jordan

Fresh Eyes

By Rev. Dr. Rick Jordan We see what we want to see. At other times, we don’t see what is in plain view to others. We all have blind spots. What are yours? What are your church’s? Sometimes we need a set of fresh eyes to find out. I asked my father-in-law, who had redesigned […]

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You’ve Got to See This!

By Rev. Dr. Rick Jordan Recently, my wife and I spent a week with our son and daughter-in-law, Todd and Stacey, in Utah. One night, while he was grilling some steaks, Todd heard an owl call. He rushed into the house with the cooked steaks saying, “I heard an owl and I think it is

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How My Vacation Changed Me

By: Rev. Dr. Rick Jordan I confess that most days, I walk through a day without much thought. Not that I’m ignorant or inconsiderate. But too often I do breeze through a day’s experiences without consideration of deeper insights. Sometimes, a shock to my system helps me realize that I need to ponder what I

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Worship in A Foreign Land

By Rev. Dr. Rick Jordan It may have been the best sermon I’ve ever heard, but I will never know for sure because it was spoken in Icelandic. Hallgrímskirkja is the largest church building in Iceland, a Lutheran congregation. My experience there sparked these reflections about this church and the Church. Experience: “Hallgrímskirkja” looks like

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Here’s My Problem

By Rev. Dr. Rick Jordan If you read my last article, you know it was about a small problem I have with tardiness. I wrote the article, sent it in for publication, then struggled for a while. Should I have done that article? Does it make me look bad? Will people think less of me?

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Keeping Time

by Rev. Dr. Rick Jordan This weekend, we have the opportunity to once again “spring forward.” This includes the spring ritual of changing the time on our clocks. It is wonderful fun, of course. How many clocks do you have in your house? As I sit in my home office, I have a computer and

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Loving Before Recruiting

by: Rev. Dr. Rick Jordan Lately, I’ve been getting strange text messages. There is a phone number given as the sender. Then, there is a message: “Hi.” Or, “hi.” Sometimes the message has more content. Last week, I got a message from an unknown phone number that read, “It’s such a nice day. Want to

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Get Back on Track

by: Rev. Dr. Rick Jordan When I discovered that Walter Lantz, the artist that created Woody Woodpecker, was not my uncle on my mother’s side of the family – something I had believed all my life – it made me wonder what other non-truths I had taken to be truths. Of course, finding that a

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My Cousin, Woody Woodpecker

by Rev. Dr. Rick Jordan My mother was a Lantz. Her mother liked to paint landscapes. Her uncle, George, was the staff editorial cartoonist for the Tampa (FL) Tribune newspaper. Then, there was the celebrity artist in our family, Walter Lantz. Walter Lantz was the creator of several popular cartoons, the most well-known was the

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