Bible at Home

My high school art teacher was passionate about “modern” art. Nature, he declared, was the raw material of art, but never art itself. Art required creativity, imagination and intelligence, none of which, he asserted, exist in nature. Even then I wondered how that could be true. On Friday when I stepped outside I saw on…

One of the most heart breaking stories in the Old Testament is the return of the spies from the Promised Land, and the general decision by the people not to attempt to enter the land: The land we explored devours those living in it. The people we saw there were of great size. We saw…

Once I had a neighbor who every fall stretched a line on a pulley from a tree near his house to the frame of the window of his study. At first he hung a bird feeder near the tree, and gradually, over a few weeks, pulled the feeder closer and closer to the window. “The…

Some fifteen years ago my husband Jack was given a small sealed glass globe containing two tiny shrimp swimming around a single small piece of coral. The globe was accompanied by instructions for its care and the admonition that the shrimps’ life expectancy was about two years. The larger of the two died within a…

Watching Nathan Chen on T.V. deliver an exquisite figure skating performance at the Olympics in Beijing was an exhilarating experience made even greater by the announcement that some of the combination of jumps he achieved had never before been seen at the Olympics. Nathan Chen performed five different types of quadruple jumps. He had committed…

Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest. (Mark 6:31) These are the words of Jesus when he and his disciples had been so pressed by the crowds seeking healing that they did not even have time to eat. They are sweet words of concern for his followers. They all…

When I drew back the draperies in our front room Thursday morning I was startled by the brilliant light that flooded in from the sun’s reflection off the snow outside. It was a sight that we rarely see in Texas. I had been reading about the white cloud that had flooded the tabernacle that Moses…

One night this winter I stood on a deck over-looking Possum Kingdom Lake, and looked up to see a sky that had almost disappeared behind the density of stars in constellations above and apparently around me. For the first time I felt as if I were truly in the midst of the Milky Way galaxy,…

In 1558 when twenty-five year old Princess Elizabeth Tudor was confined to house arrest by her half sister Mary, Elizabeth was sitting one day out doors reading a book when she was approached by a group of riders who were men of importance at court in London. She didn’t know if they would require her…

Gone Fishing Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling is the story of Harvey Cheyne, the spoiled fifteen year old son of a railroad baron. The boy falls overboard from an ocean liner on his way to Europe with his mother. Unknown to anyone on the liner, Harvey is picked up alive by a nearby fishing boat…