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If we can hope and if we can love, we can change the world, starting with our own. '60 Seconds of Hope' your daily oasis of positivity and inspiration! Join Horace McMillon each day for a minute reflection designed to equip, empower, and inspire you to be your best self. Kickstart each morning with a dose of hope to uplift your spirits and set a positive tone for the day ahead. Tune in and embrace the power of positivity!
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Send us a text Don’t celebrate people getting the bad they deserve. (Advent 13) “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem” - from Isaiah 40:1-2 The people of Jerusalem were in a very bad situation. Worse, they, themselves were largely responsible for the hardship they were enduring. Their own actions had led to these…
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Send us a text Sharing God’s Love through Justice and Decency. (Advent 12) “Righteousness will go before him and will make a path for his steps.” - Psalm 85:13 It’s hard for folk experiencing neglect and abuse to feel God’s love. It’s hard to feel hopeful and optimistic about one’s future when one is being dishonored, and disrespected, when one’ hu…
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Send us a text Prepare the Way for Others (Advent 11) “Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight…” - from Mark 1:3 (quoting Isaiah 40:3) The ‘Kingdom of God’ describes a way of experiencing and living in the world that leads to shalom. Shalom is a type of peace and wellbeing that can be experienced both individually and collectively. In …
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Send us a text How to get and stay on P.O.I.N.T. (Advent 10) In order to become the kind of people we believe we should, we have to be intentional in reacting to stimuli. We have to stop being reactionary and get on P.O.I.N.T. Pause: In the world of broadcasting, they often have a seven second delay, in order for them to “dump” or eliminate anythin…
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Send us a text What Kind of People Should We Be? (Advent 9) “What sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God?” -from 1 Peter 3:11 & 12. What kind of people should we be while we are waiting for and working towards a better future? What kind of person should I be…
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Send us a text When Justice and Peace Come Together (Advent 8) “Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other.” Psalm 85:10 We don’t have to look very far to find examples of injustice and inequality. We don’t have to search very far to see exploitation and abuse or to see heartbreaking suffering. The seaso…
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Send us a text Stop Beating Yourself Up (Advent 7) “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid…” from Isaiah 40:1-2 At some point we have to stop beating ourselves up for our past mistakes and misdeeds. At some point we have to stop beating others u…
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Send us a text Strength to Finish the Job (Advent 6) “He will also strengthen you to the end…” -from 1 Corinthians 1:8 None of this is easy. We encounter all kinds of obstacles and difficulties along the way when we decide to change, when we decide to do better and be better, when we decide to make a positive contribution. There will be times when …
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Send us a text Christ is Coming Today (Advent 5) “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” Mark 13:30 Mark 13:24-37 is a passage many Christians associate with the second coming of Christ. Verse 30 unlocks the meaning of the passage. It declares that very generation hearing these words will see …
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Send us a text When God Seems Absent, Call Anyway. (Advent 4) “There is no one who calls on your name or attempts to take hold of you, for you have hidden your face from us and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.” - Isaiah 64:7 There are times when God seems a long way away or absent altogether. Human cruelty and indifference, violence…
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Send us a text We Can Grow and Change (Advent 3) “We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.” - from Isaiah 64:8 Honest assessment of our individual and collective faults and shortcomings is an essential component of our growth. The writer of Isaiah a few verses earlier in the text pointed out that, “All of us have becom…
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Send us a text We Are Called into Partnership with Christ (Advent 2) “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the partnership of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” - 1 Corinthians 1:9 Advent is about embracing an alternative vision to the way things are in this world. We have been called to participate in the work of bringing this vision to lif…
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Send us a text Something’s Got to Change “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!” - Isaiah 64:1 Many Christian traditions around the world take four weeks every year to remember and celebrate a season called Advent. The scriptures associated with Advent are broken down into three four week gr…
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Send us a text Overcoming Ourselves is the Greatest Gift “Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self.” - Francis of Assisi The day we stop worrying about what other people are doing and not, the day we focus on ourselves, our thinking, our habits, our behaviors, our actions and reactions- is the fi…
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Send us a text Forget Work Life Balance In today’s bonus reflection, I want to challenge the whole notion of work life balance. The whole notion presupposes that there is a bucket of time called work, and some other bucket of time called life. The reality is that we only have one life. For those of us who work full time outside the home, we spend m…
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Send us a text Count Your Own Blessings- Not Someone Else’s “So they hung Haman on the pole that he had prepared for Mordecai…” from Ester 7:10 For those not familiar with the story, Haman had a fabulous life. He was the top assistant to the King of Persia. Persia at the time was the most magnificent empire on earth. Haman had the power and privile…
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Send us a text We have peace when we understand that God is preserving us. “Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another." - From Mark 9:50 Yesterday, I mentioned that salt was used to preserve meat in the ancient world. Salt keeps meat from spoiling. If we pause to look within ourselves and around ourselves, we will see that most of t…
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Send us a text Keep Some Salt Inside Yourself "For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another." - Mark 9:49-50 In using the phrase “salted with fire” the gospel writer is mixing metaphors to make an important point. The image o…
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Send us a text How to Open the Right Doors Have you ever gotten everything you wanted the way you wanted it only to discover that it wasn’t really what you wanted? I have lived that life. I used to use a number of spiritual and mental techniques to visualize and manifest the things I wanted. Those techniques are powerful and effective. It wasn’t un…
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Send us a text We Become What We Value “You become like what you worship. That's one of the basic spiritual laws.” - N.T. Wright What’s most important to us? What are the qualities and traits in a person that we admire most? In what types of accomplishments do we take the most pride? Little by little we become what we admire, value, and praise. So …
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Send us a text Better Days Start with Better Affirmations “Start each day by affirming peaceful, contented and happy attitudes and your days will tend to be pleasant and successful.” - Norman Vincent Peale This advice sounds like magic. It isn’t. The reality is that we always find more of what we are looking for. So if we start each day with affirm…
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Send us a text Amaze Yourself “If you set goals and go after them with all the determination you can muster, your gifts will take you places that will amaze you.” - Les Brown There’s a power the lives inside every one of us. This power is released when we move passionately with consistency and persistence in the direction of our goals. We may not a…
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Send us a text “Recapture the childlike feelings of wide-eyed excitement, spontaneous appreciation, cutting loose, and being full of awe and wonder at this magnificent universe.” - Wayne Dyer The Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus proclaimed in the Gospel of Matthew is not a destination but rather an experience. It is something we can experience in full …
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Send us a text Keep a thankful state of mind. “We are in a wrong state of mind if we are not in a thankful state of mind.” - Charles Spurgeon Gratitude is the best remedy I know for anger, bitterness, and resentment. Focusing on all the good things we have in our lives allows us to know that we are going to be alright. Once you know that you’re goo…
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Send us a text Shifted During Flight When traveling by airplane, it’s customary for passengers to store their bags in the overhead bins. One of the warnings the airlines always give is to use caution when opening the bins because the bags may have shifted in flight. Life is like an airplane journey. In the course of our living we go through and exp…
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Send us a text Be honest with yourself about where you are. “But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be arrogant and lie about the truth.” - James 3:14 The most important people that we need to be honest with are ourselves. Individually and collectively we have some uncomfortable truths that we need to recognize and …
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Send us a text Let Your Life Be Your Testimony “It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching” - Francis of Assisi In the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10) there were two religious folks who passed by without stopping to help. Why they didn’t help, we don’t exactly know. Maybe they were afraid of being hurt themsel…
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Send us a text Remaining calm in the midst of chaos… “In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.” - Deepak Chopra Sometimes it’s not possible for us in the moment to control our external environment. In these moments we have to focus on maintaining a calm internal environment. How do we do this? We want to become aware of our…
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Send us a text “You can't make positive choices for the rest of your life without an environment that makes those choices easy, natural, and enjoyable.” - Deepak Chopra It’s not impossible to make positive choices in a chaotic and toxic environment, but it sure is a lot harder. Passengers traveling by airplane are coached that in the event of an em…
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Send us a text Learn, Grow, and Move On “Forgive yourself for your faults and your mistakes and move on.” - Les Brown Guilt, shame, and regret can be useful if they cause us to stop, reflect, and change. After that, they are of no use to us. It’s time to put therm behind us. This is where the concepts of re-birth and renewal are so powerful to us. …
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Send us a text God loves the world and we should too. Most of us know that we are supposed to love our neighbors. But most of us like the Lawyer in Gospel story (Luke 10:29) want to know who our neighbor is. In other words, we want to know who we have to love and who it’s ok not to love. Because, the truth is, there are some people we don’t want to…
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Send us a text Guard your hearts. “While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.” - Francis of Assisi Life is a journey, and sometimes a difficult one. Along the way, we experience things where if we are not careful, we will become angry, bitter and fearful. All of us experience anger, bitterne…
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Send us a text Recognizing Our Toxicity is the First Step in Healing It. “And the LORD said to Moses, "Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live." Numbers 21:8 It’s a long road, from bondage, to freedom, to wellbeing. It’s easy to get side tracked along the way. The people of Israel were in…
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Send us a text Believe the best about yourself. “Don't let someone else's opinion of you become your reality.” - Les Brown Unfortunately, there are too many of us who have been under estimated and under appreciated. Our gifts and contributions have gone overlooked and have even sometimes been denied. Perhaps others define us by our past mistakes, m…
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Send us a text Stand up for yourself and others. “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?” Rabbi Hillel When I was a young elementary school student, I let another child bully me without standing up for myself. After condemning the actions of the bully, my mother explained that the next t…
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Send us a text If we want different, we have to change. “If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten.” - Tony Robbins If we keep doing the same things, in the same places, with the same people, we will continue to get the same results. If we want to see individual and/or social transformation we need to examine ourselves…
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Send us a text “When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” - John 21:21-22 It’s easy for us to get distracted comparing ourselves to other people. We look around and see what other people are doing and not doing and we sometimes feel …
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Send us a text Do what you do. A bunch a years ago a young woman for whom I serve as one of her pastors, asked me to help her find another pastor who was known as someone who casts out demons. She was looking for help for her Aunt. I’m the pastor you call when you are looking for a referral to see a therapist. So I wasn’t sure what to do with this.…
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Send us a text No matter who you are, no matter what you do, no matter how well you do what you do, there will be critics and haters particularly if you are doing anything of significance. Jesus was criticized. Martin Luther King, jr. was criticized. Mother Teresa was criticized. Heck even one of the greatest and most successful singer songwriters …
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Send us a text Have a vision big enough to inspire you. “People are not lazy. They simply have impotent goals - that is, goals that do not inspire them.” - Tony Robbins I’m convinced that we never unlock and unleash our full potential while we are playing it small. We have to have a vision and purpose that is large enough to inspire us, to motivate…
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Send us a text 60 Seconds of Hope: Live with Urgency “We have to live life with a sense of urgency so not a minute is wasted.” - Les Brown I started my professional career working in food service as a Restaurant Manager for Denny’s. A little over 30 years ago, I worked my last major holiday as I prepared to return to school full time. The restauran…
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Send us a text Let your life be your witness. “It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.” - Francis of Assisi Belief alone is not enough. Good intentions alone are not enough. Our beliefs and our intentions must be supported by our consistent sustained effective activities if we want them to matter. There’s a lot …
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Send us a text The Secret of Success “The secret to success is find a need and fill it; find a hurt and heal it; find a problem and solve it.” - Robert H. Schuller True success is not measured by our bank accounts and social status. True success is measured by the way we contribute to and bless the world around us. Money is one type of contribution…
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Send us a text “We will act consistently with our view of who we truly are, whether that view is accurate or not.” - Tony Robbins Many of us have to overcome the negative impressions we have of ourselves. How many of us talk badly about ourselves? Tell ourselves that we are impatient, have a bad temper, that we are impulsive, hold grudges and so on…
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Send us a text “If any think they are religious and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless.” - James 1:26 Some of you like me, grew up with the understanding that you never want to let your mouth write a check your behind can’t cash. While this is true, the principle is even deeper than that. Genesis one d…
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Send us a text Never lose the thrill of living. “When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It's to enjoy each step along the way.” - Wayne Dyer To many of our lives resemble a line from one of my favorite John Mellencamp songs… “(our) life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone.” Jesus was accused of being…
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Send us a text Now go do it! Tony Robbins said it this way: “You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action. The letter of James says it this way: “But be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.” (James 1:22) They both say the same thi…
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Send us a text Take the First Steps “Go to a land that I will show you.” - from Genesis 12:1 Abram had already lived a long successful life by the time we meet him in chapter 12 of Genesis. But he hadn’t begun to create his legacy- the one that would eventually inspire and transform the world. In order to do that, he had to leave his comfort zone b…
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Send us a text What was my part in it? What was my part in it? This is perhaps the most powerful and transformative question I’ve ever asked myself. There are real world situations of abuse where responsibility for something is 100% to zero percent. Those are hard to overcome. This hasn’t been the case for me. Even when I could pinpoint blame and a…
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Send us a text Focus on the Light “A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.” - Francis of Assisi Have you seen yourself or anyone you cared about get into a negative emotional spiral? I first noticed this dynamic twenty some years ago when I was a manufacturer’s rep traveling my first territory. A really talented salesperson had been …
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