Apr 25, 2022 | Pondering and Kindling
Suicide. The word itself carries difficult-to-name feelings…pain, shame, disbelief, gnawing questions. Professionals who deal with it in an ongoing way recently referred to it as an epidemic of hopelessness, a mental health crisis. Last year high school students...
Apr 18, 2022 | Pondering and Kindling
In her book, Learning to say Goodbye, Edna Lashon tells the story of visiting with a friend of hers whose husband had died. They went out to the graveyard where the husband had been buried and began to share together memories of their life and their relationship....
Apr 11, 2022 | Pondering and Kindling
Because it’s Holy Week, as a Christian the death Christ is vivid for me. The suffering in Ukraine is seemingly never absent from my awareness. And the word of Jesus, “If any man would come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me,” has a...
Apr 4, 2022 | Pondering and Kindling
Emotions ran high. A husband and his wife had quarreled. Both were nursing their hurt feelings in defensive silence. As they were driving to attend a family wedding in a distant city, the angry tension between them was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Then the...
Mar 29, 2022 | Pondering and Kindling
I am an avid reader and I’m not as disciplined in what I read as I might need to be. If I were more disciplined, I might learn more about something and learning more about something can enhance intellectual growth. Even so, I have learned a lot about some-things...
Mar 21, 2022 | Pondering and Kindling
Recently, I shared the story about a ring we bought years ago when traveling in Russia and the former Soviet Union. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, we were visiting Christians and establishing relationships with the long oppressed Church. Jerry has worn the ring...
