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A few years ago I met a friend for coffee. We ordered our drinks and sat down and my friend cut to the chase. “How are you?” she asked with a certain pointedness that suggested she wasn’t interested in small talk. “Work is hard,” I said. The church I…
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Earlier this year, a police officer in Slidell, Louisiana, made what had every appearance of a fairly routine traffic stop. Only after they pulled over did realize there was more to discuss with the driver than originally anticipated. The officer ran…
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As I write this, I can hear my kids doing remote school with their amazing teachers here in Davenport (Thank you, teachers!). I am continually distracted by the unexpected joy of my third-grade daughter learning multiplication through a screen. It tu…
If you were to step into the kitchen right now and bake a cake from scratch, how would you rate your skill as a baker? What about your coordination for catching a ball? Or your talent for dancing? How would you evaluate the level of your compassion?…
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With the changing of the seasons, I imagine many of us have similar routines where we prepare our houses, yards, and wardrobe for the colder weather. I don’t have a lot of household decorations for the fall but I do enjoy putting out a few pumpkins,…
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With “falling back” to standard time from Daylight Savings Time, and perhaps with the sleep disruptions of advancing age, I find myself more often walking through our home in the dark. Of course, I have some friends and colleagues who, through the ye…
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Five years ago, I was worshipping in the Mt. Airy neighborhood, on the northwest end of Philadelphia. David Lose was the preacher. “Worship is an act of resistance,” he said. Those may not have been his exact words. But the idea has stuck with me. Ev…
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Two months ago, when derecho hit, we briefly lost power at our house and cell service was pretty much wiped out, too. My keen husband had the foresight to head out once the wind had died down and buy as much ice as he could find. Not to hoard – that’…
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Have you ever spent much time examining the personalized license plates of cars you pass on the street? Or maybe you have one yourself? It’s always been a peculiar joy of mine to notice the various personalized plates and attempt to decipher just wha…
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On many afternoons as a second-grader, our daughter Rachel resituated the chairs from around our kitchen table and formed them into a semi-circle. That’s how she converted the family room into a choir room. Some of the greatest sacred music ever sung…
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Just after I graduated from college, I worked with homeless youth in Denver. I would spend every afternoon out on the 16th Street Mall, handing out granola bars and socks. I’d listen, troubleshoot, and provide resources. I had amazing conversations a…
“To everything there is a season….” (Ecclesiastes 3:1) The Preacher, as the author of Ecclesiastes is known, penned a hymn to the truth of natural cycles: a time to be born, a time to die; a time to plant, a time to harvest; etc. As we enter fall,…