Newsflash! Church is not a buffet, a dining hall, a mess hall, a restaurant, or the dinner table such as most of us have at our home. Yes, some have cafes and some have periodic potluck or community dinners (often used to raise some money for something church related). I hear people say, “I go to church to get fed” and, frankly, it makes me cringe. It makes me think of a field where a horse might be leisurely chowing down on grass, or a barnyard where the cows are getting fed their hay, or a muddy mess where the pig slop is tossed so the pigs can devour their delicious goodies. I’m getting fed!
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It’s one of those toys I had over seven decades ago that I wish I had now. The Jack in the Box toy. If one of those old ones like I had were around today, and in pristine condition, I guess it would be worth some bucks given the publics nostalgia for old toys. It was a metal box (tin) approximately 6”w X 6”d X 6” h, and it had a hinged lid that snapped shut. On one side there was a crank. When you turned the crank at some point you could never guess all of a sudden the lid would pop open and a clown face on a spring attached to the inside would pop up out of the box. It was always a surprise when that lid would fly open. To put one of today’s expressions to it, you could easily say it was one of those “wow” moments for us kids.
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It’s a saying that’s been around for as long as dirt. “You can trust me on that one” or it’s variations such as “you can take that one to the bank”, etc. I don’t know about you, but usually when I hear the term my cringe meter kicks in because my thinker starts yelling to me “well, we’ll see about that.” That is called skepticism, or better yet, doubt. It is caused by a lack of trust, which often occurs because somewhere along the line trust has been broken.
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Nathans. There are plenty of them out there. They are valuable. They are real. They are a needed. Each Christian needs at least one. Many, however, do not realize that, so they muddle through life without one. And then they will wonder, “Why am I getting this life thing wrong so often?” Often our hearts tell us we need a Nathan, but our brain screams, “No, you got this.”
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Dogs have been the subject of a common myth for a long time. The myth is that they see in black and white only. The truth is dogs do see in color (a medically proven fact) though not with the clarity of their humans.
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How many times in our lifetimes have we heard the overhead speakers belch “clean-up in aisle 3”? So often that we might all stores were not making use of a voice-over tape of pre-recorded messages to use at the appropriate times. It is one of those things that when we hear it, we know exactly why we heard it. There is a mess somewhere that needs to get cleaned up.
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Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” 10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
Genesis 3:8-13 (NLT)
We each have one. We all use it. It is our friend. It can also be our enemy. When it is our enemy, it is our very own weapon of mass destruction. It is small, but often it is uncontrollable. When that happens great, and often irreparable, damage can take place. Even if only minor damage is inflicted, we often show ourselves to be someone we inwardly may not want to be because damage was done.
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From a brother friend of mine, Derrick Winn. His work, his post (to his timeline on FB), on 5/31/20. I love this guy and his heart.
How do you spell abortion???
- A
- Baby’s
- Original
- Right
- Taken
- Ignorantly
- Or
- Nonchalantly.
At My Age
At my age it seems like a gazillion years have passed since I was in school. Yes, this old dinosaur was in school. One thing that always stood out to me in school was how quiet it was in the room when tests were being given. One could almost always just about hear a pin drop. Everyone was quiet, including the teacher. Typically, they would simply sit very quietly at their desk at the head of the room and watch this poor soul try to pull the rabbit out of a hat one more time. While I sat there at my desk struggling with uncertainties, stress and anxiety, fear, discomfort, and perhaps some self-condemnation, the teacher sat quiet, observant, caring, patient, and available.
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