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In his late forties, Sam began to sense that something was wrong. After a couple of decades seeking to honor God in the responsibilities of his life, a question confronted him one evening: Amidst all this stuff I am doing for God and others, does anyone really know me? This question named his unrest. Sam […]

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October 27, 2023

A Harvest

From my home office window, I can see the final fruit of an exceptional pumpkin patch here on the Iowa prairie. It’s not commercial quality or quantity, no state fair winners, but it has been very rewarding and lots of fun. The grandchildren, ages 3 to 6, planted the carefully purchased seeds with no rhyme […]

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Over the last several years I have witnessed four Celebration of Life/Memorial services for friends who I would say each finished well as people. As I remember Randy, Kris, Mary, and Bill, I am continually struck by the beauty of their lives. It’s the sort of beauty that Simone Weil speaks of when she writes […]

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September 28, 2023

Where are you?

One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there. – Henri Nouwen __________________ Adam and Eve have just eaten of the tree that God has commanded them not to eat of—perhaps the most disruptive moment in the history of […]

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Many years ago I sat down with a group of Biola University professors and fellow graduate students over lunch to hear Dr. Jim Houston from Regent College (Vancouver, BC) give a brief lecture. In his early seventies at the time, this small, Scottish man, with half a century of experience in the academic settings of […]

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Psalm 51, the Ash Wednesday psalm, is the acknowledged masterpiece of biblical self-knowledge. "I have been wicked from my birth, a sinner from my mother's womb." No human being has ever looked at himself more unflinchingly than the author of this incomparable penitential psalm. "I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me." [...]

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“The language of telling people what to think and what to do dominates most leadership paradigms in the church, with very little, if any, mentoring attention given to the actual details of being a Christian in the home and workplace.” - Eugene Peterson   One of the things our VP3 team has been paying particular [...]

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This prayer of Father Thomas Keating and its radical call to be open to the love of God struck me as we cross the threshold into 2023. May we be increasingly open to the love and activity of the Triune God amidst all that life will throw at us in this new year... The Welcoming Prayer [...]

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Called to set a table... VantagePoint3 has been helping set a table for truly making disciples in the local church.   It really is true that we hear stories of how VP3 has been a catalyst for growth and depth in Christ almost every day. Last week I had the privilege of leading one of [...]

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The grace and the impatience to wait In our secret yearnings we wait for your coming, and in our grinding despair we doubt that you will. And in this privileged place we are surrounded by witnesses who yearn more than do we and by those who despair more deeply than do we. Look upon your [...]

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Helping others grow into Christ rests on an understanding and conviction that the primary shaping work in a person’s life belongs to God. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10, NIV). Our primary burden as God's people is [...]

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A Liturgy for Those Flooded With Too Much Information In a world so wired and interconnected, our anxious hearts are pummeled by an endless barrage of troubling news. We are daily aware of more grief, O Lord, than we can rightly consider, of more suffering and scandal than we can respond to, of more hostility, [...]

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