New Year’s Resolutions Have you made your New Year’s Resolution yet; or perhaps already broken the one you made last week? I gave up making resolutions several years ago, but I do find them interesting. C.S. Lewis once said, “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” Bestselling American author, Melody Beattie,…
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Birthday Week
This is my birthday week. Lots of free and discounted meals. Can’t believe I lived this long. Outlived all of my family except a few younger cousins. For several years I’ve said I’m ready to go whenever God is finished with me on earth. Apparently, God is not finished with me yet. Either that or my heavenly mansion is not…
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Christmas Week
This is Christmas Week. Here are ten of my favorite Christmas quotes. “One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas Day. Don’t clean it up too quickly.” Andy Rooney “Dear Santa, define “good”. “Got all my Christmas shopping done. Now to shop for other people.”…
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The Sameness of Christmas
I’ve celebrated eight decades of Christmas and much of it is just not the same anymore. Trips to share the festivities with grandparents accompanied with backyard football and afternoon singing around the piano, have evolved into being the grandparent, listening to Christmas music on the radio and watching football on TV. The smell of a…
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Becme Like Me
I have been studying in preparation for the 2026 teaching sessions for the Valley Baptist Missions Education Center. We will be looking at “Biblical Role Models for Church Leadership.” I have rediscovered at least three things to be consistent in every character that we have chosen. For one, they walked with God consistently. You can’t…
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Monday Morning Manna, Monday Afternoon Phone Call
When I wrote last Monday’s Morning Manna about Thanksgiving, I did not know about the Monday afternoon phone call. The Nurse on the other end of the line said, “We need to talk with you about your surgical procedure scheduled for in the morning at 7am.” What? Back in the summer, when I first began…
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Another Thanksgiving, Another Thankfulness
This is Thanksgiving week and I have a problem. How do I condense all the things on my Thanks list into one Monday Morning Manna paragraph? So let me surprise you with one. I am thankful that thirty-two years ago, I attended and graduated from the Fort Worth Citizens Police Academy. I am thankful for…
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Old and New Music
I just completed an Interim Pastorate in a church that sang all their congregation hymns from a hymnbook. I knew all of them and sang along freely. Then I returned to my home church where the congregation sang five songs, none of which I knew, or had ever heard before. I couldn’t even sing along…
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Surprised Counting
Every morning, I step on the scales to be sure I am not gaining weight. At mealtimes I am conscious of the calories I consume, so I don’t count too many. Every day I count the pills I take so I don’t get the wrong number at the wrong time. When walking I look for…
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National Buffalo Day
This week we will celebrate National Buffalo Day. The term ‘buffalo’ is often used interchangeably with ‘bison,” the proper term for the mighty creature we celebrate on this occasion. I remember studying about the Buffalo Soldiers of the post-Civil war era and hearing about Buffalo Bill and the Wild West Shows of the late 1800s. …