Category: Uncategorized
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The Door
“How does a whole book get inside my Kindle while I’m just sitting here?” my mother asked me. I wanted to to tell her exactly what she wanted to know, but I was as puzzled as she was, so I laughed, and said, “It’s a miracle of modern technology, Mom.” When I think of how…
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Echoes
When my granddaughter was three years old we went for a walk that took us through a brick enclosure where our voices produced an echo that frightened her. We talked about the echo and she said that she didn’t want to walk that way again: “When we go to the zoo, and you can show…
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St. Paul
In the book of the First Thessalonians St. Paul writes of the end of the world and the second coming of Christ: “We who are still alive, who are left will be caught up together…in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.” (I Thessalonians…
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Jabez
A single verse in the book of I Chronicles tells the whole story of Jabez, a man who reached high for relief from what he regarded to be a curse upon him. It was his name, Jabez, which means “Pain,” for his mother had struggled in pain at his birth. “ ‘Oh, that you would…
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The Aoudad
Aoudads are sheep with curving horns native to North Africa, but introduced on other continents and states, including Texas. They resemble hairy goats. On Monday I watched an aoudad, ( or“Barbary sheep”) bathing in Possum Kingdom Lake, while a tall white heron stood by in the water as a witness. It was a scene that…
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Delicious Fruit
The World is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon. William Wordsworth, 1807 Alexander Bell invented the telephone in 1876. When Wordsworth wrote “The World is too Much With us”…
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Of Praise and Swimming
In the summer my oldest sister Nancy used to teach Red Cross swimming at a nearby municipal pool. It was one of her first jobs as a teenager and she took it very seriously. Half way through her first summer she came home and told us that she had discovered that praising the children for…
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Shopping For a Soul
Once while I was shopping before Christmas I found a lovely white cardigan sweater with white embroidery and made a mental note to return to the store after Christmas to see if it was still there and on sale. As it happened, I did return, and to my surprise and great pleasure, the sweater was…
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Toad to Wait
Toad to Wait A friend sent me a and made bookmark picturing a frog, that read, “I was toad to wait here.” It is a pleasure to slip into my book, but to my seven year old grandson it is hilariously funny and worth reading over and over again. I keep it in “Prince Caspian”,…
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Struggle
For most of my life I have believed that Jesus’ words, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48), were either hyperbole from Jesus, or a mistake in the transcribing of the Bible. It occurred to me that no one knew better than he the universality of human imperfection. From one struggle…
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