“I thought you were dead.” That’s what my friend said when I finally returned her call. Not dead, but in paradise—sort of. Years ago, when I unexpectedly found myself teaching first grade, I landed in both an inferno (due to my inexperience in classroom management) and a paradise as I reveled in God’s Word and…
We have hammered the ringing rocks in Pottsgrove, Pennsylvania. When struck, these rocks chime like bells. If, however, you take one of these stones out of the rock field, it no longer rings. It needs other stones to make its song. Likewise, as Christians, we need other minstrels to make our music. We are called…
One of our friends told a story that, with variations, is sadly common for Deaf children who lack communication. As a child, he told everyone he had been born in the United States. He was ten years old when a teacher at his school (which followed an oral approach of forcing Deaf children to get…
One Friday night, I was sitting with about fifty other people who hailed from Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The group dispensed with small talk and broached subjects close to their hearts: concern for loved ones, need for jobs, and the difficulty of living wisely. Then the evening speaker began,…
Years ago, we stood briefly at the equator in Uganda, but our ministry trip to eSwatini was our first sojourn south of the equator. I was startled by the upside-down crescent moon, even though—after a moment’s reflection—the topsy-turvy sight made perfect sense. In the northern hemisphere, the moon moves left to right as it rises…
We had planned to go to eSwatini in May to encourage an American missionary couple and the Eswatini Deaf Church. Our aim was to teach leaders of the Deaf church how to present a summary of Romans 1-8, so they could use their skill in Swazi Sign Language to teach at the Deaf church and…
Before, I saw hope as glass baubles blown to wish-bone fragility, then iced in the winging snow; Crystalled strands dangling– until, frayed by untamed winds, or snapped, splintered, by stabs of light, they scattered, splattered– jagged, tattered tears. Now I know hope as that fierce and holy stubbornness that glimpses the rainbow refracted by the…
In a radical break from the medieval distinction between the sacred and the secular, the Protestant Reformation dignified all honest work. I love this video, which is filled with happy scenes from my city. And I love Melissa, who appears at 3 minutes 12 seconds into the film. Melissa literally follows the Reformation call to…
After visiting our children and grandchildren in El Paso, we were driving through utter darkness to a remote place in Arizona. Black-tailed jackrabbits, which can leap up to twenty feet, kept bounding in front of our car. Chuck kept swerving, at seventy-five miles per hour, to miss hitting the jackrabbits. The one time we encountered…
My mother read aloud to us once a year; on Christmas Eve, she read Luke 2 and “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.” We had very few children’s books in our home, but someone gave me—the child insomniac with chronic pain—Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book, which I cherished. Despite crying over trying to read the word “laugh,”…
