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Farm Animals Prefer the Familiar to the Good
There is a story about a farmer who had a few animals he kept in a barn that had gotten old, drafty, and leaky. Concerned for his animals' well-being, the farmer decided to build a new barn. He bu... -
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Erecting a Life Around Dysfunction
Remember Miss Haversham in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations? Her entire life was defined by the fact that she was jilted on her wedding day. People can become very attached to their pain and i... -
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Waiting is More than In-Between Time
Waiting isn’t an in-between time. Instead, this often-hated and under-appreciated time has been a silent force that has shaped our social interactions. Waiting isn’t a hurdle keeping us from intimacy ... -
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Life in Reverse: Short Term Spiritual Memory Loss
In the film Memento , we meet Leonard, who is searching for the man who killed his wife. He appears to be the typical Hollywood hero of the early 2000s. The hair is right; the jaw line, the atmospher... -
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Looking Back to Find the Way Out
Barbara Brown Taylor recounts her first experience with caving, the exploration of caves that are not prepared or made easily accessible for inexperienced explorers. Her guides gave her a bit of helpf... -
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John Steinbeck Hears an Old Fashioned Hell & Brimstone Sermon
While it has become unpopular in many circles, including many Christian circles, to avoid the "s" word (sin), some, including the writer John Steinbeck, see it's value. In his travelogue... -
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The Bible a Great Comfort
For seven years, Terry Anderson was held as a hostage of Shiite Muslim fundamentalists. The former reporter for the Associated Press had been taken captive and held as a political prisoner, and for se... -
lectionary
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
preaching commentary The Transitive Property of Welcoming In elementary school math you learn various basic principles of working with numbers…the commutative property, the associative property, th... -
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I Haven't Changed
The famous entertainer W. C. Fields, known for his humor, love of drink, and agnosticism, found himself bedridden in his final illness. When a longtime friend visited and noticed Fields reading the Bi... -
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Driving at Night in the Rain
One of the most dangerous driving situations is when it is raining at night. Not only are the streets slippery and visibility obscured by water on the windshield, but wet streets can reflect light fro... -
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A Good Start to the Day
Martin Luther, whose actions sparked the Protestant Reformation, recommended a very manageable start to the day. He wrote: In the morning when you get up, make the sign of the holy cross and say: I... -
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Homecoming & The Hope of Resurrection
In her book Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home, Jen Pollock Michel reflects on the nature of home in a transient age. In this short excerpt, Michel describes the central longing in both... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide, 2 Peter 1:16-21
Context Text Clues While all pericopes, of course, need to be read in context, sometimes we get clear textual clues that we are to do this. In this week’s text we get that by way of a bookended “fo... -
lectionary
Transfiguration Sunday
Context Text Clues While all pericopes, of course, need to be read in context, sometimes we get clear textual clues that we are to do this. In this week’s text we get that by way of a bookended “fo... -
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Waiting For Their Souls To Catch Up With Their Bodies
The story goes like this: It’s the height of British colonialism. An English traveler lands in Africa, intent on a rapid journey into the jungle. He charters some local porters to carry his supplies. ... -
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Praising Slowness
In our culture slow is a pejorative. When somebody has a low IQ, we dub him or her slow. When the service at a restaurant is lousy, we call it slow. When a movie is boring, again, we complain that it’... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide, Matthew 10:40-42
The Transitive Property of Welcoming In elementary school math you learn various basic principles of working with numbers…the commutative property, the associative property, the distributive property... -
Quote
From a purely biological point of view man is not at home anywhere in the world. -
Quote
This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing towar... -
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Nothing enslaves more than that which we think we cannot live without. -
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Our Hope Gets Manipulated
It’s part of the life cycle of every living thing to grow and mature. It’s also natural for us to hope that we will be better people today than we were yesterday and that the things that trouble us at... -
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Seeking a Spiritual Home in the Bible
Many people these days feel an absence in their lives, expressed as an acute desire for “something more,” a spiritual home, a community of faith. But when they try to read the Bible they end up throwi... -
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The Climber and the Phone
A climber recently had to be airlifted off Japan’s Mount Fuji due to altitude sickness. That alone would have been a dramatic enough story. But four days later—still recovering—he climbed back up ... -
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Every day God patiently bears with us, and every day we are tempted to become impatient with our friends, neighbors, and loved ones. And our faults and failures before God are so much more serious tha... -
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How We Wait
Part of our experience of waiting is cultural, and how time elapses while we wait can vary from person to person and context to context. We wait differently and we have different expectations that are... -
Quote
Though conversion may be pinpointed to a moment, salvation is a process that continues over a lifetime. I am still being saved from old ways of thinking and behaving and am coming to new understanding... -
lectionary
Transfiguration Sunday
Preaching Commentary Drama at Its Finest The transfiguration is theatrical. It is drama at its finest. The mountain peak as the stage of the performance, the appearance of the greatest dramatis per... -
lectionary
Transfiguration Sunday
Preaching Commentary Context The Gospel of Mark presents two clear phases of Jesus’ ministry. The first phase (chapters 1-8) takes place in Galilee. It is characterized by words and deeds of power ... -
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A Voice They Could Trust
On May 1, 2023, a small aircraft carrying seven passengers crashed deep in the Amazon rainforest, one of the most remote regions on Earth. The Cessna had been flying between two villages in southern C... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide, Matthew 17:1-9
Drama at Its Finest The transfiguration is theatrical. It is drama at its finest. The mountain peak as the stage of the performance, the appearance of the greatest dramatis personae known to Israel, ...
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