Bible at Home

Probably the most vivid and inexplicable example of faith in the Bible, next to the example of Noah, is that of Abraham, who believed beyond reason that Sarah, his elderly wife, would bear Abraham a son in his own old age. Even though he believed God, Abraham and Sarah contrived to provide a proxy son…

Manoah, the father of Samson, was terrified when he realized that the “holy man” who had spoken to him was, in fact an angel of God: ”we are doomed to die!” he said to his wife. “We have seen God,!” But his wife answered, “If the Lord meant to kill us, He would not have…

Nancy, my oldest sister was a competitive swimmer and diver in high school. For one or two summers she taught swimming to children in the community pool. Her first summer she struggled to keep their attention until one day Nancy came home all smiles. She announced at dinner that she had discovered that praising the…

Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado is fascinating to visit. It is a fairly large community of buildings made from six to ten hundred years ago by a people who did not have so much as a wheel of any kind. They built their structures of local stone carved by the use of another stone…

When we bought our house over eleven years ago, it had a beautiful ornamental pear tree in the front yard. For most of those years we enjoyed the tree mightily, until about four years ago in a storm it cracked and had to be cut the rest of the way down. I grieved for the…

When they brought my new-born brother home from the hospital, my parents lived in an upstairs apartment in a small New York State town. The baby, Burr, was their first born. One day soon after bringing him home, Mildred, my mother, put him down in his crib after feeding him, softly closed the door, and…

Moses took half of the blood and put it in bowls, and the other half he splashed against the altar . Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people. They responded, “We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey.” Moses then took the blood and sprinkled…

For Lent one year a pharmacy in a small southern U.S. Town, advertised a drawing for a rabbit. Sarah, a friend of mine , was a young girl at the time. She and her sister saw the ad and went into the store. They were too young to enter the drawing, so they filled out…

The people of Israel returned from exile to rebuild their ruined temple and made a start on the foundation when Ezra was asked to read to them the Old Testament laws given originally to Moses to give to the whole people of God. (Nehemiah 8:1-9) the words of the law were new to many in…

In the story Silas Marner, written by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) in 1861,the main character is a young man engaged to be married, but who is unjustly accused of a crime he didn’t commit, and his accuser eventually married Silas’ fiancé. Silas was a linen weaver by trade, and so he traveled to a…