Christmas carries on at our home, as we consider the gift of still-fresh memories of the past year and the promises of the next. “Hon, if you had to wrap 2019 up in a few words or a sentence, how would you do that?” I asked on Christmas Day. …
Sitting pretty atop elephant, camel and stallion, the three Seekers navigate the perimeter of my living room. For the last two months, those three ceramic magi have migrated (with a little help) from surface to surface. They’re at the south end of the piano now. Still seeking; looking steadily skywards. …
Music and lights, family, food and fellowship…Christmas washes over the land like a warm sigh. But the experience of Christmas changes as one ages. Gifts with my name on the tag took top spot in my earliest memory. Things shifted when I realized that Christmas meant giving as well; that …
I’m sorry. That’s all I can say to those who feel the joy has been sucked from their Christmas because they’ve encountered less-than-charitable Christians who stridently insist everyone use the phrase “Merry Christmas” rather than “Happy Holidays.” What disturbs me most about that is that from what I’ve observed, the …
Thirty-six square feet. Nestled near our clothesline cross, under a towering maple, my tiny backyard retreat stands tall in the snow; a startling slash of crimson on an unblemished canvas. A tangible, colossal exclamation mark. The odd building with the duncecap roof and the screened lift-up sides sits just a …
Sinkholes spook me. Especially the largest one—regret. It sucks us all in sometimes. “Man, I wish I hadn’t done that,” I’ve said, all too often. If I permit myself to dwell on them, I’d spend entire days gnawing on the big things I would change about my past if that …
“Sir, can you tell me if this kit will work for my toilet?” The older male employee I’d approached in the plumbing aisle of the hardware store looked at the package in my hand. “What’s wrong with your toilet?” “Well,” I said, “ya’ know how when you flush a toilet, it …
“If you do not forgive men their trespasses,” Jesus said, “neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.” It’s a condition not easily met. During the Holocaust, Dutch watchmaker Corrie Ten Boom, along with her beloved sister, Betsie, spent ten months imprisoned in Ravensbruck concentration camp. Nazis had discovered …
“Crazy! Mercy! WOW!” Tears falling unchecked, the young husband sitting on the grass peered intently at the carrot in his hand, the fruit tray beside him, the sky overhead and the surrounding trees. He absorbed what he saw as though for the first time. His wife had just given him …
Halloween. I’ve tiptoed around the unholy holiday for years, decades even; some years just choosing to be away from home on October 31st; some hiding in the basement, and others, joining in with what everyone else was doing. Trying to find the fun in it; trying to ignore the very …
