Category: Current Events
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Gird for the Morning After
Post-election, there will be hand wringing, mud slinging, insult ringing, fallacy breeding, identity clinging voices that vie for your mind’s attention, your heart’s devotion and your hand’s action. We don’t need to wait for the results with dread and bated breath. We can breathe deeply and rest in God’s character now, before the results are…
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The “Give Me Money!” Corner
I had the luxury of gazing out the window across the Rift Valley, high on the escarpment somewhere between Lilongwe and Blantyre. The driver, not so much. His eyes were fixed on the road, watching for potholes. Our vehicle neared a notoriously entertaining bend in the road. As expected, children scampered all over the tarmac,…
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An Unsettling Question
I simply took it for granted. There is no other explanation or excuse. I didn’t even know what questions to ask that would help me creep out from behind the veil of intellectual certitude. When I asked the question, I didn’t understand the burden that would arise when I heard the answer. We were driving…
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Yes, but. . .
It’s like the guy who enters a coffee shop and takes a seat at a table next to a group of women. One woman begins to share her recent account of a traumatic labor and delivery. In the company of friends, she recounts how she wanted to have a natural birth at home, but after…
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The Season After
Several times a week our grandmotherly neighbor in Romania would knock on my door and deposit a warm 1.5 liter bottle of fresh milk in my hands. She was the delivery, providing the service for another neighbor whose primary means of income was the cash she received from the milk of her one cow. I…
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A murder in Romania hits close to home
Sunbeams burst through the fog that nestled among the fields and groves along a rural, two-lane road in southern Romania. On this early morning I was headed to the airport several hours away. Normally my car was loaded with three carseats and rowdy kids. On this day I felt the infrequent release of freedom that…
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George H. W. Bush, from a dung floor under a tin roof in Chebitet, Kenya
I have mental snapshots and memories of the main house on the family compound. We were living with a Kipsigis family on their rural Kenyan land, surrounded by rolling hills, grazing cows, and red dirt. In this main building, we shared meals around a long table and the boys slept in the corner, having given…
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Even This Stone – An Easter meditation; Grootfontein, Namibia
Lil’s P’s cowboy boots slipped on the side of the rock, belying its composition of pure metal. We didn’t expect to befall a space treasure on our Namibia trip, but it happened to be on a not-too-distant detour on the route from Windhoek to Rundu. We followed signs from the highway and when we arrived,…
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What Refugees Need Now
I am compelled to add my voice to millions of American citizens who are crying out, lamenting, over the refugee families who are turned away at airports, those who have been told at government offices abroad that their application is now on hold. Though I am not an expert in consular affairs, I do know…
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BREXIT in the Algarve, Portugal
In a place where grocery stores carry no less than five varieties of British cheddar and every village has at least one Indian restaurant, the Brits are no strangers to the Algarve, Portugal’s beach paradise. So it’s no surprise that when we stepped out the door this morning we couldn’t help overhearing conversations taking place…
will travel with kids 