Dreams Aren’t Free

I believe God wants us to dream and follow big, outrageous dreams. But let’s never fool ourselves. Dream-following has costs. On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered one of history’s most famous speeches. In perhaps its most recognized line, Dr. King proclaimed: I have a dream that my four little children will […]

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End

Happy Monday! A Sunday school class we visited this weekend got me thinking about today’s word-of-the-week… END If you’ve hung around the bible at all, you’ve heard of The Beatitudes. (Matthew 5:3-11) It’s always good to hear familiar verses phrased in new ways. The first of The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3) says: “Blessed are the poor […]

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The Dream Center

The Dream Center in Carbondale isn’t what I expected. The building’s kind of nondescript. Inside, things are plain. The furniture’s a bit worn around the edges. It’s serviceable, but certainly not fancy. At first glance, one might feel that the concerned people need to change the furniture, maybe buy a fancy table, drawer pedestal, or […]

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Spiritual Cholesterol

My friend Dick Foth has a way with phrases. Recently he described a spiritual ailment called “hardening of the categories (HTC).” Those afflicted with this disease lose the ability to see individuals. Instead, they see people only in terms of their categories. It’s like the physical disease in which hardening of the arteries narrows the […]

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He Likes Me!

Don Miller wrote a penetrating reflection about how his faith has evolved in the past decade or so. I paused a long time over one simple heading: Jesus likes me I believe Jesus loves me. It’s in the words of the simplest children’s song. Jesus loves me This I know For the bible Tells me […]

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Right

Happy Monday! A stranger’s death prompts today’s word-of-the-week… RIGHT By nearly any definition, Aaron Swartz was a computer prodigy, a brilliant, eccentric young man. As a teenager he created some of the backbone Internet systems we take for granted and later campaigned for online transparency and freedom. You can read briefly about his life, legal […]

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Stone Her!

I’ve been thinking all week about our pastor’s weekend sermon. He talked about the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery. John 8:2-11 There’s so much to the story, but I can’t get past one fact: the Pharisees were willing to stone this woman—to death! Her life mattered less than their desire to […]

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We’re Surrounded!

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid is one of my top-ten favorite movies of all time. In the final scene, Butch and Sundance are surrounded. After some concluding wisecracks, they boldly confront the entire Bolivian army in one final, futile last stand. Earlier there’s a wonderful scene, including a memorable 60’s song, in which Butch […]

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