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SPENT – Replenished, Restored – Moments in the Life of Elijah
The lack is so impacting that you don’t think you can keep going. You want to give up. You may have even decided to give up and in the most extreme of moments you make the decision TO give up. You have had it – the pressure is too great. For whatever reason you can’t go on. Maybe you did not plan well; maybe you are a player in circumstances beyond your control; maybe you made some really bad choices and now have to live with the consequences. Whatever the cause and whoever is responsible the fact is that you are done. You absolutely have nothing left to give…
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We Grieve With The Town of LIttle Elm, Texas
We are grateful to Dorothy Burton, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Christians in Public Service for permission to reprint her piece today "Weeping WIth Those Who Weep"; originally posted on her web site, see below. “Our prayers are with the family of Little Elm Detective Jerry Walker. Another brave officer killed in the line of duty Tuesday, January 17. There are no words, only grief, as we grieve for his family, especially his children, ranging in age from 22 to a few months who are left without their dad. We grieve for his entire family left with an emptiness that only can be filled by the love and comfort…
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First Responder
On January 15, 2009, Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger makes an emergency landing in New York's Hudson River after US Airways Flight 1549 strikes a flock of geese. Miraculously, all of the 155 passengers and crew survive the harrowing ordeal, and Sullenberger becomes a national hero. This event became known as “The Miracle on the Hudson”. The rescue of the 155 passengers after the safe landing could not have happened without the immediate help of the first responders – Coast Guard boats, the New York Island ferries, the New York police and water rescue teams of police divers – all poised and ready for action not knowing when they woke up…
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Resilience – Honoring And Learning From
Paul had it. The Russian women in a training project over a period of 10 years have it. Cross country runners who compete in hot, humid 90 degree weather have it. Against all odds and with a strong temptation to quit these ones persevere with God inspiring resilience. Paul had plenty of reasons to quit but he kept going… “in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and dishonor, bad report, good…
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It Is Well With My Soul
On September 7, 2016 – 450 high school students from Christ Presbyterian Academy in Nashville, Tennessee came to their beloved Latin and Bible teacher’s home to sing and worship with him and his wife outside his window. Their teacher, in the last weeks of a long battle with cancer, had no treatment options remaining. The subsequent video of this event has gone viral with an estimated 35 million hits having been picked up by the national news -ABC, Good Morning American and CNN. Early Friday morning, September 15, 2016 Mr. Ellis slipped quietly from this life and into the Presence of the Lord whom he loved to worship…nor more pain,…
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Standing Side By Side, Staying On The Path, Accompanying Others
How much harder would it be to stay on the path if you were doing it all alone? How would a single mother of two sons recently divorced by her husband and left with no support stay on the path if others in the Body had not come to her aid in prayer and practical help. How would a CEO, ousted by the injustice of an abrupt coup, keep from sinking into abject despair were it not for his clinging to the power of God’s word to inform and comfort, and his group of friends in the Body of Christ rallying around him and his wife. How would the grandparents…
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Learning From the Benedictines – Why a Rule of Life?
In the late 1800’s two French Benedictine Priests were sent to Louisiana. For some reason, they were not embraced there and had to leave. The Abbott of St. Gregory’s Abbey in Shawnee, Oklahoma explained to our students that God took these two French Benedictine priests who were not wanted to a land that was not wanted to a people that were not wanted to do what He wanted to be done. Leaving Louisiana the Benedictine priests settled in Oklahoma where they began an amazing ministry to the Indian tribes that were moving into the Oklahoma territories. They started schools for the Indian children all over the territory and eventually founded…
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Two Different Narratives – Bridging the Racial Divide
Thursday night July 7, 2016 two church communities met for their regular joint meeting of two congregations: one a small house church and the other a small African American church both in Bryan, Texas situated within miles of each other. The believers in each congregation have a commitment to support each other. This particular night a foot washing was scheduled – modeling Jesus washing the disciples’ feet (John 13:1-17). The communities washed each other’s feet. They prayed together; they had fellowship together; they encouraged each other. When their meeting concluded, they left and returned to their homes. Then, the news broke about the sniper shooting of the police who were…
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Responding To and Remembering – #prayfororlando
Our hearts are stirred and broken over the mass shooting in Orlando Sunday – the deadliest mass shooting in US history which left 49 dead and 53 injured. How do you compute this? How do you make sense of it? What do you do with all the questions, the feelings of violation, the abruptness of an act of terror and the personal fear that ensues? These questions have surfaced before in the Columbine shooting, 911, Sandy Hook Elementary School, the Boston Marathon attack, at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, in San Bernadino and will likely surface again. After I turned on my phone to check the weather Sunday morning…
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Why Wait? – Waiting and “Waiting on God”
WAITING – can be as mundane as waiting for the line to move, for the traffic to untangle, for the light to turn green; or as tension filled as waiting for a phone call, for the pregnancy report, for the diagnosis, for wellness, for a job; or as poignant and anticipatory as waiting for someone to come home, for the war to be over, for God to make the next step clear. Even in this moment the idea of waiting calls up all kinds of memories and images. Who of us has not waited? It is part of the human experience and some of us weather waiting better than…