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Of Trees and Tapestries
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion—to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the…
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Loose Threads Require Redemption…
If I had to choose a favorite book in the New Testament, it would be a tough choice between the books of Romans and Ephesians but, in the end, I think I would have to go with Ephesians. That’s because, in its six short chapters, Paul lays out for us God’s grand plan for all humanity and in case you haven’t picked up on this yet, I am all about understanding His “grand plan.” In fact, I am so eager and determined to learn as much as I can about it that I have become very much like the little kid who tags along after her father, nagging him…
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…And More Loose Threads
Loose threads…we all have them in our lives, you know. Some of them may be hopes, dreams, or aspirations that have never been fulfilled or, as in the case of my mother, they may have been the result of decisions that were made which didn’t turn out quite the way we had intended. But just because they show up in our lives, that doesn’t mean that they are always bad things. As we saw last time, the loose threads in my mother’s life were the results of a decision that she had made and even though that decision didn’t bring the results that she had hoped for, in the…
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Loose Threads…
When I was very young, my mother took a job as a school bus driver so that she could buy two things: a Royal typewriter and a Singer sewing machine. Not long after she bought the typewriter, she enrolled in, and later completed, the typing and shorthand classes being offered by one of the local high school’s adult education programs. Although I am sure she did exemplary work in those classes (my mother always brought home “A’s”), I don’t think she ever got to use her newly acquired skills in any vocational way. That’s because my mother’s real gifts were in cooking and managing, and it was the combination…
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EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!
If there had been newspapers back at the beginning of human history, the events that we have been discussing recently might have looked something like this when reported in the local paper. ******************************************** The Garden Gazette Serving the Greater Eden Area since the Creation of the World EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! A Crisis in the Cosmos! Yesterday, a tragedy of inestimable proportions took place in the Garden of God at Eden when a malevolent Being, previously unknown to the residents of the area, appeared in the Garden in the guise of a serpent and duped Adam and Eve, the overseers of the Garden, into disobeying the direct orders…
