Devotional

It's that time of year, again, for Vacation Bible School. I remember it well as a child. Two blocks north of our home, Salem Baptist Church was where my brothers and I attended VBS for years. We didn't attend Salem…

When I was in seminary, and for a number of years after that, I was involved in a tremendous amount of pre-marital counseling as part of our workplace chaplaincy initiatives. That led to my decision to get involved in performing…

It's the 4th of July holiday week-end. Here in the midwest, the weather was beautiful on Friday and nice on Saturday, but today is rainy and we are expecting the same thing for tomorrow, the actual 4th of July. For…

If you have been watching the news, you know that the state of West Virginia has been hard hit by massive flooding in the Greenbrier Valley, including the town of White Sulphur Springs, where the beautiful Greenbrier resort is located.…

Early this week, on June 21st, at 6:34 p.m. E.D.T., we witnessed the official arrival of summer. And for the first time since 1967, the full moon of June happened to occur on the same night as the summer solstice.…

As patriarch of our family, since both my father and Janet's father are gone, I really don't expect any special gifts for Father's Day. But I know that Janet and the kids wouldn't hear of not recognizing and memorializing the…

I was working in the yard late Friday afternoon and suddenly heard the hauntingly familiar ring of the bells that I remembered from my youth. Perhaps you also would have recognized, somewhere in your distant past, the sounds of the…

On this day, June 9th, several months before Janet and I were married in 1973, Secretariat won the Triple Crown with a victory at the Belmont Stakes - having already won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. Secretariat's history was…

A good friend of ours lost his father earlier this week after a rampant infection finally took his life - several weeks after a surgical procedure. The visitation was this evening and the funeral will be in the morning -…

I have always loved the outdoors - especially a garden and beautiful perennials. When I was growing up in Chicago, Dad put me in charge of his iris bed on the side of the house. It was filled with every…