Featured
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Of God and Grocery Carts
When the Lord first nudged me to wheel the grocery cart into the stall specified for them, I did it without question. But then there was a next time, and a next time. Every time I went to the grocery store, I felt the Holy Spirit gently reminding me to put the cart back. I found it a little irritating. I have to confess that I very rarely put the cart back before this, and my conscience did not suffer for it. I wasn’t inconsiderate. I put the carts where they could not damage any cars. I often anchored them to the middle island nearest me so they would not…
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Confessions of a Five Year Old Runaway
My confessions start when I was very young. It all started with the maroon polyester pantsuit. Feeling ugly and uncomfortable, I remember sitting on the sidewalk refusing to go anywhere in that garish monster of an outfit, wishing I could scrape the itchy thing off like Job’s boils. And then the persistent diet of fried eggs in the morning. Is anything worse than the viscous undercooked egg white slipping down the throat? It became clear to me that it was time to part ways. I filled the old stained Samsonite suitcase with all my belongings and somehow managed to haul it down the green shag-carpeted stairs of the tiny apartment…
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Naked and Afraid: The Genesis Episodes and Shame
Naked and Afraid: The Genesis Episodes The red squiggly lines of spell check lets me know that unshaming is not a word, and I am a disgrace for using it. Even my computer shames me. Shaming others has become something of a national pastime. Even our country, the United States is famous for baseball, apple pie, and internet humiliation. I suppose that shame’s allure is in the illusion of control. If we mortify people effectively enough, then they won’t do things that either they ought not or that we wish they wouldn’t. But how effective is it really? How safe does shame really keep us? Shame sneers at human frailty…
