While walking one day, my friend encountered someone who had lost control of herself. A mother, shouting and ranting. Her small child stood nearby. My friend felt horrid. She hurt for the young one absorbing her mother’s outburst. Every mother fails sometimes. I certainly have. Perhaps something devastating had momentarily …
It’s the plumb line of truth for every Christian; the door to truth for every non-believer. Without the Bible, it’s impossible to realize when our lives, thoughts, beliefs and actions are off kilter from God’s best. A young Asian man entered the restaurant where my sister and brother-in-law and I …
“…no spot feels as warm or secure as the place where we’re surrounded by the people we love most; who love us most, in spite of knowing us best. The place we don’t have to deserve.”
How I love the blessed reminder that Jesus Christ left Heaven for earth to make peace between God and man. He accomplished that by dying the cruelest of deaths in our place and rising again three days later, redeeming sin’s hostages, and breaking the power of the inner darkness it …
In the spring of 1988, my then seven-year-old daughter Amanda and I visited a monastery on a hilltop near Orangeville, Ontario. A short visit, but I recall it clearly with both amazement and regret. I wish I’d asked more questions of the person we’d come to see. I would never …
Sometimes I can’t find God. He’s not hard to experience, but I’ve been churched so long, theologized so much, seminarred so often, sanitized, saintified, holyfied and Sundayfied so thoroughly that the goal of a pure childlike faith feels like mere rhetoric. Mosquito spit in a dry sky. But every so …
Journal entry. March 20th. First day of spring. Lower mainland, B.C. Good day, diary. Good day, Lord. And good day, Spring. After our record-breaking cold Canadian winter, you’re more welcome than usual, even though you’re late to your own party. I travelled two provinces in order to catch your entry …
A friend called one day, in a panic. Her babysitter couldn’t come. Was there any way I could watch her ten-week old foster baby for her—all day long? My mind raced. So many pressing things sat on that square of my calendar. I couldn’t imagine setting them aside for an …
On March 13, 2019, my mother would have turned a hundred. After her death at age ninety-five, I lost her voice for almost four years. It neither echoed in my ears nor whispered in the corridors of memory. That grieved me. Then came the dream that placed life precisely as …
She stood up too fast. She went down faster. Two minutes later that daughter of mine woke to find herself sprawled on a pile of folded laundry, a brass lampshade on her head. Everyone found that funny. Amanda did too, until the headache from hell began and didn’t stop. Until …
