Bible at Home

The same day that Jack hung a birdhouse on our patio, a pair of wrens took up residence. They have provided entertainment for us ever since. Our back yard is treacherous for small birds, as there are vigilant hawks who are also trying to raise and feed their own broods. The birdhouse is the best…

“Camp Meeting” was a time when Nana, my grandmother, went to the woods with other Christians, and slept in a tent and ate at a picnic table and listened to a preacher and sang hymns with spirit and gusto. I sometimes accompanied my father when he went to drive her home at the end of…

Miss Hysham, my Classics teacher in College, was full of enthusiasm for her subject. In the midst of a lecture she would stop and exclaim, “Isn’t this beautiful? Isn’t it simply beautiful? The language is lovely, and the images just glow in your mind! How beautiful!” Then she would continue the lecture. These outbursts occurred…

The use of clay to produce pottery is one of the oldest crafts of humankind. Shards of ancient pottery have been found on nearly every continent. The Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, has displayed a large intact pot that is three thousand years old, and others have been found that are even older. I…

“I have loved you with an everlasting love. I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.” (Jeremiah 31:3) These words, if ever heard or read, are almost always dismissed as “filler” for God’s message to Jeremiah to give to his people; but I believe that they express both God’s method and His motive in dealing with…

Short in stature, poor in income, but gigantic in spirit, St. John of the Cross lived and wrote in the sixteenth century some of the greatest spiritual books in the world. “The Dark Night of the Soul”, and “The Ascent Of Mount Carmel” are spiritual classics that in over four hundred years have never been…

Tender Mercy On the day my new-born granddaughter came home from the hospital, I was visiting, and happened to be holding the baby when the doorbell rang. Without even thinking, I went to the door and met a neighbor who was bringing a lemon pound cake in honor of the birth. I have never seen…

In visiting my brother and his wife on the East shore of Maryland one year, I went to a small Methodist church on the Sunday after Christmas. The congregation had a custom of telling “Jesus stories” before the service began. A microphone was passed around to those who raised their hand and they told of…

As a child, I disliked eating eggs so much that my mother, who thought that eggs are always “good for you,” was frustrated when I refused them. After witnessing her frustration, my Aunt Mildred, who was visiting, said to me, “The only reason you don’t like eggs is because you’ve never had egginacup” (all one…

Preparing for a mission trip to a small rural village in Mexico, our church team was told that we would have adequate supplies of bottled water in the van we took, but we must not under any circumstances offer water to the citizens who would be working with us, or we would certainly run out…