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Some years ago, the news service carried a story about a dramatic rescue. A California Highway Patrol officer received a call. It seems a woman was about to jump off a bridge. Immediately the officer, a woman herself, was confronted with a dilemma. This police officer had an extreme fear of
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Presbyterian/Reformed
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We had a friend one time, a lovely and hospitable woman, who would often have us over for dinner. And she was a great cook. But I couldn’t enjoy her desserts, especially her cakes. She always made them without salt. I don’t exactly know what salt does in a cake recipe, but I know that, when it’s
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Denomination:
Presbyterian/Reformed
There’s no reason we can’t set out to show love in everything we do. Now, notice that I did not say “feel” love. If you and I wait until we feel love for others, we will wind up loving only those who make us feel loved. I did not say that we are to feel love but rather that we are to show love.
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Presbyterian/Reformed
You’ve heard of self-defining moments, I’m sure. A self-defining moment occurs when something happens that determines your identity from that instant forward. Because of some event or incident, whatever it may be, you will never be the same again.
I had such a moment each time my children were
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Presbyterian/Reformed
God is also like an obsessed lover. Let me tell you what I mean by that. I have known people so captivated by romance that they have had the name of their beloved tattooed on their body. I knew one man who did that, and the woman he loved eventually broke it off with him. Her name was Marie, and --
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Presbyterian/Reformed
When I was very young, my grandfather worked for a time as a night watchman. His assignment was a textile plant that manufactured carpet. I never got to see him at work, but I sometimes got to see him before he left for the job and sometimes when he came home. He wore a badge and what I would call
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Denomination:
Presbyterian/Reformed
It started off as a simple request. The kind of thing you might hear if you’re in a crowded restaurant, sitting at a table with an empty chair. Someone at the next table is one chair short, and they approach you. “May I borrow this chair?”
“Sure,” you say. No skin off your teeth. You have no need
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Denomination:
Presbyterian/Reformed
Let down the nets? Give me a break!
But then...Luke says, “When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break.” Not the kind of break Peter had in mind. Not the kind of outcome he had in mind either. Have you ever reached to lift something -- a milk jug,
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Denomination:
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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Presbyterian/Reformed
Occasionally, I read a web log by a young man who gives only his first name, which is Justin. In a recent post on his blog, which he calls “Uban Idealist,” he says this. He says, “For a long time my reaction to seeing [the broken] areas in my life has been to work hard on them. Try to act more
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Presbyterian/Reformed
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
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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Presbyterian/Reformed
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
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CONVERTED NOT ONCE, BUT OFTEN
A person of no less stature than Ruth Graham, the daughter of a Presbyterian missionary and the wife of a world-famous evangelist, struggled with this idea of a "moment of conversion." She was raised in the faith and knew that she was secure in Christ, and yet she
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Presbyterian/Reformed
TRAINING IN GODLINESS
Our daughter-in-law has participated at times in triathlon competitions. The triathlon is an endurance event in which you swim a certain distance, ride your bike a certain distance, and finally, and without resting, run a certain distance. It is a very demanding test of your
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Presbyterian/Reformed
THINK STEPS, NOT PROGRAMS
In his book, Seven Practices of Effective Ministry, Andy Stanley writes: "Think Steps, Not Programs" (p. 88). The idea is this: Instead of having a strategic vision that focuses on programs, you have a strategic vision of a people-process, a pathway that takes people from
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Presbyterian/Reformed
A GIFT OF THE WORD
When I was a teenager, my pastor gave me a little pocket New Testament, bound in red leather. And inside, on the flyleaf, he had written a note. And with the note was a Scripture citation: Romans 12:1-2. I couldn’t wait to turn to that passage and read what it said. If you know
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