Ready to Make Friends with Poetry? ⟶
In a previous lifetime I spent many years in elementary classrooms and labored through daily routines required for young learners. One such activity was a calendar exercise where teachers dutifully pointed to a one-dimensional rectangular graph of squares labeled with days and numbers and names. “Today is……. Yesterday was….. Tomorrow will be….”, and the children…
The first verses of Isaiah Chapter six begin, “In the year that King Uzziah died….” and proceed to describe just what it was like when God’s presence filled the temple. What a way to worship. (Go ahead, read it. I’ll wait.) Anchoring a year by identifying it as when so-and-so has died seems an odd…
My husband and I sat for a few moments in the waning daylight of September’s first day, swatting away persistent mosquitoes and chatting about unfinished summer projects. The bittersweet end of August that sidles up to the beginning of Autumn always surprises me by the quick demise of sunlight and sudden arrival of the evening….
I got a notice from the Neptune Society this week. Seriously. I felt like calling or emailing them to say, “I’m turning 70 this week. I am not dying.” It’s weird to do the math confirming I am, in fact, entering my eighth decade and realize I feel maybe 35 inside. Know what I mean?…
July 14th, 1973 Nothing says ‘tine machine’ quite like a blurry photo or a guy with a bushy beard and a wearing daisies in her hair on her wedding day. I say ‘time machine’ because my wedding dress was made of cotton eyelet and my bridesmaids wore yellow checked gingham. My cake topper also had…
FULL DISCLOSURE: long post ahead but there are lots of great photos. The thoughts below are directly affected by a post-Europe travel brain and my best attempt at gathering my thoughts. Paragraphs may be rather random. “May be?” They are. People travel for different reasons. To see the world, visit friends, taste new food, for…
There are times in the dead of winter that I have a hard time imagining ANYTHING will every be growing or blooming in my flower beds. Then Spring and Summer come and it’s an EXPLOSION of color that can’t be contained. Somewhere in the middle of all that green there are plants vying for sunlight…
“Personally, I know little about God, whoever he is. If he is. I realize, however, that to some, he’s downright awesome. From Gram’s description, I picture him like a raptor with a sky’s wingspan, exhaling love’s oxygen on his hatchlings, feeding them comfort and truth and power straight from his beak.” -Sugar Birds, Cheryl Bostrom…
God with us in the broken place. E manu el, Yahweh whose hand steadies and steers us while we lift our face. Prayers rise. We cannot transform a heart but we can tend and feed the bodies housing hope, care for roses, prune and weed, wash and fold, clothe the people who inhabit our petitions….
Last week in Sunday School we talked about the number 1, and how there’s only One Way to Heaven—and that’s Jesus. Of course, “Jesus” is the Sunday School answer to nearly everything. And it works, especially if you’re a young child. But what about as we grow older? This got me thinking. Jesus said He…