No Thornless Roses

No one ever said being a Christian would guarantee us a bed of thornless roses.  This week proved that point for me.  How can so much heartache befall a people at one time without their hearts bursting from the pain?  I could list several things that have afflicted us as a church family over the past two months, but I'll just mention the most recent—a close friend in church passed away quickly from ovarian cancer and septicemia.  She was just 50 years old.

Read more

Doubting Faithful

Have you ever felt like a hypocrite at church?  I have.  There are days when doubt overtakes me, when the mountains seem bigger than my faith, and the road is filled with more obstacles than I can imagine.  Sometimes I feel so small.  Then the voices of doubt are louder than my voice of faith.  I hear the voices in my head say things like, “If He loved you that much, you wouldn’t be going through all of this”, and “Look at that person over there.  At least she’s having fun.”

Read more

Blackberry Patch

One of the hidden benefits of buying our home was discovering we owned the woods behind our fenced backyard. My husband is clearing out the brush to create various paths. One thing he isn't clearing out is the wild blackberry brambles. During this entire process we've eagerly watched the blackberries mature and ripen. First we saw the blossoms, then the fruit appeared, and now the mature fruit is ready to be picked.  But one thing I noticed in this maturation process was that the blackberries didn't all mature at the same rate.  Some berries ripen slower than others. Some of the fruit is smaller than others. Worst of all, some fruit never ripens, but dies on the vine before it ever matures into a plump, juicy, flavorful berry.

Read more

Black and White

I often long for the days when the good guys wore white and the bad wore black.  An incident a few months back reminded me of why.  A girlfriend and I had just pulled through a drive-thru when a man walked up from behind my car to ask for directions.  It wasn't until he leaned toward my open window that I began to panic.  My doors were unlocked and we were blocked in from a quick getaway.  If the man really was lost I wanted to help, but I couldn't tell if he was a good guy or a bad one.  Where was that white hat?  I didn't find one, but all ended well—the man got the help he needed and we were safe.  Jesus has a better identification program than white or black hats.
Read more

A Birds Eye View

Dancing around from side to side, taking shortcuts underneath the plants to the next row, the bird constantly pecked into the earth, ferreting around for the first meal of the day. Occasionally the bird would stop and “chew” and swallow some undetermined shard but then, all of a sudden, the uncompromising peck into the fertile ground brought forth a prize-sized earthworm worthy of fastidious consumption! Little by little the earthworm disappeared into the contented stomach of my feathered garden guest!

Read more

« Previous Page — Next Page »