Week 2 The Fragrance of Love
What does Easter smell like? Close your eyes and think of as many spring fragrances as you can. Did you smell fresh flowers, orange blossoms, rain on the desert or pavement (Petrichor), newly cut grass? Even breezes have a smell. What do you suppose Jesus smelled? What fragrances were at the first Easter? The spices…
Week 1 The Mind of Love
Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Ps. 90:12 What does it mean to number our days? It’s not the ability to count how many days we have lived or to predict how many days we have left. Numbering our days means realizing the brevity of life. It…
Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent. On this day many people put on dark clothes as a sign of mourning for the sacrificial death of Jesus. Some folks continue this until Easter Sunday. Also, people go to church where their foreheads are marked with ashes in the sign of the cross in memory…
Pancake day!
Traditions are the things we do all the time and eventually pass on to the next generation. They can be good or bad, ruts or memorials, fun routines or boring rituals. Sometimes we do things in a certain way for do long that we forget the reason and the meaning for doing it. What are…
Easter Kaleidoscope
This is from a devotional I wrote in 1991 for my junior high students at First Baptist of Scottsdale: Lent is the old name for spring; it means that time of year when the days lengthen. It now is the traditional time of repentance, self-examination, and fasting lasting for forty days and leading to Resurrection…
“A trick up my sleeve”
Even though I may be losing my influence over my kids (like I ever really had it in the last 10 years anyway) as they fly the coop and leave me in the nest, empty, I do have an “ace” up my sleeve! Their heavenly Father still has their hearts and their lives in his…
It has already been 6 years
6 years since the strange shuffling of his foot and the droop in in his smile. 6 years since he seemed to become slow to respond and abnormally quiet. 6 years since the “C” word entered my life and altered the landscape of my existence. 6 years. It seems distant and faded in many ways.…
We all are born with Super Powers
I read this article that talks about the miraculous ability of babies to read minds! It really isn’t mind reading but it is the amazing ability to read body language and facial expressions super acutely. They can also see things in extraordinary ways, distinguishing between sights and sounds that actually diminish as they move from…
Save memories and make memories
This year’s resolution: I am going to try to save some memories and make some memories. What I mean is that while I spend a lot of time remembering and living in my memories, I have not spent much time making new memories to save. I have spent a lot of time saving up my…