A Pottery Lesson

“Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand …” Jeremiah 18:6 I’ve been reading in Jeremiah for the last few weeks – boy is it a tough book. A lot of folks avoid Jeremiah; they think it’s too difficult to understand, too depressing and too...

Gifts of the Magi

By O. Henry One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of...

In Defense of Strays

“So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.” (Genesis 2:20) We’ve got a cat named ‘Baby’. Let me back up. We’ve got four cats, six dogs, somewhere around fifty fish (the kind you feed, not the kind...

Groundhog Day

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in...

‘Enough’ is an Illusion

“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them” (Matthew 6:26) Of all the times I’ve asked God to help me or to provide something for me, I don’t remember ever asking Him for someone I can...