Of Words and Wonder

We have come to the crowning of the year, my friends, and oh, what a year it has been. This passage has been on my heart for some months now: “You crown the year with Your goodness,And Your paths drip with abundance.They drop on the pastures of the wilderness,And the little hills rejoice on every side.The pastures are clothed…

Gravel crunched beneath the tires of the old red pickup as it pulled into the winding driveway leading to the farm. The farmer looked over at his little girl, asleep in the passenger seat, and the corner of his mouth tilted up into a smile. Her head lolled on her shoulder, her arms hugged tightly…

Keep the home fires burning, while your hearts are yearning. Though your lads are far away, they dream of home. It was a crisp, cold autumn evening in the midst of October’s crimson and gold, as I wended my way home from an evening of feasting with friends. And oh, what a feast it had…

“So he shepherded them according to the integrity of his heart, and guided them by the skillfulness of his hands.” – (Psalm 78:72) I cared about the cows. Some of my earliest childhood years were spent in Germany, in an old house on an Army base where my dad commanded a battalion of soldiers. Our house…

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him…

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might…” Ecclesiastes 9:10 Our culture has destroyed the concept of the inherent goodness of work. That’s not to say that work is always good. In fact, some kinds of work can be quite decidedly bad. But as our culture frantically climbs a ladder of self-promotion, it often appears that the idea of work as…

In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien’s epic tale of hope, friendship, and the undoing of evil, there are many brave and beautiful women who change the tide of the war. Queens and warrior women, their courage and defiance shine as bright lights among the shadows of Middle Earth. But there is one woman who…

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts…” Ecclesiastes 3:1 When I was a little girl, eternity seemed so close. I could picture it, if I closed my eyes and focused very hard, an unending line stretching out before me with golden streets, Jesus and joy as…

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing – to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from – my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it…

This weekend brought me back to life in a wondrous way. In a castle in a quiet valley where time truly seemed to stop, beauty flooded in and made all things new. We heard about grace and strength for the journey, about hope in the midst of darkness, about cultivating our “place on earth” for…