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For many people, this is the time of year for vacations, a week at camp, or a trip to visit family. I don’t know how you prepare for a trip or vacation, but my first action is always to make a list of everything I need to pack. It’s the only way I fe…
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I was stopped at the intersection of Kimberly and Eastern here in Davenport a few weeks ago, and saw the large sign for Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore. I looked at the sign, with a whole lot of gratitude for this store that sells used or repurposed b…
“Walk the talk” has been a popular phrase for a long time. It’s one way we celebrate the importance of actions backing up words. Conventional walk-the-talk wisdom suggests that what we do with our lives matters more than what we say. Deeds trounce wo…
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I have the small world song from the Disney World ride stuck in my head. Many other things need to be taking up residence in my brain in this season of life, but that catchy little tune has prime real estate. The idea of floating in a dimly lit tunne…
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I was a very patriotic kid. For my 9th birthday, I received a flagpole for our front yard. It was exactly what I wanted. My grandfather assembled it out of some old pipe, painted it, and set it up in our yard. It even had a beautiful gold-painted ea…
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When I was a senior in high school, I was part of the production of our school’s musical—Annie Get Your Gun. It’s a somewhat-whimsical story of the fictional sharpshooter Annie Oakley, taking place in the Wild West. I played flute in the pit orchestr…
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One afternoon over a decade ago, I was cleaning up after serving lunch at a soup kitchen for poor, elderly Russians in the middle of Moscow. I was wiping down the tables as a pair of women were getting ready to go, tying their scarves and packaging t…
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While attending Yale Divinity School years ago, I had the fun of playing on the intramural hockey team for Calhoun College, one of Yale’s undergraduate colleges. My teammates were kind enough to embrace me as a de facto “hounie,” even if our lives on…
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Earlier this spring, I attended the Festival of Homiletics in San Antonio, Texas. Homiletics is a fancy, $20-word way of saying preaching and sermon writing. This week-long event is meant to educate and uplift pastors across all denominations. Basica…
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Last weekend, along with a few other folks from St. Paul, I attended the Southeastern Iowa Synod Assembly at Lutheran Church of Hope in West Des Moines. As Lutheran Christians, we believe the church is much bigger than one congregation. This is what…
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In recent years, the idea of creating a personal “bucket list” has grown in popularity. The concept is rather simple—identify things you’d like to accomplish, see, or experience and attempt to check those items off your to-do list before you, say, “k…
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A few weeks ago, my then-4-year-old daughter and I were coloring at our dining room table. I noticed that our vase full of cheerful, yellow daffodils were much too quickly becoming droopy and brown. I commented how sad it was that they were so pretty…