Does a date make a difference? This one did. I married Everett V. Jackson on December 28, 1968.

That seems like, and is, a lifetime from 2014. Years of adjustment, years of joint decisions, years of laughs, experiences, days and nights together. Where did it all go?

I don’t remember not being married. 46 years can do that. I do remember the longing times before marriage. Will I ever marry? Who will it be? Will he love me for being…..

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Got to watch one of my childhood favorite productions last night. I bought a DVD of the 1955 TV Christmas special, Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors. I had the entire thing memorized .  It tells the story of the wise men on the way to meet the Christ child. They stop at the home of a poor widow and her crippled son. When the little boy offers to send a gift to the Christ Child, he offers the…..

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Let us never forget what it cost Jesus to come to earth to save us. While the humble birth, scratchy straw, and unhygienic setting for labor and delivery are part of this week’s story, when we look at the agony of the cross, we see something Paul E. Miller in Love Walked Among Us tells so eloquently: “But Jesus had never known the silence of his Father. …Jesus has never been separated from his Father–until the cross. The thought of…..

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With all the hustle, the parties, the shopping, the “I’ve got to get this done!” flurry, let us look at the ends of each of the lines of this hymn, written by William Dix in 1860. The manger story, yes, but our response to it is the real story. Are we further along in our Christ walk than we were last year? Are we where we want to be next year?  As we celebrated our church’s renewal service the other…..

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Today is a day of fasting and prayer for our congregation of Christ’s church. I am reminded of the Advent hymn, “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.”  It reads: Let all mortal flesh keep silence and with fear and trembling stand; Ponder nothing earthlyminded, For with blessing in His hand, Christ our God to earth descendeth, Our full homage to demand. King of Kings, yet born of Mary As of old on earth He stood, Lord of Lord, in human…..

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I’m struggling with a passage from John 3 right now. I guess I have struggled with it for a while, maybe forever, because of my sin nature. Intellectually, I understand it, but my proud hard rebels, and now that my writing is becoming important to me as never before, I am really having a hard time with it. Here is John 3:30-31: “He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less. He has come from above…..

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