When Buffalo Bills’ safety Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field in Cincinnati Jan. 2, the injury proved so shocking it ended the game. Afterwards, I felt amazed at how quickly the value of prayer and prayer itself became an acceptable public practice. The week following the game, our local newspaper carried a syndicated editorial cartoon.…
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Here we are, not quite a month into Old Man Winter and already I’m dreading spring. Not the season, but the “spring forward” that will interrupt our lives the second weekend of March. Can’t they leave time alone? I refer to Daylight Savings Time (DST), that awful practice of moving our clocks ahead one hour…
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While not a New York Jets fan, I was saddened by their late-season collapse that once again doomed their chances of making the upcoming National Football League playoffs. The reason: I had hoped the team’s success would spark the New York media’s attention to a most unusual ministry to Wall Street financiers, led by former…
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While its crowd-sourced funding and modest production budgets have made The Chosen a quiet success until now, its recent “blow out the doors” performance in theaters have given this TV series new visibility. In case you missed it, the first two episodes of season 3 were packaged for theaters and ranked third nationally in box…
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If you are searching for a last-minute Christmas gift, I recommend Jim Watkins’s amusing book, If You’re Not Dead, You’re Not Done: Live with Purpose at Any Age. One thing I have learned about passing traditional retirement age and still working is that life’s challenges continue. Whoever thinks that things get easier as the miles…
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Since it has only a few hundred year-round residents, Harpers Ferry has had a rather outsized impact on U.S. history. It was the site of abolitionist John Brown’s ill-fated attempt in 1859 to free slaves in western Virginia. What we learned on a recent trip there is that Brown’s efforts were not necessarily in vain.…
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Together again. A great theme for Thanksgiving 2022, as we gather to give thanks. It expresses how we have conquered an irrational fear of sickness and each other as we emerge from the pandemic panic that erupted in early 2020. For me, that became clear in mid-October when I took a friend to a spiritual…
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As a nation, we are dangerously close to losing the ability to laugh at ourselves. We have forgotten the purpose of satire. That is sad, for when we can’t find amusement in human foibles, we become serious scolds. Exhibit A is the politically correct trolls on the internet, seeking grievances for which to grind their…
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Sixth in a series. Read part five. When the deacon and his wife came to our house to counsel me about salvation through Christ, the youth pastor and his wife (who remain friends to this day) came along to talk with my wife. Unsure about this “Christian thing,” my wife held out. Meanwhile, the deacon…
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Fifth in a series. Read Part Four. As much as we liked the church we were visiting, we only went every two or three weeks. Providentially, we skipped services the Sunday morning my stepson called. I listened as my wife talked. As clueless and insensitive as I can be, I could still tell from her…
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