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This time of year, I spend many Saturday mornings on the side of a soccer field. Our kids play on Davenport Parks and Rec teams, coached by dedicated parents who make up for any coaching deficits with a whole lot of love and care for our kids. I love…
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Two frightening storms have rushed through and devastated Nova Scotia and Florida coastal communities this month. The first was Canada’s largest natural disaster in 19 years. As I write the second storm is still underway. Hurricane Ian is currently l…
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I’ve recently come to the conclusion that there’s a conspiracy going on among companies that produce digital clocks. Namely, that they’re aiming to make us sleep later. This dawned on me the other day when I stretched my arm over to the night table t…
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In recent months, I have experienced a reality that happens to many of us as we age. At first, I denied it and ignored it. But after too many months of squinting at my text messages and accordioning out my arms singing from a hymnal, I bought myself…
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Two small nails – that’s all it was. And neither one went into the wall easily. One resisted but finally settled in with just a bit of a bend in it, nicely positioned to hold a memorial plaque. The other bent more dramatically and stopped penetrating…
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It was one of those heart-stopping, stomach-dropping, ‘uh-oh’ moments. I had just moved to the Quad Cities and was taking advantage of a rare 15-minute window of time to speed home and let the dog out. I was in a hurry, so I rushed in, put the dog on…
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In my next life, I want to be a paleontologist. Not that every day is stimulating for them. They can work beside archaeologists for years, poring over the same rock terrain, only to come up with nothing. But when a fossil of significance is found, th…
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A few weeks ago, my dad and I took a quick road trip to Chicago. I dropped him off at O’Hare International Airport where he caught a flight to visit my sister in Baltimore. That doesn’t sound like anything exceptionally noteworthy, I’m sure. While ai…
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At a recent medical appointment, the tech covered the silence while prepping a procedure by asking if I had big plans for the day. “Just headed for work.” “Oh; where do you work?” “I’m one of the pastors at St. Paul Lutheran in Davenport.” <long…
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A few weeks ago, we lost the internet at our house. To fix it, we needed a technician to come out, and so for five days, we lost our connectivity. Like so many of us, we have become utterly dependent on those fiber cables that bring us our music, ent…
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Two of our four worship services this weekend at St. Paul are jazz services (9:00 & 11:15 a.m.). It’s the 26th consecutive year (minus two for the pandemic) that our distinguished group of jazz folks from Chicago will lead us in worship. It’s als…
I have a special music playlist on my phone titled ‘Amen.’” It’s a list of songs I compiled that help me better understand who God is and who I am to God. Some of these songs fit the “spiritual/religious” genre, like “How Can I Keep from Singing?” by…