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A Brief Candle

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A Brief Candle (Part 2)

      For years, I have lived with “personally minded” individuals in churches who genuinely believed that if they blew out my candle then their candles would burn brighter. My book, For Pastors Only: Dealing with Rejection in Ministry , is a memoir of my life centered around the theme of rejection. How to cope with it.  How to deal with it.  How to overcome it.  How to learn from it.  Even how to benefit from it to help others through negative life experiences. Two selections of George Bernard Shaw’s insights on life are combined into a literary piece called “A  Splendid Torch”. “This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. And also the only real tragedy ...
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A Brief Candle (Part 1)

  I love candles.   I love making tea light candle holders and special lantern holders just to have a reason to light more candles in my home. My love for candles was created long before the exotic scented candles had become popular.   My earliest memories of smelling burning wax go back to those days when a storm knocked out our electrical power in our home.   Instant darkness. A quick scramble for the kitchen drawer that held the candlesticks and the matches. Seeing that candle flicker to light brought immediate relief. As more candles were lit more shadows were dissipated. So I have always been baffled by some people's tendency to blow out other people's candles so that their candles would burn so much brighter. A current internet meme is: “Blowing out someone else’s candle doesn’t make yours shine any brighter.” In a purely pragmatic sense, this statement is true.   The amplitude of the light of a single candle does not increase as other candles in...
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A Hug Saves a Soul: Part I

A Hug Saves a Soul:  Part I The story I have to share with you today is startling, somber, serious, and sad. The story begins with a small fragile vulnerable baby at fourteen months of age. We start the story at this point because it really sets the stage for seventeen years of struggle and suffering. We zoom in to see a family in the in the mid-1960s. A family of nine children. We pause just long enough to see a father who was not able to pay the heating bill.  His young baby nearly dies of double pneumonia. Our focus changes to see a distraught mother who has to make the most difficult decision in her whole life. With one phone call to Catholic services, she sets in motion the future of her nine children.   No one in her family steps in to help so the children go into group homes and into foster homes. Today we only have time to track the life of that 14-month-old baby. Our tender little baby enters into a loving family were all of his needs are pr...
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