Tag: Faith
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Lord of the Bowel Movement
Yesterday was monumental. I prayed with a 92 year-old-woman who had a bowel movement in her bed, specifically a poop, immediately after I prayed for her. I didn’t know it right away. A nurse who came into the room shortly after me, reported back and thanked me. Apparently, they had been waiting for the patient…
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Willing But So Weak
I had one of those deathbed Jesus moments last week. I was with a patient while they died whom was reconciled to God the week before. I did not save the man, all I did was remind him that God was willing to forgive him because of the work of Jesus Christ. All I could…
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Wealthy Mercy
“But God is so rich in mercy…” I believe you can tell how rich and deep someone’s faith is by how generous they are with mercy. I believe this because according to God’s sense of justice, people deserve harsh consequences for their wrongs, yet God is slow to deal judgment. In Ephesians 2:4, the Apostle…
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When the Game Slows Down
My orientation into chaplaincy has begun. Who knew orientation could feel so disorienting? While inundated with information, it is amazing how many golden nuggets of truth and wisdom I have received in a weeks time. One statement I am fixated on, even though I have not yet visited a single patient is this: “The game…
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Mommy and Dad (as you are in my phone) I Hope I get this Right
I’m so naïve. It didn’t take long. I wept for the first time today, and it wasn’t because I visited a church during an emotional service where they were saying goodbye to some people they really love, to send them to Burundi perhaps indefinitely. I didn’t weep because I was confronted with my own darkness,…
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What do I do with these blank pages?
In 2010 I wrote to be funny, more specifically I wrote comedic fiction for a class to counterbalance writing my thesis on Islamic extremism in Southern Russia and what exactly that looked like. But what I was most proud of is a story called the Cheesebringer, which was a dumb coming of age story about…
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A Time Before Certainty
Matthew 13:1-32 I worked on an organic farm for 4 seasons. It’s interesting how many factors go into having a fruitful crop: the seed, the soil, the sun, the water, the bugs. Some of these can be controlled. We can add water, we can spray pesticides (technically not in organic farming). Much of farming maintains…
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Saint Listener and Hearing Different
If you are looking for a good cry, I would suggest seeing “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” the new Mr. Rogers documentary. If you’ve been wanting to feel like you’re endeavor to love and to be a compassionate human being falls far short of perfection, I’d also suggest watching the movie. What I found most…
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The Gospel of Love: Fill the World with Stories
John 21: 15-25 – Word Feed If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written. The Gospel of John ends with the author telling us that Jesus did too many good things to contain in writing. Jesus, likewise,…
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The Catching Gospel: Assured to Shore
John 21:1-14 – The Dive-in Depths It never ceases to surprise me how quick I am to stumble, how at such arbitrary times our struggle with sin seems to affect us and leaves us without excuse. I am prone to wavering in my affection and in those moments I feel as if I forget myself.…
The Reconstructed 