In the In-Between I sat on the cold window ledge and leaned my forehead against the glass, looking out at the hospital garden. Brown earth, dried and brittle, had replaced the green of months before. I looked up at a bleak sky. Bare-branched trees broke solemn clouds. I dislike in-between spots, those adolescent-awkward, neither-here-nor-there, twilight […]
Continue ReadingBaal with a Pinch of God on the Side
“So Ahab sent for all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together on Mount Carmel.” (I Kings 18:20; NKJV). Let me paint the scene. A range of mountains, called the Carmel range, stretched some thirty miles from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea into the Jezreel Valley. Lush and green with trees over […]
Continue ReadingShelf Life
For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. I woke up this morning and felt like I’d lasted longer than my shelf life. I’m tired, weary and it is the just the first month of a new year. Maybe David felt that way when he wrote Psalm 103. As for man, his […]
Continue ReadingStrength Clothed
We met in the living room. Two couples. Older and younger. Married and about-to-be. My husband and I, the older and married pair, sat on stuffed tweed chairs across the coffee table from them. Side by side, facing us on our brown leather couch, hands intertwined, their love spoke like electricity through long glances and […]
Continue ReadingBye-Gones
“…if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV). Backgrounds. Everyone has them. They are the backdrop of our todays, the backstory of our narrative. Some people seem to get all the breaks, and others all the rough stuff. But […]
Continue ReadingI Hear Knocking
After a weird night of outside noises, my foggy early morning Bible reading arrives at Revelation 3:20. The familiarity of its long ago memorized words steal into my heart immediately like water into dry soil. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come […]
Continue ReadingFake News, True God
Herod the Great ruled Jerusalem and its surrounding villages with cruelty and deceit. His ruthless murders made him almost as famous as the magnificent building projects he instituted. During his reign, an entourage of distinguished travelers from the East came to Jerusalem. Their entrance into the massive doors of the city must have created a […]
Continue ReadingThat Time
It may be that Christmases have sped up, maybe they really do come more often, or possibly it’s time warp of aging, but it is that time of the year again. I have a billion things to do, and in the vast scheme of things, most of them are insignificant. Time moves ahead regardless of […]
Continue ReadingIt came to pass in Second Grade
Once upon a time, long long ago, before people knew better than to celebrate Christmas in schools, when the principal could still haul a student to the office for a whopping, a second grade teacher formed a choir. Now this choir was made up of twenty children all under the rule of one solitary gray […]
Continue ReadingLeftover Thanksgiving
“I’ll still be here,” he whispered as he climbed back into bed next to me. The sun still slept outside the dark window. Chill replaced the warmth of good-bye hugs, of little arms around my neck, of wet kisses on my cheek. The car door’s final bang echoed in my ears. Like hundreds of times […]
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