Month: December 2017

In November of 2011, I was told that the aortic pig valve in my heart, which had been placed there in 1993, was leaking badly and had to be replaced. Even though it had lasted much longer than I had been told to expect, it still came as a … Read more

Christmas wasn't a big deal when I was growing up, but my family would usually take the train to London to see "the lights". The windows of the big department stores displayed electric trains, animated bears clapping continuously, and … Read more

God sometimes shows up in the strangest ways to provide for us. One Christmas week in 1980, He did just that, and it was a Christmas that my family has never forgotten. For a number of years, dad struggled with God's call to be a … Read more

The extravagance of British royalty fascinates me. Yet sometimes, I wonder, Why bother? This pageantry is just a remnant of the past. It's not the real thing; monarchs no longer rule. Yet royal traditions can preserve values like … Read more

Homelessness and people on the streets asking for money, food, and/or work are not new, but they are increasing in most communities, and perhaps nowhere more than on the Lower Mainland or on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, … Read more

When we toured Israel as a group, our faith was reinforced as our experienced leader, a Christian minister, many times supplemented our Jordanian guide's orations of what we were seeing by telling us of further connections between these … Read more

Recently, I have been dealing with a difficult financial situation. It's not health-related, but nonetheless daunting. By nature, I tend to take matters into my own hands and have occasionally lived to regret it. This time, I simply put my … Read more

As a writer, I always use a thesaurus to help me to choose a word that will best communicate the idea that I want to convey. A thesaurus is also useful in selecting a different word with the same meaning in order to get my point across … Read more

It has begun: the lights, the shopping, the baking, the gift wrapping, and all the hustle and bustle associated with Christmas. In fact, the lights and decorations were going up in some stores alongside the Halloween decorations. You have … Read more

One Christmas season, our church's Celebration Choir was introduced to a song entitled, "Mary, Did You Know?" which became very popular in both the spiritual and secular worlds. The words were written by Mark Lowry in 1984 as part of the … Read more