Every year at Lent I pray about what I need to do, not do, give up or take on. Of course a person can do a bit of soul-searching any time of year, but given Lent’s significance in Church history, there is something special about participating with other Christians around the world, past and present, […]
Standing for Christ
I listened with great sadness to last week’s news about the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians by ISIS in Libya. While I have not tracked all of the “public” murders ISIS has performed in the past, it seems that – besides punishment for unpaid ransoms – they often target journalists and unsuspecting aid workers, and […]
Those Wise Guys – Finale
As I watched the wise men head for home in my imaginative musings, I was left with a handful of questions to ponder. If the Jewish spiritual leaders were aware of the wise men’s search of the child born King of the Jews – in other words, the Jewish Messiah – why did they not […]
Those Wise Guys – Part 4
Have you ever faced a situation where you had been rehearsing what you would say, only to find that when the time came, your speech fell flat on the floor? This is what I imagine (as I participate in this scene from my rocking chair) happened to the wise men when they finally came face […]
Those Wise Guys – Part 3
The landscape deepened into tones of gray as the wise men on their camels, their entourage in their midst, lumbered along the western road. Knowing that their journey was almost over, the men were anxious to reach their goal—the home of the One born King of the Jews. A crowd of curious onlookers that had […]
Those Wise Guys – Part 2
“Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star as it rose, and have come to worship him,” the wise men said. I love astronomy, though I am a novice. Yet I know that stars don’t move like planets do. Stars are in fact suns in […]
Those Wise Guys – Part 1
I’m talking about those foreign dignitaries who visited the child Jesus in Bethlehem – the story of Epiphany – as described in Matthew 2. This past week, rereading this story again, I did something I have never done before (with this passage of Scripture). I placed myself in the story, like a precocious adolescent who […]
Atonement
Have you ever read the book of Leviticus? All those “offerings” (burnt offering, sin offering, trespass offering, etc.) sound bloody and cold. Even though there are several names for these different offerings, they all boil down to “sin”…that ugly archaic 3-letter word that has no place in a modern society. Or if it does it […]
Death of a Writer
One of my favorite authors died last month. Gabriel García Márquez was a Colombian-born journalist and author. My introduction to him came in my World Lit I class at Chapman University when we read “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” followed the next year (World Lit II) by “Love in the Time of Cholera.” On my […]
Identity
Who am I? First off, I am a wife and a mother—those are extremely important roles to me. I am a writer and editor by vocation, both as a career as well as what I perceive to be my life’s calling. I am a classical guitar player and knitter who loves the outdoors. But do […]