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Book Review: Where Do I Go?
Where Do I Go?: A Yada Yada House of Hope Novel by Neta Jackson Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2008 To the outside world, Gabby Fairbanks would seem to have it all – a wealthy, successful husband, a pernthouse apartment, and two sons she loves, but appearances are not everything. She has just been uprooted to […]
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Prayer to St. John the Caregiver
Beloved St. John, from the cross, Jesus entrusted to you the care of His Blessed Mother. Help me and all those taking care of a loved one who is sick, elderly, disabled, or frail. Pray for us, that as we go about our many caregiving duties, we may never lose sight of that truth which […]
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A Baby Changes Everything
In the quiet of night, a young mother holds her baby to her, admiring his fingers and toes, exploring the features of his face. Her son is new to this world, a gift from God. She is like every other new mother, filled with wonder and exhaustion and, perhaps, fear. She is very young. Is […]
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Mother Teresa’s Secret Fire
Mother Teresa’s Secret Fire: The Encounter that Changed Her Life, and How it Can Transform Your Own by Joseph Langford Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor, 2008 What was the secret fire that fueled Mother Teresa? That is the question that Father Joseph Langford who co-founded the Missionaries of Charity Fathers with Mother Teresa, attempts to […]
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A Time to Wait
Can you remember the excitement of being a child waiting for Christmas? The days of December seemed to drag on forever. There were Christmas pageants to prepare for and activities at school to fill the days. Letters to Santa had to be written. Anticipation built daily with dreams of what presents might be under the […]
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A Wonderful, Imperfect, Life
“Mom, what is this movie about?” a child asked his mother as “It’s a Wonderful Life” was just beginning. “It’s about a man who is in trouble through no fault of his own and he wishes that he had never been born. He thinks other people’s lives would be better that way. But an angel […]
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Balancing the Sacred and Secular
I still believe in Santa Claus, not the whole North Pole concept complete with Rudolph of course, but the idea of Santa Claus as the spirit of giving. There have been times in my life when presents have just appeared anonymously in unlikely places. These gifts from secret Santa Clauses have often been the most […]
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Time to Get Ready
As presented in scripture, John the Baptist is quite the imposing character. He was not exactly the most “normal” of people, living in the desert as he did, dressed in camel skin and subsisting on locusts and wild honey, shouting at people to repent. Honestly, when one encounters someone equally non-conformist today, one is most […]
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Book Review: Heaven has Blue Carpet
What happens when you transplant a suburban housewife and put her into a working sheepfarm? It sounds like the beginning of a joke, doesn’t it? But in Heaven Has Blue Carpet: A Sheep Story by a Suburban Housewife Sharon Niedzinski, a devoted Christian, shares the real-life lessons she learned from throwing herself into a new […]
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Keep Christ in Christmas
Here are some traditions you may want to incorporate into your family or practice on your own as a means of keeping the focus of Christmas on the birth of Christ. Advent Calendar: An advent calendar is a way of marking the days until Christmas. There are many commercially made which often have small doors […]