I live in full sight of Highland Mountain. Just one of the many in the Chugach range, it sits at 3360 feet according to the internet. While not a particularly tall as mountains go, nevertheless the Alaskan sun can barely peek over it in winter. To me, it looks primitive and wild, like the old black and white pictures of Alaska that I used to look at as a child. Squat and rugged, Highland Mountain, as minor as it is in the realm of mountains, seems immovable to me. And yet it has been moved several thousand times in the…
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Fear is almost a bad word in Christianity today. Reminders that the Bible has the words, Do not fear, 365 times between its covers have become a justification to eradicate it from our lives. And it is true that to live in perpetual anxiety is crippling. However, God gave us each of our emotions purposefully and for good cause. Fear has its place in our souls for several reasons. We would be wise to examine what we fear and why. The absence of fear is as much or more of a mental disorder than being flooded by it. Psychopaths and…
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This post is my first on a series of gifts that we generally don’t want, and I am starting with pain. I don’t suggest that all pain is a gift. In fact, too much pain, whether physical, emotional, or mental, can harm or even kill you. But life without pain would prove dangerous indeed. Pain acts as a warning, an instructor, and even as a chastening, and most humans need all three. Pain as a Warning: If our bodies felt no pain whatsoever, we would be at severe risk. That is how leprosy endangers its victims. Because their nerves are…