Category: Christian Faith & Life
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A Life of Service
Today is World Kindness Day. This holiday was created with the intent of building a kinder and more compassionate world through the intentional deeds of kindness and love we show to others. That’s a worthy goal. It’s all too easy to view such a day with pessimism. In our self-focused society—driven by the need to…
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No Longer Any Sea
Today is World Freedom Day. This special day is an observance of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall—the vast and terrible wall of barbed wire, concrete, and watch towers separating East from West Germany, dividing friends and family members from 1961–1989. I can’t even imagine the feeling of being separated from loved ones for…
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The Way Home
Today is Marooned Without a Compass Day. With all the technology at our fingertips and in our pockets, we can know where we are at any given time. It’s practically impossible to get lost anymore! Or so I thought. For the most part, I work remotely. But once a month, I drive from Appleton to…
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364 Days of Devotion
[This blog post is derived from an email correspondence between the writer of this post and Pastor Frederic Berger of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Plymouth, Nebraska.] “What if everyone in our church family could be thinking about Jesus every single day? How awesome would that be!” That “what if” burned in the hearts of…
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What Might Luther Have Read?
The sheer volume of Martin Luther’s writings is astounding. According to Britannica, he wrote a third of the books published in the German language during the first half of the 1500s.[1] The first 55 volumes of his written works in the English translation altogether are over 22,000 pages long—and that’s not even everything he wrote!…
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Searching for Meaning
Today is Evaluate Your Life Day. From a secular standpoint, this is meant to be a day to take stock of where you are in life. How’s it going? Is it everything you’ve ever wanted and more? Have you achieved all your hopes and dreams? If you haven’t, now is your chance to reevaluate your…
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The Pastor
[From Our Worth to Him: Devotions for Christian Worship by Mark Paustian. All rights reserved.] “Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.” – Acts 20:28 Martin Luther commented that people would surely “run their feet bloody” if they thought there was a place where they might go and…
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The Flock’s Responsibility
October is Pastor Appreciation Month. In a previous post (you can read it here), we highlighted a pastor’s calling by building on selected verses from 1 Peter chapter 5. A pastor’s responsibility is to shepherd God’s flock and do everything he can to make sure the flock under his care gets home to heaven. How?…