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HEROES OF THE DEVOTIONAL LIFE
Not long after I discovered that daily devotions were something that common Christians commonly did, I began to hear about spiritual giants who went above and beyond the ten or fifteen minutes that the bush league church-goers invested each day. No, these men and women measured their devotional time in hours, not minutes. And it wasn’t because they lived in the days before stressful jobs, soccer practice, and Netflix. They didn’t have all kinds of spare time on their hands. These were busy people. People like Martin Luther, who would increase his prayer time on his busiest days – from…
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DAILY DEVOTIONS
For many years I assumed the prayers and Bible lessons embedded in an hour-long Sunday morning worship service was more than enough spiritual focus for the average Christian. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I became aware of the fact that some church-goers actually spent time in prayer and Bible study on their own, at home, throughout the week. Every day! As a young kid, I would occasionally come across my mom sitting beside the kitchen table under one of those giant hair dryers, reading her Bible while her head – covered in little curlers – was…
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BIG TIME
I once heard a preacher marvel at “how small a twenty dollar bill looks as we shop at Target compared to how big a twenty dollar bill looks as we put it in the offering plate at church”. Ouch. I suppose something similar can be said for time: Ever notice how small 15 minutes looks when you’re scrolling on your phone and how big 15 minutes looks when it is spent on reading the bible? How short an hour is when watching Netflix and how incredibly long when praying? One of my current classes is requiring students to spend thirty…
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MISUNDERSTOOD ON EVERY SIDE
In reading through the book of Matthew again recently, I am struck by Jesus’ incredible patience with people. How did he keep it together when, day after day, just about everyone around him completely misunderstood just about everything he said and did? And that included his own disciples, who were with him every waking hour. It seems like the vast majority of the crowds that gathered just became fixated on Jesus’ ability to heal their physical issues. Here’s Jesus – the Son of God in the flesh, come to set humans right with the God who created them – and…
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SPIRITUAL JUNKFOOD
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declared, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” (Matt 5:6) The Lord desires to fill us with true righteousness. Therefore, we need to be on guard against the cheap knock-off, self-righteousness. If God’s righteousness is what truly satisfies our hunger and thirst for right relationship with Him and others, then self-righteousness is the spiritual equivalent of junk food. Dictionary.com’s definition is right on target for what I mean by “self-righteousness”: Being “confident of one’s own righteousness, especially when smugly moralistic and intolerant of the opinions and…
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“IT’S JUST A DOG!”
That’s what some stranger yelled at me a few mornings ago. But “dog” was drawn out to make room for as much condescension as possible: “It’s just a dawwwwwg!” I couldn’t tell where the voice came from exactly, but it must have been from an open window of a house across the street. His comment was prompted by seeing me take several selfies with Ginger as we had just finished a one mile run while the sun was rising: I took so many because I figured if I took a couple dozen, I MIGHT end up with one where I had…
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ANSWERED PRAYERS
“How many aspects of your current life are answers to your past prayers?” I heard someone pose this question recently and it made me realize how prone we are to taking even the most incredible blessings for granted. It is a question that should reorient us to the reality of every good gift coming from God. It is a question that should spark renewed gratitude. Ongoing gratitude. If you’re anything like me, your list likely includes most of the basics, if not all: daily bread, shelter, transportation, meaningful work (and if not, some sort of income at least). At the…
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MISSION RESOURCE INTERNATIONAL
Dave Ketchum started his own mission organization many years ago right here in Columbus, Indiana. He calls it Mission Resource International and I am just getting to know him and the organization, so I am short on too many details yet. MRI raises funds to send overseas – mostly to poor communities in Ghana currently – in order to supply micro loans to individuals who are seeking to create a livelihood for themselves and their families. The loans have been distributed for a number of years – with a pretty impressive repayment record. On top of the loan ministry, recently…
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CORNFIELD
This afternoon I spent an hour in a cornfield a couple of miles east of Columbus. “Visit a farm” was not even on my To Do List. Maybe it was a God thing. Time will tell. This morning I had started reading When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor … and Yourself by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. The premise of the book is that simply handing money to the poor is not actually helping them … and may even cause more harm than good. “Simply having sufficient material things is not the same as ‘poverty…
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BRACELET
My wrist feels naked tonight. This morning, after my prayer time, I found a pocket knife in a drawer and used it to cut a bracelet that had been on my wrist for the past 8 years. It was a gift from a dear Haitian friend. Maybe I have been shaped by my love of literature, but I tend to see life in terms of symbols; this bracelet represented my connection to Haiti. And I had planned to wear it until the strings broke on their own. (I wish I knew what it was made of because it is one…
