“Petulant child!” That’s what I thought as an obviously frantic mother was trying to placate a toddler throwing a fit. Nothing seemed to work. He didn’t want the toy, then he did want the toy. The treat mom tried to give the boy was accepted then thrown down and the screaming commenced again. She tried…
One of the greatest practical jokes ever played on me was when some friends actually hid my car from me while I was at work. As a teenage boy, my car was my ticket to freedom. It represented my passage from a child to a man! Besides, I looked really cool driving it around the…
Ah, summertime! The season of vacations, a more relaxed pace of life, adventures, and warm weather. “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy….” Summertime is such a wonderful time of year.
But our society is one in which most Americans take little to no vacation time. The drive to produce creates the sense that I always have…
The gradual shift in modern educational philosophy to a “self-esteem” emphasis is complete. From the math standards that discourage teachers from “correcting” incorrect answers to the ball fields where “we don’t keep score” so no one “feels” bad, this shift is now producing consequences of its own. In fact, some have come to call the modern…
“Hate” is such an ugly word. And yet I use it all too often. “I hate this traffic.” “I hate coconut!” ( I really don’t like coconut. I think it’s the texture.) “I hate that music.” You get the idea. But, sometimes, dark times, weak times I have even used that word about another person! Horrible! Lord, forgive me!
And I’ve…
“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” This saying has been around a long time and been attributed to several famous and not-so-famous people, but it rings true, doesn’t it?: It’s hard to communicate AND easy to miscommunicate, especially if…
There’s one sure way for any politician to get an applause line in a stump speech. All he or she has to do is say “I support our troops!” And rightly so. The brave men and women who serve in our military perform a vital function in the preservation of our liberty, and we, as…
Yeah, he was my friend, but he had this annoying habit of everytime I told a story, he would come back with another story meant to be even more interesting or scary or funny than mine. Have you ever known someone who simply had to "one up" you every time you said or did anything?…
"Have you been saved?" The sincere lady was looking intently at me and waiting for my answer to her probing question. You see, she was "witnessing" to me in hopes I would be "saved." Most of us have either experienced this sort of question or know someone who has been asked this at one time…
There is a deep weakness philosophically in we humans when it comes to Faith. We, all too often, reduce Faith to a mere mental assent to an idea rather than always pushing beyond the beginnings of Faith to actually doing the Faith.
This interruption in Faith in our everyday lives have huge consequences, not just for…