We had a restful weekend with the kids at the lake house and now back in the city gearing up for a busy week and month. Mellow days make for loveliness amid the hustle of an ordinary week. I started to say a mundane week—but is anything ever really mundane—even trivial tasks repeated? The older…
Stop and Breathe, It’s Sabbath!
John 30:22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. When I am pressed and overwhelmed in my daily life, there is one thing that brings immediate relief. It’s a very old remedy and technique, but is well proven to be effective. And that is to intentionally come to full…
Oak Trees and Anchors
Last weekend, our daughter, son-in-law, and both grandchildren visited our lake house for the first time. You can imagine how much preparation grandparents do anticipating the patter of little feet. Our goal is smiling faces and happy hearts. In buying this home of course we thought about respite—a place by still waters and green meadows…
Fall 2021
September morning breezes whisper the unrooting of summer’s green carpets and blossomed meadows in anticipation of the changeless mystery of autumn and the foretelling winter’s barren bone. While down below ancient earth produces again the necessary spools and spools of burnished color to unravel, with giddy delight, across the mountains, hills, and plains. The opened…
Dying for Breath
My husband and I had been leading a tour of the biblical sites of Israel when we first learned that the pandemic had hopped from China to the Mid-East. A few COVID-19 cases had been reported in the ancient city of Jerusalem and surrounding villages. Even then the threat loomed distant—like it was someone else’s…
Winning the Oldest War
The longest-running war of all time is ironically not between countries or ethnic groups. There is one older and filled with more hatred, unresolved injustices, and animosity. Can you guess the two formidable opponents? As old as Adam and Eve, the battle between the sexes rages on into post-modern, post-God societies. It is clear that,…
Blueness
Blueness Six million dead and the blueness of a wound, scars in the inward parts, is there a blueness to revive us? None. But the bruises of a perfect lamb chastised for peace, for justice, for mercy. His blue bruises mingled with scarlet cleanses white, weightless white. See hidden here in the prophets’piercing pages of…
Secret Cove
Secret Cove The barren season moves with stealth behind the scenes of autumn, steadily edging toward the razor cold and lacy veil of ice and crystal. Then suddenly she falls, winter’s glorious mystique reveals in a day. In sparkling white layers, she manifests and penetrates deeper than surface chill and snowdrift for earth and sea…
Handel
Handel He never considered for a second the standing ovations, the wild applause, the tears of joy, the years of popular longevity, or the glorious manifest presence of the living God. Tattered velvet slippers shuffling upon the cold stone floor at midnight, he frantically searched by candlelight for inkwell, pen, and paper trying to pace…
Bonnie Saul Wilks 