Thought Exercise on Days

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Two Golden Days

Author

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 43:18-19, Exodus 16:4-5, 19-21, Lamentations 3:22-23, Matthew 6:34, Philippians 3:13-14, Psalm 118:24

There are two golden days in the week, upon which, and about which, I never worry—two carefree days, kept sacredly free from fear and apprehension. One of these days is Yesterday; Yesterday, with its ...

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Fourteen Good Days

Author

Brian Russell

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 4:6-7, Psalm 5:11, 1 Chronicles 16:23-27, Psalm 5:11, 1 Chronicles 16:23-27, Psalm 16:11, Psalm 118:22-29

In a July 2014 New York Times article about happiness, author Arthur C. Brooks quotes tenth-century Moorish king Abd Al-Rahman III, who assumed his throne as a young man and enjoyed tangible abundance...

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The Creation of Light

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:3-4, John 8:12-20, 1 John 1:5-10, Psalm 27:, Matthew 4:12-17

In The Lost World of Genesis One , John Walton points out that the creation of light and the division of day and night is profoundly puzzling if we understand light in the modern way, as a material o...

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A National Day of Quiet

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

The fascination with silence took root early in the life of composer John Cage. In 1928, during a speech contest at Los Angeles High School, he argued for the establishment of a national day of quiet....

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Stereotypes Affected by the Time of Day

Author

Daniel H. Pink

Keywords

Did you know that we are more or less likely to act with prejudice according to the time of day? Daniel Pink, in his excellent work, “When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing” draws from recent...

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The Disciples’ Time with Jesus

Author

John Ortberg

Keywords

The act of “being with” someone requires patience and sacrifice. It means putting the other person’s wants and needs above our own and being willing to invest as much time as it takes to make the pers...

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Soon and Very Soon?

Author

Mia Levetan

Keywords

Scripture

Ecclesiastes 3:1, Genesis 18:10–14, Habakkuk 2:3, 2 Peter 3:8, Luke 2:25–32, Psalm 90:4

My kids are still young enough that they ask cute questions. My youngest is still learning what all the measurements mean. He’ll ask, “Mom, how long until we leave?” “15 minutes.” “Is that long?” “No,...

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Within Four Days of Seeing Jesus

Author

James S. Stewart

Keywords

Scripture

Philippians 1:21, 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, Romans 8:38-39, Isaiah 41:10, Proverbs 3:5-6, Psalm 56:3

In December 1666, Hugh MacHale, the youngest and most gallant of the Covenanters (a 17th century pro-Presbyterian group in Scotland), was brought to his trial in Edinburgh. He was given four days to l...

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Doubting the First Days

Author

C. S. Lewis

Keywords

In this short excerpt from C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, the fictional demon Wormwood instructs his apprentice Screwtape to build on the doubts that often occur once the initial spiritual and emo...

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Never Leaving Their Work

Author

A. J. Swoboda

Keywords

Because of the modern rhythms of work that are mediated through personal computers and phones, people, in the words of one cultural commentator, “leave the office, but they do not leave their work. Th...

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A 7 or 10 Day Work-Week?

Author

A. J. Swoboda

Keywords

This seven-day week is not something that can, or should, be tinkered with, although some have tried to. In 1793, France, in an effort to increase human productivity, de-Christianized the calendar by ...

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Change Happens Fast These Days

Author

Edmund J. Bourne

Keywords

Scripture

Philippians 4:6-7, Psalm 102:25-27, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Romans 8:28, Malachi 3:6, Isaiah 43:19

Does it ever seem like the world around us is changing at breakneck speed? Well, it turns out, you’re right. A team of researchers have concluded that the Western world’s “environment and social order...

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Silence Adding Days to Your Life

Author

Francis Chan

Keywords

Scripture

James 1:19, James 3:2, Matthew 12:36, Proverbs 10:19, Ecclesiastes 5:3

My friend Joi told me that when she was growing up, her parents invented a ploy to keep her from talking all of the time. They told her that people are allowed only so many words in one lifetime, and ...

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Stones for Time

Author

Alisha Illian

Keywords

I once gifted my husband a container of small stones on his birthday. I’m thoughtful like that. Each stone represented a month we had remaining until our children left home. While some may consider th...

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Sabbath-living Slows Down and Expands Time

Author

Tiffany Shlain

Keywords

Scripture

Mark 6:31, Isaiah 30:15

Living 24/6 feels like magic and here’s why: it seems to defy the laws of physics, as it both slows down time and gives us more of it. I laugh a lot more on that day without screens. I notice everythi...

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Even the Almighty took seven

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 15:23, Proverbs 16:1, Ecclesiastes 3:1, James 1:19, Proverbs 25:11, Genesis 1:

Franklin D. Roosevelt had hoped the Yalta conference (which discussed the future of Europe and Germany post-WWII) wouldn’t last more than five or six days. Winston Churchill, however, remarked, “I do ...

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Parenting and the Sabbath

Author

MaryAnn McKibben Dana

Keywords

Our Sabbath project grew out of a desire to reclaim some of the unhurried wonder of those early days of parenthood—to see what would happen if, on one day out of seven, we stopped working, striving, a...

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Slinging Chow and Fruitless Trees

Author

Hannah C. Hall

Keywords

An empty-nester friend of mine was recently reflecting on the long days at home with a growing family. “You just gotta keep slinging chow,” she said with a laugh. I laughed too . . . but not quite as ...

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What to Do With all Our Free Time

Author

Richard Swenson

Keywords

For much of the twentieth century, futurists and other labor experts were predicting ever shorter workweeks. In the mid-1920s, for example, Julian Huxley said that the two-day workweek was “inevitable...

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Is That Enough?

Author

Dan Baumgartner

Keywords

Scripture

1 Thessalonians 4:11-12, Ecclesiastes 3:12-13, Colossians 3:23-24, Proverbs 16:3, Philippians 4:11-13, 1 Timothy 6:6-8

The award-winning and now venerable filmmaker Wim Wenders recently put out a new movie called “Perfect Days.” It was filmed in Japan and follows the daily life of Hirayama, a cleaner of public t...

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All the Succession of Time

Author

Jeremy Taylor

Keywords

All the succession of time, all the changes in nature, all the varieties of light and darkness, the thousand thousands of accidents in the world, and every contingency to every one, preaches our funer...

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PRESS RELEASE DATE: NOVEMBER 1, 1993

Author

Neal Chase

Keywords

We didn’t make a mistake when we wrote in our previous releases that New York would be destroyed on September 4 and October 14, 1993. We didn’t make a mistake, not even a teeny eeny one! PRESS RELEAS...

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God’s Creation on the Seventh Day

Author

Abraham J. Heschel

Keywords

Sabbath

Scripture

Genesis 2:2, Exodus 20:11

The words: "On the seventh day God finished His work" (Genesis 2:2), seem to be a puzzle. Is it not said: "He rested on the seventh day"? "In six days the Lord made heaven and...

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The Creation of Artificial Time

Author

John Mark Comer

Keywords

The Passing of Time

We all know our world has sped up to a frenetic pace. We feel it in our bones, not to mention on the freeway. But it hasn’t always been this way. Let me nerd out on you for a few minutes just to show...

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Mary at the Nativity

Author

Tania Runyan

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 1:32-33, Isaiah 9:6-7, Psalm 139:13-14, Luke 2:9, Matthew 2:11

The angel said there would be no end to his kingdom. So for three hundred days I carried rivers and cedars and mountains. Stars spilled in my belly when he turned. Now I can’t stop touching hi...

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Just a stain in the soil

Author

William Rowley

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 3:19, Ecclesiastes 3:20, Genesis 18:27, James 4:14, Psalm 90:12, Psalm 39:4, 1 Peter 2:24-25, Psalm 90:10, Psalm 78:39, 1 Chronicles 29:15, Psalm 39:5, Psalm 144:4, Job 14:1, Psalm 103:15-16, Job 7:6-7, Genesis 2:7

I love a British TV show called Time Team. Hosted by Tony Robinson, a team of archeologists descend on a site in Britain and excavate for three days. Inevitably, the archeologists unearth the dead...

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The End is Nearish

Author

Neal Chase

Keywords

PRESS RELEASE DATE: NOVEMBER 1, 1993 We didn’t make a mistake when we wrote in our previous releases that New York would be destroyed on September 4 and October 14, 1993. We didn’t make a mistake, no...

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Daily Thanks and the Tragedy of a Consumer Culture

Author

D. L. Mayfield

Keywords

Consumerism

Melissa Florer-Bixler, a Mennonite pastor, told me, “One of my favorite stories from the Talmud comes from a wondering by the rabbis—why did the manna come once a day instead of once a year? They tell...

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Life with the Dull Bits

Author

Tish Harrison Warren

Keywords

Alfred Hitchcock said movies are “life with the dull bits cut out.” Car chases and first kisses, interesting plot lines and good conversations. We don’t want to watch our lead character going on a wal...

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Holy Dishes

Author

Jackie Hill Perry

Keywords

There’s a sermon by the great Tony Evans in which he uses an illustration involving dishes to make sense of the term “holy.” In his home, and in most homes really, there are two types of dishes. There...

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