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Where We Will Have Trouble
About ten years ago, my wife and I took our first cruise vacation. Within a couple of hours aboard the Norwegian Jewel out of Galveston, I thought, “Now this is how to travel.” Cruises offer something different: instead of tackling airports and TSA lines, you just drive, board, and ease into vacation mode, plates in…
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The Lower Lights
Spring break in Manchester, New Hampshire wasn’t part of our plan—but sometimes the best journeys aren’t. My wife and I used frequent flyer miles for a trip as far as New England. Hotels and rental cars were surprisingly cheap, and though it was winter for locals, for us from the Texas coast, it was an…
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Facing Fears, Trusting God
For me, watching “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” is as much a rite of fall as carving a pumpkin or feeling that first snap of cool autumn air. There’s just something about these little traditions—they have a way of rooting themselves in your memory. As a kid, Halloween meant dressing up in the absolute…
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The Shadow of Grace
For several years in my forties, I started my days before sunrise—out the door by 5 a.m., paper coffee cup in hand, before breakfast and ahead of the school-day rush. I’d walk a few blocks down cracked, uneven sidewalks to a small park by a wide concrete drainage culvert. On either side, a narrow, grassy…
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Seeing Like the Samaritan
Several years into my teaching career, I found that a personal connection could transform even the most indifferent students—especially when teaching about the Great Depression. For my parents, especially my much older father, those years were vivid realities that shaped our family and, eventually, me. History in textbooks, I realized, was mostly words and statistics—dry…
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Embracing the True Father
A Christian writer named A.W. Tozer wrote, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Earlier in my walk with God, I wouldn’t have given that much weight. God is God; he doesn’t change. So he is who he is. That much is true—but Tozer was…
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A Worthless Religion
When I was in my twenties, I worked at a metal supply company. The people I worked with were friendly, but like most folks, they lived according to what was right in their own eyes. I tried not to be “holier than thou”—just wanted to walk with God without making a show of it. One…
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Waiting with Confidence
If the forecast holds, Houston will receive its first true taste of fall this Wednesday. There is an unmistakable anticipation in the air—not unlike Linus waiting patiently in the pumpkin patch for the Great Pumpkin to appear—a hope that grows even when it seems like nothing is happening. In June, my wife and I visited…
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The Demand For a Designer
Many people grow up with skewed notions of God. Perhaps the most common is the idea that He doesn’t exist. Imagine inviting the world’s best engineers and architects to stand with me before Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. There I announce—with conviction—that I built the whole thing—dam, turbines, generators—by myself. The reaction is instant—a…
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The Important Speaks Softly
The world is crowded with voices, all talking at once—some whispering in my head, others shouting from the TV and from feeds engineered to keep me staring, stewing, and scrolling. If Christians have an enemy—and we do—this noise is not incidental; it’s strategy, because distraction is a remarkably efficient thief. Awake, and my mind is…
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Fresh Grace Daily
I am a child of God. He is the Lord, the maker of the heavens and the earth, and there is no other. The fact that I can call him my Father has nothing to do with my merit—it’s all about his grace. In this context, grace is unearned favor. I can’t claim I’ve done…
