March 17, 2022 - My mother always was one who enjoyed doing “crafty” things. When we were cleaning out her house, we found numerous half-finished projects. Things like purses being made from lunch boxes, wooden trays to be painted, pictures she was going to decoupage and, well, you get the idea. If we are honest, all of us have a number of “unfinished projects” of our own. It seems we “run out of time.”

March 3, 2022 - I got a phone call this week informing me of the sudden passing of an old friend, someone I had known for more than 60 years. To be truthful, he was more family than friend and though I had not seen him in more than 10 years, I thought of him often. It made me think of a poem by Leigh Hodges, one I first read many years ago.

February 17, 2022 - Though it is February, in East Texas that means that spring is “just around the corner.” With springtime, the grass starts to turn green again, the trees bud and the flowers bloom. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus admonished his listeners to “consider the lilies of the field”. When you unpack that statement, there are two important things for us to consider.

February 3, 2022 - It’s probably a good thing you cannot really see what’s “across the preacher’s desk”! There are a couple of coffee cups, various file folders, several stacks of books, yellow legal pads with sermons and Bible class lessons in various stages of completion (or incompletion, depending on your point of view) and then assorted papers, trinkets, numerous pens, well, you get the idea. The “preacher’s desk is messy and cluttered. Truth be told, I have always said that a clean desk is the sign of a sick mind in my attempt to justify my mess.

January 20, 2022 - How long has it been since you just sat in a rocking chair, alone with your thoughts just quietly rocking. Not rocking a baby to sleep but just sitting there rocking? I am going to speculate that for most of us it has been too long.