Stuck in the Mud

It had rained all month long. Literally. I was discouraged and worried that my tender garden, planted just 13 weeks earlier wouldn’t be able to absorb much more rain. I decided it was time to venture out into my soppy, muddy garden and inspect the damage. I slipped on a pair of old flip-flops, grabbed my garden hoe, gloves and pail, and trotted to the back of the property where my garden was planted.
Read more

Help Is On The Way

Last night an ambulance barreled down our quiet cul-de-sac at two in the morning. Bright lights whirling around, illuminating bits and pieces of the neighborhood. When the hues of orange and yellow lit up the faces of family, I detected concern. They witnessed their loved one wheeled out on a gurney, strapped in and curled up on her side. What could the problem be? Maybe she was severely dehydrated from a bout with a stomach virus or perhaps she had a fall down the stairs. All I was left to do was pray, so pray I did.
Read more

The Real Thing

By Cheri Cowell

My mother’s favorite dessert is banana pudding. Now if the only banana pudding you’ve had is the kind made with vanilla pudding, you have not had real banana pudding. For my mother’s birthday I made the real kind of banana pudding: scalded milk, egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla over a double broiler, layered with the bananas and wafers, topped with a meringue. It tastes nothing like the vanilla pudding version. Looks like it, but doesn’t taste like it. Real and sincere love is like that. The counterfeit version looks like it from a distance, but doesn’t measure up.
Read more

The Cupboard is Bare

Isn’t it amazing how we can have a cupboard full of food, yet can hear the cry from our families, “There’s nothing here to eat?” We know there is plenty of food in the house. No one is going to starve. But then they know that, too. They’re not really saying they can’t find anything to eat. What they’re looking for is something that will satisfy. Our souls are like that. We long for something that will satisfy our inner hunger. We look into the cupboard that is filled with all the world has to offer: movies, relationships, big houses, fast cars, and nice vacations, and yet see nothing to eat – nothing to satisfy. But God knows how to satisfy our hunger pangs.
Read more

Knocking Down Walls

By Peter Lundell

In this new year, before we try new things or quit old things, we should remember one thing: To do the new or quit the old, we need to break through what has hindered us until now.

Take a lesson from the Berlin Wall, erected in 1961 by the paranoid East German government, which divided democratic and Communist Berlin. The wall epitomized the government’s iron-fisted control of its people and its fear of the West. The concrete blocks and barbed wire isolated West Berlin from the rest of East Germany for 28 years.

Read more

Next Page »