Jeremiah 29 is one of the seminal texts to biblically consider faith, work, and vocation. Unfortunately, verse 11 is often read without the surrounding context: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11, ESV)...
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Walk into the office, ask my supervisor how I can help today, get a long list of tasks ranging from papers to file, emails to return, excel spreadsheets to create, and then after a few minutes of small talk, go to my isolated office, sit down at my desk, and get to work on my...
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In Genesis 13, even though the promise of the land was to Abram, he allowed Lot to choose the best part of the land, showing uncommon and unnecessary generosity. And Abram lived less well because of this choice. Lot took the fertile and well-watered land of the Jordan valley, and Abram took the steeper, more...
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It was yet another rainy Wednesday morning when I walked into the Russell Senate office building. I set my umbrella against the wall and got to straight to work. Before me were dozens of letters from 2009 with tea bags attached. My job for the rest of the day was to go through the letters,...
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Work may have been made good, even pleasurable, but the simple fact is that it is not for most people today. One of my friends likes to ask the proverbial 64 Million Dollar Question: “If I gave you 64 million dollars today, would you be at work tomorrow?” As you can imagine, the answer he receives from...
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“Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start…” Julie Andrews sang Rodgers and Hammerstein’s famous line in The Sound of Music. And that’s good advice. Genesis 1 and 2 bear a disproportionate influence on our understanding of our world because they show us the way God made it – before human...
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