Tag: faith

Rodeo: Where USDA Prime Meets America’s Pride

I’ve fallen in love with cowboys. Not Louis L’Amore’s country-drawling, quick-on-the-draw, old-time Wild West fictional characters. Not the iconic John Wayne hero-types who were popular with past generations. I’m enamored with real-live, adrenaline junkie, God-fearing, patriotic, chaps-wearing, bucking-bull-riding men. In ten-gallon hats or protective helmets, these guys—who individually race the clock astride a two-thousand-pound-angry bull …

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Close Encounters of the Creepiest Kind

What scares you? Think beyond concrete things like losing a job, facing the death of a loved one, and worrying over an upcoming surgery. I want to know if you’re afraid of anything truly creepy. Have you ever seen a ghost? Are you haunted by something you can’t explain? Do you wake terrified from nightmares? …

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The Best Seat in the House

“This is my command: Love each other.” ~ Jesus (John 15:17, NIV) Oliver sits directly in front of me. The five-year-old was a student in my vacation Bible school class. He snuggles up to his mom. With a broad smile and a gleam in his eye, he leans in to kiss her cheek. She puts …

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Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee!

In Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge was obsessed over the accumulation of wealth. He was greedy, hoarding his pennies. He was mean, complaining about the poor. He was nasty, wishing ill on others. No one wanted to be around him. His main problem, however, was that he had lost his joy. Wretched behavior grew …

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Falling in Love with Perfect Arrangements

During my college days, I became friends with a girl who was valedictorian of her high school class. She sometimes annoyed me with her intellect. After a test in our art history class, she and I milled about and fretted over how our individual results would rank on the class curve. She worried and said, …

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