Thought Exercise on Memorial Day

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I Knew You would Come

Author

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 12:10, James 5:19-20, Ruth 1:16-17 , 1 Samuel 18:1-4, 2 Samuel 23:15-17 , John 15:13, Luke 10:30-37, Psalm 133:1

Though Jim was just a little older than Phillip and often assumed the role of leader, they did everything together. They even went to high school and college together. After college they decided to jo...

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A Soldier's Sacrifice

Author

Source Unknown

Keywords

Scripture

Ephesians 5:2, 1 John 3:16, Philippians 2:8, Romans 5:8, Galatians 2:20, John 15:13

A chaplain was speaking to a soldier on a cot in a hospital. “You have lost an arm in the great cause,” he said. “No,” said the soldier with a smile. “I didn’t lose it–I gave it.” In that same way, Je...

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Service over Glory

Author

Chris Stroup

Keywords

When Pearl Harbor was bombed, one of the Americans who volunteered to serve his country was Bob Feller. Bob was a 23-year-old pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, a phenomenon who had already pitched a ...

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The Nature of Freedom

Author

Os Guinness

Keywords

The truth is that, as the saying carved in granite on the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C., declares, “Freedom is not free.” This means not only that blood is the price of defending freedom abr...

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The Origin of Rituals

Author

Ronald Rohlheiser

Keywords

Once upon a time there was a rabbi who, whenever he wanted God’s presence, went to a special place in the woods, lit a fire, said some prayers, and did a dance. Then God would appear to him. When he d...

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Tell Them About the Dream, Martin!

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 5:9, James 2:8, Proverbs 21:3, Romans 12:21, Isaiah 1:17, Galatians 3:28

Most of us in the United States know the famous “I have a Dream” speech Martin Luther King Jr. gave at the Lincoln Memorial as part of the 1963 March on Washington. On a sweltering, humid day in the n...

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For the Sake of the Medal

Author

Timothy Keller

Keywords

On a TV detective show some years ago I saw a story of an old man in his eighties, an ex-Marine, sadly broken down and accused of a crime. Two big, strapping military police and a snarling Navy lawyer...

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What You’re Missing

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

James “Jim” Moore owned a famous midtown (New York City) eatery that was known as “Dinty Moore’s.” The restaurant attracted a lot of actors from the theater industry due to the quality of its food and...

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Hallowed Ground

Author

Kevin DeYoung

Keywords

Holiness

When someone or something is holy it is set apart. In the Gettysburg Address (1863), Abraham Lincoln declared the Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania to be “hallowed ground.” Because of the momentou...

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Remembering the Martyred Saints

Author

Ben Lansing and D. J.Marotta

Keywords

Scripture

Daniel 3:16–18, Daniel 6:19–22, Acts 7:54–60, Hebrews 11:35–38, Psalm 116:15

Two thousand years ago, Christians were often hunted down and killed. Amid this darkness, the church began a radical practice. When a brother or sister was martyred for faith in Jesus, the Christian c...

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Great God Almighty Done Parted the Red Sea One Mo’ Time

Author

Andrew Young

Keywords

Scripture

James 1:2-4, Hebrews 12:1-2, Romans 8:31, 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, Matthew 5:10-12, Isaiah 41:10, Psalm 46:1

Easter Sunday dawned with Martin [Luther King] in jail. . . . We planned a march from New Pilgrim Baptist Church to the city jail for the afternoon of Easter Sunday. . . . By the time church ended som...

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Moving the Fence

Author

Mike Yaconelli

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 19:1-10, Galatians 3:28, Romans 3:22-24, Ephesians 2:14, Acts 10:9-48, Luke 10:25-37, John 4:4-26

In the Second World War, a group of soldiers were fighting in the rural countryside of France. During an intense battle, one of the American soldiers was killed. His comrades did not want to leave his...

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Independence Day to the African Slave

Author

Esau McCaulley

Keywords

When Frederick Douglass asked his famous question, “What to a Slave Is the Fourth of July?,” he didn’t simply ask a question about the United States of America . He asked a question about Amer...

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The Gettysburg Address & Identity Formation

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

2 Corinthians 5:17, John 1:12, Romans 6:3-4, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, Hebrews 10:24-25, 1 Peter 2:9

Why is it that countless American school-children memorize the Gettysburg Address each year? Is it a simple civics lesson? An opportunity to learn about the Civil War, a turning point in American hist...

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A Father’s Sacrifice

Author

Patrick Morley

Keywords

Fathers

The salmon nearly leaped onto their hooks! That was a far cry from the previous day, when the four anglers couldn’t even snag their lines in the rocks. Disappointed but not discouraged, they had clim...

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Gratitude Requires Memory

Author

Robert A. Emmons

Keywords

Gratitude

In his book Gratitude Works, psychologist and Gratitude expert Robert Emmons begins by drawing an important connection between the practice of gratitude and memory. He also goes on to share how religi...

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The Cross Set-Apart

Author

Dan Baumgartner

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 1:18, Isaiah 53:3-5, Matthew 27:45-46, Romans 5:8, Luke 24:6-7, Romans 6:4, 1 Peter 1:3, Ephesians 1:7

Our church has a large open field next to it, with a tall wooden cross in the middle– perhaps 15-feet high or so. I love that cross. I’m always struck by its isolation, abrupt in the midst of land wi...

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A Childbirth that Created Gratitude

Author

Max Lucado

Keywords

Scripture

Ephesians 6:1-2, Proverbs 1:8-9, Colossians 3:20

When my niece bore her first child, she invited her brother and mother to stand in the delivery room. After witnessing three hours of pushing, when the baby finally crowned, my nephew turned to his mo...

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A Meditation on Loss

Author

Gerald L. Sittser

Keywords

Jerry Sittser, who experienced the terrible tragedy of losing a mother, a wife, and a daughter in the same car accident, wrote these poignant words on loss: Loss creates a barren present, as if on...

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A Poor Man’s Ticker-tape Parade

Author

Mia Levetan

Keywords

Scripture

Zechariah 9:9, Exodus 12:1–28 , 2 Kings 9:13 , Matthew 21:1–11, John 12:12–16, Psalm 118:25–26

Frederick Buechner is a master of capturing the excitement of the moment of Palm Sunday. It’s a great reminder that the story itself is a great illustration! We call it Palm Sunday because maybe t...

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Stones for Time

Author

Alisha Illian

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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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Returning to a Better America

Author

Ken Wytsma

Keywords

Scripture

Amos 5:21-24, Micah 6:6-8 , Ecclesiastes 7:10, Psalm 146:3-7, Matthew 23:23-24, Philippians 3:13-14

There are many people who will always want to return to the time when America was great. But was there ever a time when America was a wonderful place for everyone? As I saw on a Facebook meme recently...

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The Lost Art of Thankfulness

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Scripture

1 Thessalonians 5:18, Ephesians 5:20, 2 Corinthians 9:11, Colossians 2:6-7

Thankfulness seems to be a lost art today. Warren Wiersby illustrated this problem in his commentary on Colossians. He told about a ministerial student in Evanston, Illinois, who was part of a life-sa...

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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 Surprise and Celebration of Easter

Author

Wesley Hill

Keywords

New Testament scholar and Anglican bishop N. T. Wright recalls being at a party once when someone decided to read a portion of the seventeenth-century Prayer Book for laughs. The Prayer Book includes ...

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Remember You are Only a Man

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 16:18, Psalm 103:14-16, Luke 14:11, Micah 6:8, 1 Peter 5:5-6, James 4:6-10, Jeremiah 9:23-24

If you were to travel back in time to the city of Rome (either during the Republic or the Empire), you may have had the opportunity to witness the Triumph, a colossal spectacle in which the greatest m...

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Martin Luther King Jr. on Achievements

Author

Will Willimon

Keywords

Scripture

Ephesians 1:11-14, Colossians 3:14, 1 John 4:7-8, John 13:34-35, Romans 13:8, Matthew 22:37-39, Galatians 5:6

Not long before his death, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the congregation at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church: If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. An...

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A 25 & 50 Year Martyrdom

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

R. Paul Stevens, Professor Emeritus at Regent College, was visiting the Wedding Church in Cana of Galilee with his wife Gail when a hilarious event took place. After introducing himself to the residen...

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The Mayflower Pilgrims

Author

Jim Forest

Keywords

Pilgrim. For a child growing up in America, the word Pilgrim had no religious connotations. Mainly heard in the plural, Pilgrims referred to a community of storm-defying. Black-clad English Puritans w...

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Remembering who we are and whose we are

Author

Mia Levetan

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 8:1, Genesis 19:29, Exodus 2:24, Exodus 6:5, Exodus 13:3, Exodus 32:13, Leviticus 26:42-45, Deuteronomy 4:10, Deuteronomy 8:2, 18, Judges 3:7, Psalm 78:11, 1 Samuel 1:11, 19, Psalm 63:6, Psalm 74:2, Psalm 77:11, Psalm 78:35, 42, Psalm 105:42, Psalm 106:45, Psalm 111:5, Psalm 119:52, 55, Psalm 143:5, Isaiah 44:21, Isaiah 57:11, Jeremiah 14:21, Jeremiah 51:50, Jonah 2:7, Mark 14:72, Matthew 26:75, Luke 22:61, Luke 22:19, Matthew 27:33-55, Mark 15:22-41, Luke 23:33-49, John 19:16-30, 1 Corinthians 1:18, Philippians 2:8, Hebrews 12:2

God remembers Noah. God remembers Abram. God remembers Lot. God remembers the Israelites. The Israelites, in the book of Judges, do not remember God—this was their problem. God remembers Hannah. The P...

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