As the plane pulls away from the gate, I am filled with a mixture of terror and exhilaration.  I love the idea of going somewhere new, but I live in the gap between the is and the ought.  I ought to be excited, but to embrace the excitement, I have to give up control, give up knowing that all will b...

Much of the New Testament is devoted to letters that the Apostle Paul wrote to various churches in the newborn Christian sect.  Last spring, I was studying Paul’s letter to the Colossians and was intrigued by the fact that he was writing to a group of people that he had never actually met.  He had h...

To be sung to the familiar tune by Steve Nelson

Frosty the Snowman
Tumbled into town
With a duct tape hat and two duct tape eyes
And a scarf made out of yarn.

Frosty the Snowman
Was a jolly, prickly soul
He’d been painted white and his smile shone bright
On his tumbly, grassy knoll

He first appeared a l...

A bright, arresting light
   shone from the Christmas star;
one star so bright that wise
   men saw it from afar,

And shepherds in their fields
   also saw it shining,
accompanied by lyrics
   a heavenly choir singing.

One light was born that night,
   that Christmas long ago,
one light that fills our hea...

The Christ is coming
and the palm tree
dresses itself in pine and holly
the porous stem
providing a loamy home
for seeds to nest and rest
and then burst forth
in new growth
a divine symbiosis
                                    Selah

like a miraculous child
carried by a virgin mother
implanted in her womb
and ...

I am going to ask you a question that I found revealing.  If given a choice between Psalm 42 or 43, to which psalm do you gravitate?  Both psalms end with the same words:  Why, my soul, are you downcast?  Why so disturbed within me?  Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my ...

I read the word twice in one day
in a novel and in the newspaper
of all places
Newspapers are supposed to use
third grade words
Here I am, elderly and still checking
the dictionary, unable to glean
from context what the writer
is trying to say.

And when I say I’m checking
a dictionary, of course, I mean
I’m ...

A few weeks ago, we had a week full of grandparenting.  First, I went down to our son’s home to watch his girls for two nights while Court and Kimberly took a trip to visit friends.  When I returned home, Dave and I had a sleepover with the Barnes boys while Ben worked in Chicago and Meredith took a...

We wanted to take our adult children and their spouses to Coronado for the opening night of my husband’s theatrical adaptation of Jane Eyre.  We made our plans back in the spring when the dates were first announced.  We then made reservations at the Hotel del Coronado.  Arrangements all set.  Except...

In the mountains
where the nations come to observe magnitude
the shadows form crescents and curls
like wispy chalk drawings
as the moon moves across the sun

But don’t look! 
not without protection

How to spread joy for free?
Rule number one is be prepared

Have the eyes to see
and reach out your hand
to e...