Travelling through a different place, we paused to look through an old church. As we left, we placed an offering on the little table with a silent prayer of thanks because it was there. Many years later, our offering that day reminded me of the offerings I find from...
It is a sad thing to stand at the gate of where home used to be and now it is not. You stand like a stranger, a guest without a welcome, at a gate that once swung open to your touch. You have no right to open it now, no right to smile and step inside and say 'I'm...
I could never understand why Esther was held up as a paragon of virtue. If you read her story, Esther unfolds as hesitant, as hiding her faith and her cultural identity for fear of personal backlash, and then as a self-centred coward. Esther pretended not to have a...
Carefully I chose a new set of saucepans and the manufacturers were specific in their instructions. They pointed out that these saucepans were designed for a particular purpose and it could be achieved only if they were used in a certain way. They were to be used only...
Carefully I addressed the Christmas card. The name was right, the street and street number were right and the town was definitely right. Inadvertently, the post-code was wrong. One wrong figure in a four-figure code sent the letter spinning off to another town. It...
‘What on earth,’ I thought, ‘is all this talk about “getting real”? What is the obsession with “getting on your island” of a dubious sub-culture? Why should we leave our out-of-date language, our tested culture, and take on other cultural habits just to prove we...
He built a pair of the most beautiful figures imaginable. He made them of his choicest material and then decided to set them aglow with a light from within themselves. He placed the fibres through every finger, toe, limb and body and took them into the garden room...
He preached faith and he practiced what he preached. So, in the goodness of his heart, he was taking a few groceries to an ‘economically challenged’ family who lived over the creek. He came to the footbridge and saw it was eroded by heavy rain. It was not safe to walk...
I listened to the morning news and two things were headlines. The first was violence in society. In addition to violent deaths on roads, domestic violence and world-wide violence which we hear about every day, a gunman had caused multiple deaths and injuries in a...
Good things come in threes and this is the first of three good news stories from the Bible. Enoch lived through about nine generations, from Adam to his own son, Methuselah, and Methuselah’s son, Lamech. He would have known Adam personally and would have understood...