“Saved alone…” That’s the news on the telegram sent by a grieving wife to her husband, Horatio Spafford. Spafford was a successful lawyer in Chicago in the mid-1800’s. During the great Chicago fire of 1871, Spafford lost a lot of property he had owned. The stress of the loss prompted Horatio and his family to […]
What do people think about when they hear your name? Well, if your name is Sybil Ludington they probably look confused or shrug in indifference. But when your name is Paul Revere, images come to mind of a dramatic, solitary, heroic, midnight, horseback ride made to warn the American patriots that “the British are coming.” […]
Who believes that our country is in trouble? Who thinks that the whole world is in chaos? These are rhetorical questions so no need to answer. I believe most of us feel as though the world is in a mess. Whenever I feel this way, I try to go to a place that is orderly. […]
When I started this blog, it was 2012. Since then I’ve made almost 200 blog posts under 4 different categories. Now it’s time to “kick it up a notch,” as Emeril says. I felt led, back in the summer, to focus on my writing. I had been teaching others to write (which I loved and […]
Remember when churches had organs—pipe or electronic? They were often the mainstay of corporate worship. They still exist in some places, but not like in years past. My husband served many years ago as a music minister in a church that was located just outside a major American military base. Well, on some Sunday evenings, […]
Wisdom, Montana—Population 132—Elevation 6,000+feet. Last week, we were in Wisdom with some friends who live several miles away. I wondered, while there, how the town got its name. When I got home, I found out that Lewis and Clark got to this part of the “Great Unknown” (basically anything west of the Mississippi) and found […]
I feel like I’m invisible sometimes—well, maybe more often than sometimes. I’ve walked up to an automatic door and had it not open for me. I’ve tried to use a motion-sensitive faucet and towel dispenser in a restroom with no response whatsoever. And with people I know, I can walk past them, and they don’t […]
There’s a great story in 2 Kings 7 about some lepers who sat outside the city gate day after day, existing on whatever crumbs they could beg. As outcasts because of their disease, they were not allowed inside. It seems that the city (Samaria, capital of Israel at the time) was surrounded by an enemy […]
Remember when we used to put real film into real cameras? Those little rolls of celluloid that had “leaders” that you must load correctly into the camera, otherwise they wouldn’t wind right? And sometimes we realized that we had a few more frames left on a roll that we didn’t want to waste, so we […]
Mrs. Woodham was my second-grade teacher. She was kind and patient and would answer even the most childish questions. She was smart and she knew how to impart to her second graders the things they needed to know from the textbook and from many other sources. And when we disobeyed direct orders, she disciplined us. […]