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Monday 29th April 2013
What It Means to Let Go and Let God (A Letter to Daughters)
Dear daughters, We were never meant to carry our burdens alone. That’s what it I thought when I watched the two of you to carry that pail of rocks to the shore. You were two little girls, wanting to help carry the weight of someone else’s world for a few hundred steps. I hope you... ...
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Friday 4th May 2012
Sacred Storm
When the rain begins to fall in thundering sheets, I’m driving through a parking lot in the city. For a moment, this creeping line of cars stops, and I just sit there, with the engine idling. I squint through my rain-spotted windshield. There are people, everywhere. Without umbrellas. And ...
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Friday 27th May 2011
The Final Bell Tolls
I stood in the bathroom, wringing wet, when the telephone rang. Jan, a widow from town, dialed our number. The men had rung her church’s bell for the very last time, and they were lowering it from the tower, and it would never ring here again. She needed to process the pain a bit with ...
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Monday 24th January 2011
Farmer in the Kitchen
I watch him cut the onion, methodical, like when he carves rows into fields that give way in spring. Shadows have stretched across the yard, and over my man’s stalk-stubbled frozen fields, now hibernating. His hands still crave work, even when acres sleep. He announced it to the whole car ...
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Wednesday 10th June 2009
Garage Time
Some of the most profound revelations of my adult life have happened in the confines of a garage. I might even go so far as to call our garage Holy Ground — a sacred space without frills or decoration. Just four walls, four wicker chairs and four neighbors gathering as the moon rises on ...
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Friday 8th May 2009
Since Day One
I give humble thanks for a merciful God who held back rain … … for stitched paper bags in a truck bed, full of promise. … for Iowa dirt (our own Holy Ground) … … for this faithful steward, eager to seeYour hand at work in an Iowa cornfield.He trusts You … And ...
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Friday 24th April 2009
Fear Not
I was miles away before I realized what I had forgotten. My thoughts were preoccupied by a grocery list, a letter to mail, a song pulsing through the mini-van speakers. I drove along the highway under mid-afternoon sun, with daily distractions and songs of praise collaborating to put space ...
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Friday 10th April 2009
It’s Friday. “But God…”
I don’t want to stand here, at the foot of the cross. Standing in the stench of my own sin, now pooling in red, and watching Someone else pay the price for it. The blood, the torture, the gory figure on an executioner’s cross. And then these haunting words from Jesus: “Eloi, ...
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Wednesday 1st April 2009
Come As You Are
I needed cups: 35 of them. Each one different from the other. I searched the china cupboard and found a goblet given as a wedding gift. I grabbed my favorite wine glass, then another standing beside it: a handpainted gift from a friend. I retrieved a child’s yellow smiley-face cup, and a ...
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Tuesday 24th March 2009
Vignettes of an Urban Plunge
I returned home Sunday night from a short mission trip called “Urban Plunge,” where rural folks like me plunge headlong into the reality of urban suffering, a mere three hours from our doorsteps. On the streets of Omaha, Neb., I witnessed the beauty of irony among the homeless, the ...
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For the High Calling: “I had over-yessed myself.”