Life on Planet Earth on Mortality

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Two New Year Prayers for Church Services: A Collect and Prayers of the People

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Keywords

Are you thinking of adding New Year prayers in your church services? Below you'll find two complete, ready-to-use prayers: a collect for the New Year and responsive prayers of the people looking b...

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5 Quotes on Summer

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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Looking for inspiration for your summertime sermons? Here are five quotes that highlight different themes about summer. Quote 1 Comment: I love The Office , but in this short quotation...

liturgy

Inspired by 1 Corinthians 15

Author

Scott B. Bullock

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Scripture

1 Corinthians 15:17

Living God, we confess the weakness of our faith. While we have heard the news that, “He is risen,” we have kept it to ourselves. In church, in the presence of the Believing, we have professed Christ’...

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Author

Thomas Jefferson

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Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.

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Author

J. Todd Billings

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Scripture

1 Corinthians 15:54-55, Daniel 12:1-26

In the testimony of Daniel and the apostle Paul, it is not just “premature death” but death itself—as that which would limit the life God shares with his people—that will be defeated. It is the final ...

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Author

Steven Wright

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I intend to live forever. So far, so good.

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Author

Source Unknown

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“Relax, none of us are getting out of here alive.”

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Author

Jürgen Moltmann, D. Lyle Dabney, and D. Lyle Dabney

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Scripture

1 Corinthians 15:53

Eternal life does not mean a life other than this life, it means that this life itself becomes other. “ This corruptible body must put on incorruptibility and this mortal body must put on immortality,...

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Author

Matthew McCullough

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Before you long for a life that is imperishable, you must accept that you are perishing along with everyone you care about. You must recognize that anything you might accomplish or acquire in this wor...

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Author

Steve Jobs

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Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear o...

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Author

Anne Lamott

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My deepest belief is that to live as if we’re dying can set us free. Dying people teach you to pay attention and to forgive and not to sweat the small things..

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The Great, Perfect Box

Author

Jerry Seinfeld

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Scripture

Ephesians 3:1-2, James 4:13-14, Job 14:1-2, 2 Corinthians 5:1, Philippians 3:13-14, Psalm 90:12

To me, if life boils down to one significant thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving. Unfortunately, this means that for the rest of our lives we’re going to be looking for boxes. When you’re ...

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Author

Peter Jackson

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Arwen to Aragorn: "I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone."

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A Turtle Dropped from the Heavens

Author

Austin Fischer

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Aeschylus was the founding father of Greek tragedy. He believed life was vicious, the gods were brutal, and all were doomed to meet a tragic end, either at the hand of fate or the gods, neither of whi...

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The Origin of the Imposition of Ashes

Author

Beth Bevis

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Scripture

Joel 2:12-13, Romans 3:20-26, Job 42:5-6, Ezekiel 9:4, Genesis 2:7, Ecclesiastes 3:20

The imposition of ashes, now a familiar Ash Wednesday tradition in Catholic, Anglican, and many Protestant churches, has its roots in an early church penitential practice. For people who had been excl...

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The Roots of Ash Wednesday

Author

Beth Bevis

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Scripture

Joel 2:12-13, Romans 3:20-26, Job 42:5-6, Ezekiel 9:4, Genesis 2:7, Ecclesiastes 3:20

Since the seventh century, the Western church has observed the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday—the fortieth day before Easter, not counting Sundays. In addition to providing ample time for self-examina...

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We Are Dust

Author

Luke A. Powery

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Scripture

Genesis 3:19, Psalm 103:14, Job 42:5-6, Joel 2:12-13, Hebrews 12:1-3, Romans 3:20-26, Ecclesiastes 3:20

At the beginning of this season of Lent, on this Ash Wednesday, we are reminded that we are dust and to dust we will return. We are reminded of human fragility and failure. We are reminded that we are...

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Two Notes in your Pockets

Author

Catherine Quehl-Engel

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I’m reminded of something a rabbi said that stuck with me the past 20 years. This rabbi—she said how on the life journey we need to carry in our pockets two reminder notes. In one pocket the reminder...

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"Remember: You are Human."

Author

Christian Meier

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Scripture

James 4:1-10, Jeremiah 9:23-24, Mark 7:20-23, Proverbs 15:25-33, Proverbs 16:18, 1 Samuel 18:null, Luke 18:9-11

When Julius Caesar returned to Rome after many years of fighting its battles abroad, he planned great festivities and triumphal processions to celebrate his victories over Gaul, Egypt, Pontos, and Afr...

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Author

A. W. Tozer

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He remembers our frame and knows that we are dust. He may sometimes chasten us, it is true, but even this He does with a smile, the proud, tender smile of a Father who is bursting with pleasure over a...

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Forgetting Death

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Death

According to Greek mythology, people once knew in advance their exact day of death. Everyone on earth lived with a deep sense of melancholy, for mortality hung like a sword suspended above them. All t...

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“But I Don’t Want to Die”

Author

Mark D. Roberts

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Scripture

Genesis 3:19, Romans 6:23

My friend Tim is a manager of a small company. Because he often hires people for their first full-time job, he gets to tell new employees about their benefits. One time, Tim was trying to explain to a...

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On Aging, Ash Wednesday, and Death

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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Do you remember the first time you started to feel your mortality? Or perhaps, the first time you realized their was something wrong with your body? Your mind? At some point (for me it was my twenties...

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Just a stain in the soil

Author

William Rowley

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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 Soft Curtain Between This Life and the Next

Author

Phillips Brooks

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Scripture

Revelation 20:12

The life which we are living now is more aware than we know of the life which is to come. Death, which separates the two, is not, as it has been so often pictured, like a great thick wall. It is rathe...

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Curse The Shortness of Life

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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Scripture

Matthew 6:20-21, Proverbs 27:2, Luke 14:7-14, Psalm 90:10-14, James 4:13-17, Psalm 39:4-5

The politician Helen Violet Asquith (later Bonham Carter) was once attending a dinner with Winston Churchill, who initially seemed lost in abstraction for an awkwardly long period of time. Abruptly he...

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Author

Esau McCaulley

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Scripture

Matthew 6:1-21, Matthew 5:16, Luke 6:20-21, Matthew 25:34-36, Mark 12:41-44

Yes, we mark our heads with ashes—public shows of piety are not in themselves evil. But we must guard our motivations and do most of our spiritual work in private, because the privacy of those acts re...

liturgy

Gracious God, we confess that we think

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Scripture

1 Peter 1:3, Luke 24:1-12, Mark 16:1-8, Matthew 28:1-10, John 11:25-26, John 20:1-18, 1 Corinthians 15:3-8

Gracious God, we confess that we think of Easter as the springtime holiday rather than the mystery holiday, the hope-time holiday, the now-its-up-to-us holiday. We’re more at home with bulbs and bunni...

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“Does My Ash Look All Right?”

Author

Tish Harrison Warren

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Scripture

Genesis 3:19, Job 42:5-6, Ezekiel 9:4, Genesis 2:7, Ecclesiastes 3:20, Daniel 9:3

One Ash Wednesday a decade ago, when I was new to Anglicanism, I knelt at a rail as Fr. Thomas, my priest, smeared a black cross on each forehead. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall ret...

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Home: A Desire for Permanence

Author

Jen Pollock Michel

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Scripture

Hebrews 10:23, James 1:9-12, 1 Corinthians 15:58, Jeremiah 17:7-8, Colossians 2:6-7

Before Seattle resident Edith Macefield died at age eighty-six in 2008, she refused to sell her house to developers for the $1 million they had purportedly offered. Macefield wanted to die at home. Se...

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