YOU DON'T HAVE TO SEE TO BELIEVE
Mt. Diablo is only about 3,500 feet, but it is very noticeable as it sits all alone in the Concord, California valley. Before I called them "God sightings" I found myself caught up in an "aha" moment as I looked at the cloud covered Mt. Diablo. I couldn’t help but
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Contributed by Anne Benefield on Mar 5, 2009
Another thing that bothers most people is that when we pray, we seem to get distracted. That is especially true when we are trying to listen for God’s word. There is an old story about St. Bernard, who once had a friend who told him her never had any distractions. Bernard confessed to having
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Contributed by Anne Benefield on Mar 5, 2009
DANCING WITH GOD
One of my very favorite stories is told by Gertrud Mueller Nelson in To Dance with God: Family Ritual and Community Celebration. It’s the first thing she says at the beginning of Chapter 1:
"Some years ago, I spent an afternoon caught up in a piece of sewing I was doing. The
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Contributed by Anne Benefield on Mar 5, 2009
Fasting is getting more attention these days. In a special issue of Time Magazine on "How Faith Can Heal" Jeffrey Kluger writes:
"Faith and health overlap in other ways too. Take fasting. One of the staples of both traditional wellness protocols and traditional religious rituals is the cleansing
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Contributed by Anne Benefield on Mar 5, 2009
NO-CUT AUDITIONS
Dick Sanderson is kind enough to give me a subscription to Leadership, Real Ministry in a Complex World. It is an exceptional magazine. This quarter there was an insert that carried a story called "A Cast of Thousands" by Lillian Daniel. She writes:
"At my daughter’s
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Contributed by Anne Benefield on Mar 5, 2009
TRUE POVERTY
The second theme in our passage is to strengthen and support the weak and the suffering. My friend at the Gazette also mentioned visiting his daughter in Kenya when she was a Peace Corp volunteer out in the desert areas in the western part of the country. He said that trip had
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Contributed by Anne Benefield on Mar 5, 2009
I WILL, WITH GOD'S HELP
I read a marvelous story remembered by Reverend Mary Moore Roberson. She writes:
"Some years ago, I served on the lay staff of my home parish under the supervision of the priest charged with pastoral care. Barbara took to appearing, first at the door to his office and
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Contributed by Anne Benefield on Mar 5, 2009
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NO ONE STOPPED TO HELP
This past week in DC, a frightening thing happened. In a bad neighborhood where drunkenness and drugs are wide spread. Three men got into an argument, probably about a bottle of beer. One man was punched. They called it a "sucker punch." The man fell backwards and hit
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Contributed by Anne Benefield on Mar 4, 2009
Here’s an interesting thing: What often irritates us in someone else is what we do ourselves.
You know that I am very close to my younger sister Jean, who is also a pastor. Years ago, I noticed that when we were on the phone, she would sometimes “checkout” of the conversation. I would know
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Contributed by Anne Benefield on Mar 4, 2009
There is no more powerful example of hating someone for what we are guilty of doing ourselves than the story of David and Bathsheba. David sees Bathsheba and decides he must have her. She is a married woman, the wife of Uriah. David has many wives. To cover his sinful relationship with
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Contributed by Anne Benefield on Mar 4, 2009
Several workplace-related studies in 2008 suggest that the majority of working Americans aren’t all that fond of whom they work with.
• When asked if a colleague has ever tried to make them look bad, 50 percent of respondents said yes; 48 percent said no; 2 percent said they didn’t know.
• When
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Contributed by Gaither Bailey on Feb 20, 2009
French impressionist painters Henri Matisse and August Renoir were the closest of friends. Renoir’s health failed and the final decades of his life he was nearly paralyzed with arthritis. Yet, he continued to paint fighting tortuous pain with each movement and stroke of the brush. Matisse asked,
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Contributed by Anne Benefield on Feb 4, 2009
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SOLONG'S FAITH
I gave blood on Friday. A lovely woman named Solong sampled my blood to insure that I had enough iron. We struck up a conversation, and it turns out she is a Christian. She told me that in 2006 she felt God calling her to go back to school. She didn't have enough money to go, but
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Contributed by Anne Benefield on Jan 29, 2009
Our topic today is worship and service. I’d like to begin by telling a true story that happened to Reverend Forrest I. Sears. He writes:
Wilma had been a member of our church for many, many years. In her later years she needed the assistance of a cane to help in walking. As she was talking
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Contributed by Anne Benefield on Jan 29, 2009
Alan Peters explains:
Whenever Christian believers gather together to worship, they create the opportunity for a miracle to occur. Worshippers who have experienced this miracle describe it in a number of ways:
• “We all seemed to be thinking and feeling the same things.”
• “There was such
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Contributed by Anne Benefield on Jan 29, 2009
A pastor named Wayne Field asks a series of profound questions:
“What would happen if we applied the same standards of loyalty to our Christian activities that we expect from other areas of our lives?
If your car starts every three tries, is it reliable?
If the post carrier
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Contributed by Terry Barnhill on Jan 28, 2009
Look at this: three times Balaam beats his reliable donkey because he was too wrapped up in himself to see God’s road block in front of him. By the 3rd time he got his staff out he was going ballistic!!! Red-in-the-face and spitting mad!
Then, right there in the middle of Balaam’s donkey-beatin’
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Contributed by Terry Barnhill on Jan 28, 2009
A few years ago, when the new Volkswagen Beetle was introduced, one feature that received lots of attention was the claim to be burglarproof. Volkswagen bragged there was no way anybody could steal their car. To demonstrate their point, VW hired a highly skilled burglar and called a news
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