Thought Exercise on Digging Up The Past

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Looking Back to Find the Way Out

Author

Keywords

Scripture

John 14:26, Revelation 2:5, Philippians 1:3, Isaiah 46:9, 2 Peter 1:12-15

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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Finding Lost Treasure

Author

A. J. Swoboda

Keywords

In 1991, a yet-to-be-identified flea market enthusiast discovered a simple picture frame to his liking. Securing the purchase, the shopper returned home only to discover an ancient document hiding inc...

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Two Examples of Long Memories

Author

Kenneth E. Bailey

Keywords

The Reliability of Scripture

As an amateur yet serious student of the American Civil War, I am constantly amazed at the sheer volume of material, which was preserved orally for half a century and longer, surrounding the key figur...

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A Trench in the Ground

Author

Wendell Berry

Keywords

At start of spring I open a trench in the ground. I put into it the winter’s accumulation of paper, pages I do not want to read. Again, useless words, fragments, errors. And I put into it the contents...

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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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Throwing Away Valuable Resources

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 42:, Philippians 3:13-14, 2 Corinthians 5:17, 2 Corinthians 11:24-30

In many parts of the country, leaf clean-up is an annual chore. They fall from the trees, blanket our lawns, and we often bag them up and toss them out (or burn them). There’s a lesson in this… In my...

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A Redemptive Memory

Author

Richella J. Parham

Keywords

In her excellent little book (Mythical Me), Richella Parham describes the importance of looking on the past with grace: Developing a redemptive memory requires recalling not only the pain of the pas...

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Topsoil and Christ

Author

Wendell Berry

Keywords

The most exemplary nature is that of the topsoil. It is very Christ-like in its passivity and beneficence, and in the penetrating energy that issues out of its peaceableness. It increases by experienc...

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The Greatness of Solomon’s Temple

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

1 Kings 6:7, Exodus 35:30–35 , Isaiah 28:16 , 1 Peter 2:4–5, Psalm 118:22–23 , Matthew 16:18

In the 1800s, a group of people were exploring just outside the ancient walls of Jerusalem, near the Damascus Gate, when they came across a hole in the ground. Curious, they began to dig—and uncovered...

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Becoming a Tiller of Soil

Author

Mark D. Roberts

Keywords

Scripture

Galatians 6:7, John 15:5, Matthew 13:23, Isaiah 28:24-26, Proverbs 12:11, Genesis 2:15

One of my favorite sections of Home Depot is the power garden tool department. Even though I have all the tools I need, I still like browsing through Home Depot’s collection of power mowers, chainsaws...

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The Value of Origins

Author

Jen Wilkin

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:27, Isaiah 64:8, Jeremiah 1:5, Psalm 139:13-14, Ephesians 2:10, 1 Peter 2:9

Origins matter to humans. The Antiques Roadshow has held the interest of its viewers for over thirty-five years with a simple formula of determining the origins of items people have not properly...

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Digging Down Deep

Author

Bianca Juarez Olthoff

Keywords

Scripture

John 15:5, Proverbs 12:3, Isaiah 61:3, Matthew 13:5-6, Ephesians 3:17-19

I’m more of an aboveground type of girl, as in, I like the stuff you can see. Flowers, trees, and vegetation symbolize life, growth, and transformation. The problem with focusing on external manifesta...

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The End of Human History

Author

G. K. Chesterton

Keywords

Jesus

Scripture

Matthew 27:57-60, John 19:41-42, Luke 23:50-56, Romans 6:4, Colossians 2:14-15, Isaiah 53:9-11, 1 Corinthians 15:20-22

They took the body down from the cross and one of the few rich men among the first Christians obtained permission to bury it in a rock tomb in his garden the Romans setting a military guard lest there...

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The Treasure of a Lifetime

Author

Randy Alcorn

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 13:44, Hebrews 14:26, Colossians 2:2-3, Philippians 3:8, Luke 12:33-34

A first-century Hebrew walks alone on a hot afternoon, staff in hand. His shoulders are stooped, his tunic stained with sweat. But he doesn’t stop to rest. He has pressing business in the city. He vee...

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Sculpting Potatoes: Searching for Something

Author

Jeannie Gaffigan

Keywords

The following story is a great analogy to what life is like before we find we experience the eternal truth of the gospel. In Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Richard Dreyfuss’s...

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The Devil Buried the Bones

Author

Austin Fischer

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:null, Revelation 21:4, Philippians 4:6-7, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Romans 8:38-39, John 1:5, Isaiah 40:31

And I was reminded of an event from my father’s childhood: He was in a Sunday school class, listening to his teacher expound on Genesis 1 and a young earth, and asked his teacher how to make sense o...

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Hardships Force our Roots to Go Deep

Author

Our Daily Bread

Keywords

Scripture

Colossians 2:6-7, 2 Corinthians 4:16-17, Ephesians 3:17-18, Isaiah 58:11, Romans 5:3-5

A. Parnell Bailey visited an orange grove where an irrigation pump had broken down. The season was unusually dry and some of the trees were beginning to die for lack of water. The man giving the tour ...

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Holding on to Everything

Author

W. Tamra Chandler

Keywords

Baggage

Scripture

Psalm 55:22, Proverbs 3:5-6, Isaiah 43:18-19, Ephesians 4:31-32, 1 Peter 5:7

Poet Donald Hall told the story of a hermit in New Hampshire, a man who passed away leaving behind sheds full of hoarded stuff. In one of the sheds was a box labeled, “string too short to be saved.” ...

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Some very Old Footsteps

Author

Mark Buchanan

Keywords

Walking

In 1976, in Laetoli, Tanzania, Africa, Mary Leakey and her team of paleontologists stumbled—that’s the word the Smithsonian uses—upon animal tracks that, two years later, led to the discovery of two p...

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A Christian Alzheimer’s Disease

Author

Sandra L. Richter

Keywords

Two-thirds of the story of redemption is known to Christians as the Old Testament. Yet in the decades that I have been teaching Bible, I have found that most Christians, if allowed to answer honestly,...

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Gaining Scholars but Losing Jesus

Author

N. T. Wright

Keywords

Scripture

Deuteronomy 18:15 , Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah 11:1–4, John 14:6–9 , Philippians 3:8–10, Psalm 34:8

A friend of mine, lecturing in a theological college in Kenya, introduced his students to “The Quest for the Historical Jesus.” This, he said, was a movement of thought and scholarship that in its ear...

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Holding on to Earth

Author

John Shea

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 19:29, Revelation 21:1-2, 1 Corinthians 2:9, Hebrews 11:16, Philippians 3:20, John 14:2-3, Matthew 6:19-21

There once lived a peasant in Crete who deeply loved his life. He enjoyed tilling the soil, feeling the warm sun on his naked back as he worked the fields, and feeling the soil under his feet. He love...

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The Dash

Author

Jon Tyson

Keywords

Legacy

On a warm summer night, I drove my son to a local cemetery. It was a Moravian cemetery that sits nestled on a hill overlooking a flowing creek. My son, a typical teenager in many ways—Xbox, iPhone, ho...

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The Turnip and The Mud

Author

Frederick Buechner

Keywords

Concerns

One winter I sat in army fatigues somewhere near Anniston, Alabama, eating my supper out of a mess kit. The infantry training battalion that I had been assigned to was on bivouac. There was a cold dri...

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Memories and Trauma Can be Inherited

Author

Casey K. Tygrett

Keywords

Scripture

Deuteronomy 6:20-23, Exodus 12:26-27, Joel 1:3, Psalm 78:4-7, Romans 5:12

Some stories, however, have been handed down to us. For some, we were not yet cognizant, and for others, we weren’t even born when experiences, memories, and stories affected our family and communitie...

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Primitivism vs Catholicity

Author

James K. A. Smith

Keywords

Spiritual timekeeping is nourished by Jesus’s promise that the Spirit will guide us into all truth across time… This stands in contrast to what I’ll call the “primitivism” of so much American Christia...

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A Need to Heal the Past

Author

Ronald Rohlheiser

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 147:3, Jeremiah 30:17, Matthew 11:28-30, James 5:16, Psalm 34:18, Psalm 51:10, Jeremiah 33:6

One of the challenges, at least in the western church, is an inability to deal with our wounds in a healthy way. Our training as Christians has been focused on Bible studies, small groups, and Sunday ...

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Scripture Grounds our Story in Place

Author

Eric O. Jacobsen

Keywords

Our Scriptures that bring us the story of our salvation ground us in place. Everywhere they insist on this grounding. Everything that is critically important to us takes place on the ground. Mountains...

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Our Place of Roots and Beginnings

Author

N. T. Wright

Keywords

In all our pilgrimages, we begin by going back to our roots. When Christians go to the Holy Land today, we do not go because God is present there in a way in which he is not in New York or Nottingham,...

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Cultivating Responsibility Towards the Future

Author

David R. Carlin, Jr.

Keywords

Ironically, the best way to develop an attitude of responsibility toward the future is to cultivate a sense of responsibility toward the past. … We are born into a world that we didn’t make, and it is...

thought exercise on Digging up the Past

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