American settlers in the 1800s had a lot of stuff to carry west. They had to pack enough for months on the road. Flour, sugar, dried meat, and sundry supplies weighed their wagons down. To move all ...
Tyrian purple is the color of kings.
There was a time that wearing purple was forbidden by law, unless you were royalty. It was as much a symbol of elevated status as a crown on the head of a ...
Not all beggars are poor. Massu in India hires a taxi to his begging spot, dons his ragged clothes, and works hard for eight hours. Afterwards, he changes again and hires a taxi home.
He also owns ...
Old cemeteries give the lie to our deepest desires. The names become worn, and when enough generations have come and gone, the story behind the monuments is forgotten, never to be brought to mind ...
Sparrows are small birds, with wingspans about the size of an opened hand, and short, stubby beaks. They are certainly the most familiar of wild birds, because they nest where humanity lives.
If we ...
A truck and a trailer are two completely different things. Obviously. Yet, we mate them together to create something better than we had before. Here are some examples:
We create a tractor-trailer ...
When we want to mark something, we flag it.
Sprinkler heads in the yard? Flagged. Boundaries for the new highway? Flagged. U.S. Post Office? Flagged. Military company? ...
Read more: Flagged for Jesus
Singing in a quartet is rather an old-fashioned thing to do in today’s modern world. There are several groups that still manage to pull this off. Don’t picture the rag-tag, oddly-dressed people ...
Read more: Barber Shop Quartet
World travelers are a unique breed, a people who reach out to grasp the beauty that our world offers. From the sweeping mountain vistas of Bavaria to sun-drenched Mexico, who would not travel the ...
Read more: The Beautiful Sin
There’s a phrase we’ve heard and probably said: United we stand; divided we fall. We often mean this to say if we work together, we’ll get the job completed. If a few slough off, then the final ...
Read more: One for Jesus; Jesus for All
We know that saying about lemons. When life throws them at us, don’t get distressed over their sour taste. Rather, we need to slice them up, and bask in the sun with our glass of lemonade in ...
Read more: The Hand-Carved Beam
A psychologist once quipped, “We are the average of the five people we are closest to.”
Average us…average Joes…no more than bits and pieces of all the people we spend the most time ...
Read more: Running with Jesus
How do we respect something that is lost? Do we wear white, as we might see in India, or as the daughters of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands did in 2004? Or do we don our black robes, as does much ...
Read more: Living Bald-Headed for God