The Ups and Downs of Life

A Facebook memory popped up, showing me a picture of my triumphant five-year-old when she’d won a fun and competitive game of Chutes and Ladders. I’d tagged my brother and sister in the post because we’d often played this board game when we were kids. Chutes and...

God’s Justice and Grace

English Romantic painter John Martin (1789-1854) is known for his apocalyptic landscapes depicting the destruction of civilizations. In these fantastic scenes, humans are overwhelmed by the magnitude of the destruction and powerless against the approaching doom. One...

Finding Wise Joy

The pandemic was winning. That’s how it looked to John Persoff, an emergency room doctor at a large hospital committed to saving patients with Covid. How could he give his best? During off hours, he relaxed by taking enlarged photos of something small—individual...

God’s Patient Love

When I give our beautiful, fluffy Norwegian Forest cat Mystique belly rubs and play with her, or when she falls asleep on my lap in the evening, it’s sometimes hard to believe that she’s the same cat we met years ago. Mystique used to live on the streets, underweight...

Grafted into God’s Family

During a visit with my father to his beloved Ecuador a few years ago, we visited the family farm where he grew up. I noticed a group of strange trees. My dad explained that when he was feeling mischievous as a boy, he would take a discarded branch from one fruit tree,...

Built on Christ

We have all sorts of names for groups of animals. No doubt you’ve heard of a flock of sheep, a herd of cattle, or even a gaggle of geese. But some names may surprise you. A group of crows is called a murder. How about a congregation of alligators, or a crash of...