I’ll never forget the first time I told Candy that I loved her. I was 20 years old and she was 19. We were sitting side by side in my rust-colored, rust-covered Plymouth in the parking lot of a fine dining establishment called Donut Land.  Mustering up my courage, I looked her in the eyes […]

The longer I live, the more I understand Job’s lament that “man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7). Sadness flares up regularly, and I encounter a lot of it in my daily work. After more than 40 years in the ministry, I am accustomed to walking through seasons of […]

Christ is “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14), so it’s not surprising when we find grace and truth mingled together throughout his teachings. When the Good Shepherd leads us beside quiet waters, that’s grace. When his rod and staff correct us, that’s truth. When Jesus tells the woman caught in adultery, “Neither do I […]

Baseball slugger Willie McCovey died last year. I felt sad when I heard the news, even though he played against my favorite team. Tall and lanky, with a smooth left-handed batting style, McCovey (nicknamed “Stretch”) played first base for the San Francisco Giants. One humid summer night when I was a boy, our family went […]

Some say 12 is a perfect number. Thereare 12 months in a year and 12 hours on a clock. A dozen seems like the right quantity when we buy eggs or donuts. (The English term dozen comes from douzaine, French for a group of 12 items.) A holiday song celebrates “The 12 Days of Christmas,” […]