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fake Christmas
Christmas just isn’t what it used to be. I was in a department store recently and was disappointed to see how cheap the Christmas ornaments looked. Everything is made of plastic. Artificial trees come out of the box with lights already attached. Ornaments look like plastic toys. Even the store Santas look as if they’re…
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Advent
Since we’re getting close to Christmas, I thought I’d talk about Christmas and the Advent season. Whether people want to admit it or not, Christmas is fundamentally a Christian holiday. It’s a day when Christians around the world celebrate the birth of their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The exact date of Jesus’ birth is…
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Daylight-saving Time
In 1784 Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to the Journal de Paris in which he sarcastically accused Parisians of staying up all night and sleeping until noon. Franklin proposed they go to bed early and wake up at dawn to save money on the cost of candles and oil for lamps which they had to…
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Cave dwellers
You can’t drive across the U.S. without seeing billboards advertising local caves and caverns. Even my home state of Florida has a tourist attraction at the Florida Caverns State Park in Marianna. Most of these caverns have spectacular, spacious chambers adorned with stalactites hanging from the ceiling and stalagmites rising from the floor. These caves…
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Cicada Killers
One thing I like about summer is listening to cicadas. Cicadas are large, funny-looking, and slow-moving insects. They add a pleasant droning sound to our summer evenings. Cicadas are relatively harmless. They are also defenseless. Since they move slowly and can’t defend themselves, cicadas are vulnerable to attack, especially by their deadly enemy, the cicada-killer…
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Autumn Meditation
A few years ago, I took a day off from work for a time of reflection and meditation. I went to a park and spent time thinking and praying. As I walked beneath huge oaks and maples in full autumn splendor, listened to the gently rustle of wind-blown leaves, and felt the warmth of sunshine…
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Bloopers
You’ve heard of sports bloopers. You know—those film clips of football players being hit and flipping head over heels, or the one that shows two baseball outfielders trying to catch the same fly ball and end up smacking into each other while the ball lands in between them. Sometimes preachers make bloopers too. These are…
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Broken Spoke
Sometimes we need a little maintenance.
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Who’s your hero?
A hero has been described as someone who fights for a good cause or makes a positive difference in the world. I know a boy whose hero is his dad who is a firefighter. He truly admires his dad who risks his life fighting fires and rescuing people from burning buildings, and when he grows…
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How Captain Ahab’s madness can help us to set good goals
If you’re familiar with the story of Moby Dick, you know that Capt. Ahab’s dream of killing the whale became a nightmare. It’s a story that shows us that having the wrong goals, can lead to tragedy. In Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick, Melville tells the tragic story about Captain Ahab, a whaling-ship captain…
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Sailing on the Clearwater
A few years ago, my family and I were invited to sail on the Clearwater. The Clearwater is a 106 ft. sloop, a sailboat that sails up and down the Hudson River to promote environmental awareness and protection of the Hudson River. The idea for such a sailboat came from folk singer and environmental activist…
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Bears and Lightning Storms
When my children were younger, we’d often take vacations by going camping. Since we lived in New Jersey, we’d camp at various national parks and state parks around the east coast. One of the parks we camped at was Spruce Run Recreation Area not far from Clinton, New Jersey. When we entered the park, one…
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Are We Missing Something?
Recently, I went to our church association’s website: https://www.efca.org/ to see what I could find about climate change and global warming. My search ended without finding any mention of global warming and/or climate change in its archives. I thought this omission was curious, so I started to search other church denomination’s websites to see if…
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Bad Java
Don’t settle for “cheap” faith
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Ants in the Desert
We should plan for retirement
Got any book recommendations?