But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. (Gal. 5:22-23)It's morning. Early...
In the winter of 1994, I left my apartment in Carbondale, Illinois, and drove to the Baptist Student Center on the campus of Southern Illinois University. My wife, Molly, was not feeling well and...
When Jesus was eight years old, his parents took him to the Temple and gave two young pigeons as their offering, the sacrifice prescribed for the very poor. Thirty years later, Jesus entered the...
"Ants pick a carcass cleaner than a lion." ...
I sliced my thumb a couple of weeks ago. Nothing dangerous, just painful and slightly bloody. Dull knife, big apple, a few seconds of distraction, and the next thing I know I am...
August was odd for me. Pleasant things happened, of course, but I also had two inconvenient mishaps. First, while attending a week-long fiction workshop on the St. John’s College campus at Santa...
When I was growing up, in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, I used to go to the family cedar chest, kneel on the floor, and lift the lid on the sacred family...
My work pays me to stand by while people fling mud at my product. Okay, maybe that's a little melodramatic, but no less true. As a writer, I get paid to work hundreds...
Even though it happened twelve years ago, I remember it like yesterday. Receiving that phone call—"your son is hurt"—frantically rushing home, wondering...
Sometimes work is difficult. Tensions can run high between supervisors and employees. We may feel helpless. We may dread the future. Sometimes we feel underutilized or unappreciated, and it affects...
Somebody—probably a preacher—has said, "Don't put a period where God only puts a comma." ...
A friend of mine—I'll call him Jack—got knocked down, run over, and ground into the dirt by everything the world could throw...
The Christian answers to those three questions are not "companion" and "boss" and "employee." Such working relationships do appear in the Bible. For instance, Jesus speaks of the centurion's...
Part of excellence in any pursuit is knowing when to quit while you're on top. The sports world is filled with stories...
Let your living spill over into thanksgiving . . . ...
When a small leak in the roof took me into the attic, I found my son’s two-foot sailboat leaning on its side. The plastic hull is red. The deck blue. The sails are...
A little boy played with his father's gold watch and accidentally broke it. Saying nothing, the boy replaced the watch in his father's drawer. When the father asked how his watch broke, the boy...
Zacchaeus was a wee little man....
Two arborist brothers performed a marvelous feat in our yard today. They cut down, and into stove-length logs, two dying white pines and a diseased oak tree. Afterwards, they trimmed a second oak...
Last week as I was leaving the house for the newspaper, my wife asked if I would buy her a medium cup of coffee. I drove to the Quick Check, parked my car...
