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Devotional

Secret place

Hidden behind clothes and toys, I giggled when I heard my mother calling and calling my name. I was around 4 years old. And I’d discovered a secret place in the depths of our walk-in closet. She called my name again. And again.

This was so much fun. 

No one knew where I was. 

As you can imagine, the end of that story was not funny at all. My mother was in tears and panicking. She thought I had wandered outside the gate of our home in Surabaya and been lost forever. This was a surprise to me. And the discipline that followed was, shall we say, memorable. The next time I listened when my parents called. 

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Devotional

Waiting for the Lord

Waiting. Yesterday our pastor continued his series on “Unexpected Jesus.”

Danny took us to the story of Lazarus. A story of delayed arrival. Unexpected timing that found the friends and family of Lazarus in the thick of grief, at the point of numb acceptance that their loved one wasn’t coming back.

In their traditional beliefs, the soul hovered above the body for three days.  Waiting. But the fourth day? Gone. No hope. It was the pinnacle of sorrow and loss in the death of Lazarus. Decay had begun.

And it was the day of Jesus’ arrival. 

Keeping the Word in front of us during the waiting.
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Crossing Cultures Devotional Uncategorized

Rich man’s rain

The tropical rain was pounding the pavement, flooding the side yard, pouring dense and loud. Riah laughed and said, “We call this a rich man’s rain.” Oh? I looked up curiously. She continued, “On days like this, the poor man cannot work. And when he doesn’t work, he doesn’t get paid. And when he doesn’t get paid, he doesn’t eat and his family doesn’t eat. That’s why we call it a rich man’s rain.”