A Lost Son
One summer Judy went to the Columbus Zoo with some relatives and all four of our children. When the day was over, she walked out the gate and toward the parking lot. A friend asked her, “Where’s Justin?” In her haste to leave on time, she left Justin inside the park....
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A Lost Sheep and Lost Coin
When I was growing up I collected and traded baseball cards. Living in southern Ohio during the 1970s, my favorite team was the Cincinnati Reds. I traded for some really good, valuable cards. I even had a Pete Rose rookie card, among others. I decided to hide these...
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Radical Discipleship
Two flight attendants were called into the cockpit of a small passenger jet. The captain told them that the jet would soon crash and they needed to hand out parachutes, but do so in an orderly manner. The first flight attendant gave the parachute to their first...
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God’s Invitation
What is your favorite dinner? Though I enjoy many things, I'd say I would probably like pizza or Mexican the best. But I like all kinds of different foods. Jesus' parable of the ‘Great Banquet’ in Luke 14:16-24 is a story about God’s great salvation. Heaven is like a...
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Why are people lost?
When I was growing up I played a game by myself. We had a finished basement and sometimes I would have all the lights on. Then at the top of the stairs I would turn the lights off, one-by-one, as I walked back to the back corner into my bedroom. Then I turned off my...
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Be a Humble Servant
In 2009 ABC premiered a new reality TV series, Shark Tank. It highlights entrepreneurs making business presentations to a panel of investors or “sharks” who decide whether to invest in their company. Now in it’s 13thseason, the show highlights the good and bad of...
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Beware of Worry
What gives you the most worry? We can worry about so many different things. I heard of a man who had a mountain of credit card debt, lost his job, his car was being repossessed and his house was in foreclosure. But he said “I’m not worried about it. I hired a...
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Beware of Covetousness
What is covetousness? It is wanting something you don’t have and which God has not give you. Paul says it is “the love of money” (1 Timothy 6:10). It is also the last of the Ten Commandments: "Thou shalt not covet..." (Exodus 20:17). We might call it greed....
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Beware of Hypocrisy
In his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey tells a story about a Bible study he was teaching. The class began discussing how the hypocritical legalism of the church turned off non-believers. Then they began to ‘swap war stories,’ and Yancey shared his own tale...
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