His alcoholic, unfaithful dad left when he was 2 years old. Then there was a stepdad for a while, but mostly he grew up with a single mom. His siblings and mom had no interest in God, and he himself had never given God much thought. Then as a teenager, he heard that God loved…
Category: Inspiration
Five things to do when your heart breaks for someone who was hurt
Dear Husband and I had a happy Mother’s Day morning teaching Bible to preteens at our church. But the afternoon brought a double dose of sadness. Two phone calls from family members broke our hearts. There was nothing we could do to stop them from being hurt. So what do we do? Here are five…
Gentle Hearted
Many thanks to my guest artist, Michele Sherwood, for these adorable images. I was suddenly a motherless sixteen-year-old with a physically and emotionally absent father in another state. I could have been dangerously vulnerable, an easy target for someone with bad intent. But, instead, God put many people around me who cared. They were…
Positive
Last week a close family member had a terrible accident. God spared his life in spite of many serious injuries. The weight of his condition has been heavy on all of us, especially his mom and sisters. Something his mom said caused me to evaluate my own thinking. She told us how the negative talk…
Welcome
Easter afternoon promised to be quiet (ok, I admit it- lonely). We had already celebrated Easter early with one of our sons and his family, and the other adult kid who lives in our area needed to celebrate with a widowed in-law. We had resigned ourselves to a boring Easter afternoon after church. But a…
Waiting
What does Judas, the villain of Holy Week have to teach us? There’s no way we would ever act like him. . . right? Some Bible scholars surmise that Judas betrayed Jesus in part because he was disappointed in Jesus. Perhaps Judas had grown impatient waiting for Jesus to start acting like the messiah he…