I love when friends come to my back door.
There are three possible doors to enter my home, not counting the garage.
Two doors are in the front of my house.
The back door leads into the kitchen.

There is a main front door which leads into the foyer.
There is a second front door that leads into the laundry room.
There are also two doors that go out to my side porch but no one comes in the house that way.
It is my back door that only good friends use.

Read More...

It is called the embraceable monument.
You can touch it.
You can rest your head against it.
You can cry on it.

The monument is open to the public 24 hours a day 365 days a year.
The monument is made of volcanic rock.
Whenever you look at the monument you see your own refection.
The monument lists the names of those who lost their lives in a war lasting almost 20 years.

Read More...

I go to the dentist twice a year for my checkup, cleaning, and polishing.
Usually, the dentist will say that everything looks good.
I leave with my toothbrush and my dental floss.
This time, I had to return to the office the following week.

I needed to have a cavity filled.
There was an old filling, and the cavity was somewhere between my two back teeth.
It had to be done even though it was not bothering me.
I made the appointment for early in the morning.

Read More...

All the times I wished I had a second oven in my kitchen.
All the times it would have come in handy.
Preparing meals for all seven of us with one oven was doable.
However, there were always those times when I wished that there were two ovens instead of one.

I never asked my husband for a second oven because it was not high on the priority list.
Wishes are not musts.
I made my one oven work all those years.
It was after a surprise party for my husband’s birthday years ago when I planned my new oven.

Read More...

I was carefully driving behind a man on a bike.
It was a gorgeous spring day.
Everyone seemed to be using a bike as their mode of transportation.
There are many country roads that do not have bike lanes, so sharing the road is in order.

I had my window down as I was driving.
The breeze was coming in and wafting across my face.
The man who was cycling was wearing a bright yellow shirt to make it easier to be seen.
I could hear the bike gears shifting as he pedaled.

Read More...

We read about them in the news.
However, we read about one such man first in God’s Word.
It is the Good Samaritan; the person who steps in and goes the extra mile.
The person who thinks of themselves last in order to help someone else.

Ibn Ali Miller was honored in Atlantic City, New Jersey for being a Good Samaritan.
Miller broke up a street fight between two teenage boys.
He encouraged the boys to talk and shake hands.
What this 26-year-old young man did was caught on camera.

Read More...

I saw her as I was leaving the grocery store.
I was not shopping at my usual store but rather a store in a different location.
My shopping cart was quite full.
The wind outside kicked up a bit and felt like a wind tunnel.

I stopped before I went into the parking lot to make sure my grocery bags were secure.
I was glad I stopped because the woman was right there in front of me.
She was pushing a walker, with a small grocery bag on her arm.
Her feet shuffled slowly, partly because of the wind and partly because of her walker.

Read More...

When I bring the laundry basket to the laundry room I come down the stairs backwards.
I am always careful about lifting things, in order to protect my back.
I slide the laundry basket down the back stairs as I guide it, holding onto the banister.
It may sound dangerous or awkward but in reality it is easier than coming down forward.

I remember when my children were learning to come downstairs.
Going up the stairs had been mastered much too quickly.
Going down the stairs was another story.
They were too little and wobbly to walk downstairs by themselves.

Read More...

He is called, one of America’s most important and original philosophical theologians.
That is how Jonathan Edwards is described.
Edwards was rooted in reformed theology and the Puritan heritage.
He played a critical role in shaping the First Great Awakening.

Edwards loved to observe nature.
He added a philosophic dimension to his observation.
In her book, Marriage To A Difficult Man, Elisabeth D. Dodds describes Edwards.
I remember one paragraph and her description.

Read More...

When she was about six years old, our oldest daughter gave me her birthday list.
I expected to see certain things on the list that I knew she liked.
To my surprise, I saw a T-ball glove as her number one item.
I didn’t think she was serious.

This was my daughter who played with Barbie dolls.
This was the little girl who loved Mary Poppins and would walk with a parasol in order to fly.
She was asking for something that was foreign to me.
It was foreign not because she was a girl but because it seemed to come out of left field.

Read More...