PEACE AND QUIET

Running errands with my over-active, over-talkative four-year-old son challenged my reservoir of parenting patience. As we drove the fifteen miles into town and then from bank to post office to grocery store, Luke rehearsed of every thought that had crossed his mind since birth.
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Blessing Rising from Rubble

I was a missionary in Haiti for seven months in 1983. Years later I took a church group there. I developed relationships with many Haitians. Some were good friends. I’ve been to the areas in and around Port-au-Prince and know all the street names and places that are in the news—they were the nicest parts of town. I’ve been to buildings that are now flattened, stayed in houses that slid down the hillside. Recent photos of the earthquake’s devastation bring me to tears. I so badly wish I could be there right now.
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Priorities

As I sat in the comfy chair I call my “prayer chair,” my attention was drawn to the winter-bare tree in my front yard. The sky had just begun to lighten with the first hints of the soon-rising sun, and  I noticed a bird perched on a branch. At first I didn’t pay much attention, because I was involved in going through my prayer list. But then the little bird shivered. Something inside me went, “Aaawwwww, the poor thing!”
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Loving in the Margins

Today the waiter who served me at lunch was a skinny college boy whose clothes hung off of him.  He wore an odd looking hat and had piercings. He was very kind to me. The girl who took my money had dyed black hair, black fingernails, multiple piercings, and a leather bracelet, but she sang a little tune to herself and she also was very kind to me. It surprised me that they were kind, and convicted me that I was surprised. I realized that they didn’t have to be kind. I was wearing a suit and looked like an upper middle class lily-white snob. I was convicted to the point of tears when I realized that all of my life I have lived without tenderness, without humility, without gentleness toward so many. I thought I was better than them. Oh, no, I never said that out loud…not with my mouth anyway.
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All the World is a Coloring Book!

My kids have a book that we’ve read for years. Our last child, a 7 year-old boy, is the one enjoying it now. It’s called, God Thought of It First. It tells about all kinds of things that are common to us that God thought of first (helicopters, hummingbirds…).
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