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What is the Shape of Your Pain?
What is the shape of your pain? Is your pain a gaping wound? Is it stuffed into the back corner of a closet, or is it neatly categorized and filed away with annotations that no one but you understand?... -
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Alcoholics Anonymous has a great definition of how we change: We change when the pain of remaining the same is greater than the pain of changing . -
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When Fire Makes Things Grow
Trivia time! What natural disaster is the most destructive to a forest? Chances are that the first thing that comes to mind is a forest fire. After all, fire is pure destruction to plants. What possib... -
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Pruning Strengthens: A Botanist's View on Pain
Any experienced gardener has heard of a botanical term called Apical (ah-pick-ul) dominance. In most plants that grow from a central stem, from maple trees to bush peas, whatever branch is at the top ... -
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Throwing Away Valuable Resources
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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Lacking a Clear Path to Faith
One common mistake is assuming that everyone else finds faith easy, while we alone struggle. Yet there is comfort in recognizing that we are not alone in our pursuit of Christ in the midst of a broken... -
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In an essay on friendship, the renowned poet
In an essay on friendship, the renowned poet Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “My entire success, such as it is, is composed of particular failures.” There’s a deep truth in that line—one many of us need to... -
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He who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself. -
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I lust after recognition, I am desperate to win all the little merit badges and trinkets of my profession, and I am of less real use in this world than any good cleaning lady. -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide, John 15:1-8
Context The last “I Am” Statement The Gospel text for this week includes the final “I am” statement in John’s Gospel: “I am the vine.” The lectionary text for this week ends at 15:8, but this text ... -
lectionary
Fifth Sunday of Easter
Preaching Commentary Context The last “I Am” Statement The Gospel text for this week includes the final “I am” statement in John’s Gospel: “I am the vine.” The lectionary text for this week ends... -
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Nail in my hand From my creator You gave me life Now show me how to live. -
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I walked a mile with Pleasure; She chattered all the way. But left me none the wiser For all she had to say. I walked a mile with Sorrow And ne'er a word said she; But oh, the things I learned fro... -
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You can be saved without suffering, but you cannot be sanctified without suffering. That doesn't mean you seek it out, but it does mean you see it for what it is. It's an opportunity to glorif... -
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The Weight of Hell Shifts to the Weight of Glory
In her book The Broken Way, Ann Voskamp shares a beautiful exchange between her and her husband (The farmer). His encouragement is for all of us: that God uses the broken things in this world for good... -
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God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world. -
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No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown. -
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When Grace Strikes
Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life…. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for pe... -
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Individual disasters, too, very largely follow upon human choices, our own or those of others. And whether or not they do in a particular case, the situations in which we find ourselves are never as i... -
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The mind is seldom quickened to very vigorous operations but by pain, or the dread of pain. We do not disturb ourselves with the detection of fallacies which do us no harm. -
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The truth is, that more spiritual progress is made through failure and tears than success and laughter. -
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We're not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be. -
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We should neither court suffering nor complain about it. Instead, we should see it as one of the means God chooses to employ in order to make us increasingly useful to our Master. -
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There is no growth without change, no change without fear or loss and no loss without pain. -
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Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world. -
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What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.
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