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The Soul Forming Power of Everydayness
Don’t discount the mundane, the 24/7. It may be the very place God is going to meet you. You may feel imprisoned by the ordinary in your life but He wants to empower you to look beyond and see His presence in all things. Brother Lawrence modeled this – living in the Presence of Christ as an ordinary kitchen worker in a French monastery in an earlier time (1600- 1691) torn and uncertain as our own day. During his boyhood the Thirty Years war began, which engulfed all of Europe. From his conversations and letters, published and translated in The Practice the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence intimately shares his…
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Why Our Work Matters to God
“The Christian shoemaker does his duty, not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.” — Martin Luther Work. It greets us at the dawn of each new day. Whether you serve in a church or para-church organization, business community, or at home, much of our life is consumed with work. It causes us to rise early and stay late. It compels us to do more, get better, grow stronger. Occasionally, we sense the glory of work as God intended it. We feel as Eric Liddell did during his Olympic training when…
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God of Small Things
We equate smallness with insignificance. So we celebrate birthdays but not ordinary days. We introduce ourselves to the CEO instead of our new officemate. We applaud graduation speeches and poetic sermons yet hush the little girl sitting next to us. In so doing we make a value statement about what matters in life: bigness, brilliance, and uniqueness. But what if the moments that mattered most were the quiet ones? What if the people of greatest significance were those without nameplates or titles? What if the most impactful words we ever heard were uttered in whispers and high pitches? Flip through the pages of scripture and you’ll find simplicity celebrated and…
