She toddles toward me, hands outstretched. My eyes are wide, excited and inviting, “Come on,” I urge with a half whisper. A foot lifts, and then another. A wobbly sort of drunken-sailor-tilt, propels her miniature body. A little too far to one side and then the other, she comes closer. And then, just before she […]
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“If Jesus wanted to,” my little seven-year-old fellow classmate declared, “He could flatten my thumb and make it big enough to go around the whole world.” He held his thumb inches from my wide eyes. I stared at it without saying a word. I could almost see it spread and widen. I imagined it […]
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Pacing from streetlight to streetlight, with my phone pressed hard against my ear, I wore a circled path on the asphalt. My head down, my feet entered the illumined cone shaped area on the pavement. There I turned again into the darkness and repeated my walk back to the lighted area I’d come from. The […]
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“What’s God been teaching you through His Word?” I ask as we settle in, past the mundane of life. We’ve left behind kids, jobs, routines, and the cycle of activities that spin our lives. It is this question, which brings a smile. The atmosphere changes from just friendship small talk to things that really matter, […]
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“Hey Sis,” she said to get my attention in the store. She was more than double my age with white hair. She looked like my grandma. “Mom,” I hissed, “don’t call me Sis,” I always wanted a sister. Sisters giggle with you when you are supposed to be asleep in bed. They share your clothes […]
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I’m not sure how old they were, but to me the title “ancient” applied. My parents, had an entire cabinet of dietary supplements. Every morning they’d pull them out and a ritual began. They twisted the lids, dumped the contents into their open palms and supplemented themselves. Watching with a child’s eyes, as they shook […]
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In the budding of a greening spring, bringing life and color to these naked woods, a lot of decay happens. We counted five dead deer on the way to church. Vultures are having a feast. Sure, death scares me somewhat. But it is the curse of decay that I find most terrifying. Mine in particular. […]
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Have you, like me, noticed how very popular the emblem of the cross is in jewelry and clothing? Both men and women wear crosses around their necks, fingers, waists, and wrists. Crosses adorn everything from shirts to mugs. They are so popular in fact that some who sport the cross have no idea what it […]
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“There is certainly a lot of uncertainty,” the television news commentator reported. Well…that pretty much sums up life, doesn’t it? The reporter went on to elaborate on his statement, all the while sounding quite certain about his uncertainty. Certainly, we all know, there is uncertainty. Not just now. Not just us. Not just because of […]
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We started married life in an upstairs apartment of a small house in a small town. Below us lived our landlady and her son. I always heard her puttering about in the kitchen. She puttered and muttered in German, which is a whole other story. Our first apartment wasn’t chic, but we were just happy […]
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