Priorities

As I sat in the comfy chair I call my “prayer chair,” my attention was drawn to the winter-bare tree in my front yard. The sky had just begun to lighten with the first hints of the soon-rising sun, and  I noticed a bird perched on a branch. At first I didn’t pay much attention, because I was involved in going through my prayer list. But then the little bird shivered. Something inside me went, “Aaawwwww, the poor thing!”
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Friends

By Ed Crumley

Friends.  Acquaintances.  Just a semantical difference?  No way!  Acquaintances come and go.  But friends stay, and stay, and stay for the long haul.  Then . . . suddenly . . . they’re gone.  But wait!  They can’t go!  It’s not time!  It’s not fair!  But isn’t that God’s decision?
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Mommy Markers: How parenting milestones get Camouflaged in day-to-day living

By Christine Thomas

While cleaning the bathtub recently I noticed that all the toys were gone. Oh no! I must have absently grabbed the plastic basket filled with floating ducks and dolls for our garage sale weeks earlier. As I wiped my sponge along the smooth porcelain rim that day, I realized the small clues of raising small children were disappearing from my home.
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Loving in the Margins

Today the waiter who served me at lunch was a skinny college boy whose clothes hung off of him.  He wore an odd looking hat and had piercings. He was very kind to me. The girl who took my money had dyed black hair, black fingernails, multiple piercings, and a leather bracelet, but she sang a little tune to herself and she also was very kind to me. It surprised me that they were kind, and convicted me that I was surprised. I realized that they didn’t have to be kind. I was wearing a suit and looked like an upper middle class lily-white snob. I was convicted to the point of tears when I realized that all of my life I have lived without tenderness, without humility, without gentleness toward so many. I thought I was better than them. Oh, no, I never said that out loud…not with my mouth anyway.
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All the World is a Coloring Book!

My kids have a book that we’ve read for years. Our last child, a 7 year-old boy, is the one enjoying it now. It’s called, God Thought of It First. It tells about all kinds of things that are common to us that God thought of first (helicopters, hummingbirds…).
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