Closer To Heaven
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Photo: Studiomill Recently, my son, his friend, and I did a musical medley at our church’s talent show. Granted, there were no talent scouts present, nor did anyone expect to be signing any contracts at the end of the show. It was intended to be an evening of fun and fellowship and that is what it was.
Photo: Erika Thorpe It was months before I even laid eyes on the Gateway Arch. Partly due to the weather and partly due to the fact we live south of the city, I just never got around to heading downtown
Photo: Noriko Cooper It was a cold, rainy winter morning in Santiago, Chile. Our entire family was up very early that morning. We were heading to the airport where Dad would embark on a 14-hour flight to New York. Dad had secretly planned this trip without telling anyone, not even my mother. For years, he had worked in the American-owned copper mine companies in northern Chile and then in foundries in Santiago.
Photo: Thomas Picard Do you have a talent that is sitting on a shelf—or buried in the ground, as Jesus describes in his parable from Matthew 25? There’s a principle that is true for any investor who reads Robert Kiyosaki books or who has spiritual abilities they might use in God’s Church.
Photo:Carmen Cordelia “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is His faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22,23)
Photo: Justyna Furmanczyk Browsing the Internet, I recently came across several short but fascinating stories. In England near the close of the 16th Century, one of the pallbearers carrying the body of Matthew Wall to his grave tripped. As a result, the other pallbearers dropped the coffin. Matthew Wall revived and went on to live for several more years! In the 17th Century, a Scottish lady, Marjorie Elphistone, died and was buried. When grave robbers dug up her body in order to steal her jewelry, Marjorie groaned. The startled thieves ran for their lives. Marjorie awakened, walked home and outlived her husband by six years! A similar incident happened in 1674 to another Marjorie (Halcrow) who was buried in a shallow grave by a sexton who intended to return shortly to take her jewelry. While attempting to cut a ring off her finger, Marjorie awoke. She went on to give birth and raise two sons. Given up for dead, these three individuals were buried alive but rose to live again! In a similar way, the ordinance of Christian baptism symbolizes both death and new life. In the book of Romans (chapters 5 and 6), the apostle Paul explains this in the following way. God demonstrated amazing love for us by sending Jesus to die on the cross in our place. Death was the outcome for sin (disobedience) but out of God’s great mercy, Christ was allowed to shoulder that consequence on our behalf.
Photo: Afonso Lima The wrong runway. How could that happen? Did the pilots talk together about the fact that, in the pre-dawn, the runway was not lighted?
Photo: Studiomill “He will be.” These three words hold such strength for me today.
Photo: MorgueFile I planted tomatoes last month. Well—at least—I thought I planted tomatoes.
Photo: Dani Simmonds “I wish I could just hear a voice from heaven telling me which choice to make,” a friend recently confided to me. “It’s so hard trying to figure out God’s will!” While most of us don’t hear voices from heaven, we do want to know God’s will and to make decisions accordingly
