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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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PTSD and Our Core Story
The robbing of our lives occurs when the core story of who we are—created as “very good” (Gen 1:31) and never downgraded, and “beloved” of God (1 Jn 3:2)—is taken through specific memories and twisted... -
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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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You don’t turn from sin to get saved. You get saved to turn from sin. -
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He-They-We Poem
They hailed him King as he passed by, They strewed their garments in the road, But they were set on earthly things, And he on God. They sang his praise for that he did, But gave his mes... -
liturgy
Psalm 51 (Miserere)
May be said responsively, alternating between leader and congregation. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving-kindness; in your great compassion blot out my offenses. Wash me through a... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide, Romans 5:12-19
Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? All are Unrighteous By the time you get to chapter five of Paul’s letter to the Romans, you’ve heard the argument build: we are unrigh... -
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Rodney King & Driving While Black
Rodney King had led the police on a high speed chase through Los Angeles. Eventually the police got him to stop, and after he exited the car, he was savagely beaten by four officers. The entire countr... -
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How being a Slave Shaped their Reading of Scripture
The social location of enslaved persons caused them to read the Bible differently. This unabashedly located reading has marked African American interpretation since. Did this social location mean Blac... -
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Our Stories, Incarnated by God
Every person in Scripture lived out a personal story incarnated by an even greater story about God, life, and the world. That story came from the politics, theology, and culture ingrained in their mem... -
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Smells Hack Our Memory
The Forming of a Memory Before we truly remember anything, it starts as an experience. It is a moment when our senses (sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch) interact with the world around us. Those ... -
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We Learn from Reflection on Experience, not Experience Alone
One simple sentence, from my first pastoral supervisor, has significantly shaped how I seek to discern God’s personal will. Each Wednesday during my first year of congregational ministry, we met to re... -
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Surrendering a Daughter to God’s Care
Let me share one more lesson I am learning about daily surrender. It concerns the way we relate to others. Daily we encounter people who express views opposite to our own, hold values with which we ca... -
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Called to Faithfulness
Many years ago, I watched a documentary on the remarkable ministry of Mother Teresa among the poverty-stricken people of Calcutta. At one stage there was a moving exchange between her and the commenta... -
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Becoming the Person God Wants Us to Be
Each one of us is called to live the truth of our unrepeatable uniqueness. We are not meant to model ourselves after others, however wonderful they may be. A delightful Jewish parable makes this point... -
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You are Named and Known
The astonishing good news that the Bible gives… is that God has a personal will for each of us. Because we find this truth so hard to learn by heart, we need to hear it repeatedly. So let me repeat it... -
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There are people who do not live their present life; it is as if they were preparing themselves, with all their zeal, to live some other life, but not this one. And while they do this, time goes by an... -
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Resilience is the virtue that enables people to move through hardship and become better. No one escapes pain, fear, and suffering. Yet from pain can come wisdom, from fear can come courage, from suffe... -
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Contemplative prayer . . . neither can nor should be self-contemplation, but [rather] a reverent regard and listening to . . . the Not-me, namely, the Word of God. -
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The church does not exist to make the world run more smoothly, but to be a truthful sign of what the world is meant to be. -
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Faith does not grow in spite of suffering, but through suffering, when hope learns to contradict reality. -
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The suffering addressed in 1 Peter is not random misfortune but the social cost of a new identity that challenges prevailing cultural norms. -
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Salvation in the New Testament is consistently portrayed not as escape from creation but as the redemption and transformation of creation. -
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The resurrection of Jesus is not simply the basis for Christian hope; it redefines the future toward which hope looks. -
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All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story. -
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Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. -
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Self-Discipline Transforms our Motivations
George Garrett, a novelist and amateur boxer wrote about a transformation that often takes place for fighters who stick with the sport. Throughout their journey to boxing excellence, in which they mus... -
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Fostering Shame in a Little Girl
I was standing in line in a crowded public rest room engaged in one of my favorite hobbies, people watching, when I observed a brief interaction between a mother and daughter. Mother looked harried an... -
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The Most Important Thing About Us
The twentieth-century writer A. W. Tozer made a stunning claim: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Really? The most important thing? M... -
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The One Ring and the Failure of Willpower
Nearly everybody knows of at least one sin habit in their life that they wish to leave behind them. Yet, no matter what they do, it seems impossible for them to be free of this habit, character flaw, ...
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