battle with the Twin Towers on that terrible day we call 9-11. They were in one of the towers when it collapsed. After being buried alive under debris all day and into the night, Will had a vision. He saw a bright light and a
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Presbyterian/Reformed
BUECHNER'S UNIQUE LOOK AT FORGIVENESS
Frederick Buechner is a Presbyterian minister and an author, and he has delightful little book called The Alphabet of Grace. It is somewhat like a dictionary of terms that people of faith commonly use, only Mr. Buechner offers some very uncommon reflections on
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NO REST FOR THE UNFORGIVING
Somewhere in the recesses of my memory is the recollection of a movie. It’s a Western; I know that much. I can’t remember the title of the movie, but I remember the story line.
The hero is a law man, and he is transporting a convicted murderer across the treacherous
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Presbyterian/Reformed
REVENGE: A LAZY FORM OF GRIEF
In the 2005 film, The Interpreter, Nicole Kidman plays the role of Sylvia Broome, a United Nations translator who overhears an assassination plot. In one scene in the movie, Sylvia talks about revenge and mercy. She speaks of a primitive tribe and a tradition they
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Contributed by Curry Pikkaart on Mar 16, 2010
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DARK AND STORMY NIGHT
In the Peanuts comic strips, Snoopy often tries to be an author. In one particular strip He's shown on his doghouse typing a novel. He begins his story with, "It was a dark and stormy night." That's the way he always begins his stories. Lucy comes and bluntly shouts, "You
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Contributed by Curry Pikkaart on Mar 16, 2010
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"SO YOU WON'T BE AFRAID"
In one of the Nazi death camps, Solomon Rosenberg lived and suffered with his family. It was a work camp, which meant a person had value and stayed out of the ovens as long as he or she could work. Solomon’s parents, aged and broken, were already gone. Now he feared his
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Contributed by Curry Pikkaart on Mar 9, 2010
A young Ensign, after nearly completing his first overseas cruise, was given an opportunity to display his capabilities at getting the ship underway. With a stream of commands he had the decks buzzing with men, and soon his ship was steaming out of the channel en route to the states. His
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Contributed by Curry Pikkaart on Mar 9, 2010
RUNNING
Herb Caen wrote, "Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t
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Contributed by Curry Pikkaart on Mar 9, 2010
GUI--DANCE
Robert Smith wrote in "Doctrine That Dances":
"When I meditated on the word 'Guidance,' I kept seeing 'dance' at the end of the word. I remember reading that doing God's will is a lot like dancing. When two people try to lead, nothing feels right. The movement doesn't flow with the
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N. T. Wright is the bishop of Durham and a New Testament scholar without equal in my judgment. Bishop Wright describes the kingdom as God’s “ultimate future and urgent present.” What does he mean?
He means what so many others mean when they say the kingdom is both now and not yet. There is a
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Larry Lea, who used to serve as a pastor in Rockwall, Texas, has a course on the Lord’s Prayer. When he teaches people how to pray this petition -- “Your kingdom come” -- he asks them to draw an imaginary circle around themselves and not to emerge from that circle until all their priorities are in
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Contributed by Curry Pikkaart on Mar 2, 2010
TOUGHER PASTURES
For our own good God will not let us stay too comfortable! As unlikely as it sounds, the birth of a giraffe teaches us a similar lesson.
When a baby giraffe is born it drops 10 feet to the ground and lands on its back. Within seconds, it rolls to an upright position with its
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Presbyterian/Reformed
PRAYER AND CHOPPING VEGETABLES
Jan and I were watching a cooking show the other day -- Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa, I think it was -- and I commented on how Ina chops vegetables. In this instance, she was chopping parsley, and she held the knife in one hand while resting her other hand on top
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Presbyterian/Reformed
This past week, another and I hosted a Hospice luncheon at which the speaker was a woman named Elaine Magruder. Elaine is a nurse who lives in Midland, Texas, and she tells how God sent her to Vietnam to start the first hospice program there. To hear her story is truly inspirational.
Elaine says
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