It was the last day with my class that I had had for the whole year. We were out on the playground, enjoying the nice weather, when one of the little girls became so intent on getting up the ladder to the slide first that her sweet, innocent face contorted into a hideous expression of … Continue reading The Link between Discouragement and Motive
The first glimpse of Christmas comes thousands of years before the Lord Jesus came as a baby to the virgin Mary and her husband Joseph. Adam and Eve whom God had created in His image had just disobeyed God's one command--Do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of the knowledge of good and … Continue reading The Necessity of Christmas
Some of my first memories of emptiness are from the Christmases of my childhood. It was after the last gifts had been opened and the beautiful wrapping lay crumpled and discarded all across the floor that the hollowness would creep across my heart like a very dark shadow. The weeks of festive anticipation came to … Continue reading My Christmas Journey from Emptiness to Joy
 There is a tree I love that stands next to the preschool where I teach, and though I rarely get a chance to look at it for long, I always enjoy a passing glance on my way into the chaos each morning or as I herd my group of three-year-olds up the hill to … Continue reading Deferred Hopes and Trees of Life
What but faith would make the golden leaf let go of life and whisper where she fell, it shall be well?
If my heart is a song the notes ramble far and long but like the roads that go to Rome every melody leads home to the exact same words again, again, again. .
I could pine with the evergreens, I could spread my empty arms like branches, aching for the snow to fall, to cover all my weary world in white. I could sway with grief in the warm winds. I could weep with the clouds in the rain— I love a winter far away. But You are … Continue reading Pining
At my table, I would have feasted on sugar. But You refine my taste with vegetables, not sweet on my tongue, but grown sweet to my soul as I gain strength.
Oh, Joy, You came to us in the night— a baby boy—made like us— oh, God of might, small in Mary’s arms, whom Herod could not kill.
That Christmas comes at the end, in the final breaths of a wasting year, is best. After the muscle-ache of trekking graveside and back, graveside and back; after the haunting loneliness— of beauty-gazing and solo-missions, of incomprehensible party chatter, of home without its people; after the long war— the blitzkrieg of unrelenting lies, and the … Continue reading In the End
Gratefully His 