Author: Michelle Van Loon
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Wall fall down
Though I’m fighting a serious case of respiratory illness, I wanted to share one of the most profound images of our recent trip to Israel. Just a few hours after we landed in Israel, Bill and I had made our way to the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism. We separated, as men and…
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Making a mess of worship
“When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed…
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Book review: Rex
Rex’s life was marked by one tragic diagnosis after another: blind, autistic, a spectrum of other neurological/developmental problems. Left to raise her severely-disabled son after her husband left the family when Rex was still a baby, Cathleen Lewis became a ferocious advocate for her son. Her intense and complete commitment to caring for him allowed…
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Praying for revival
Yesterday, we attended the quarterly “When We Pray” county-wide concert of prayer. Each time it’s held, the 4-hour Saturday morning even is housed in a different evangelical church building throughout Lake County, IL. There aren’t many places where believers from a w-i-d-e variety of churches can come to intercede for the time and place in which…
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Where are you, Holy Spirit?
If you have ever experienced the nearness of God in your life – heard His voice speak to you, experience His burning, overwhelming love, it threatens to “forever ruin you for the ordinary”, to borrow a well-crafted phrase from a book title. And when that Presence moves from you, even just a bit, it…
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Bad Hair (salon) Day
I trudged and slid through the slushy, ice-slicked parking lot of a local strip mall a few days ago. It felt so good when I first entered the warm salon, one of those thirteen buck, no-appointment places. When you have hair like mine, you just need someone with a sharp pair of hedgclippers or a…