Three years ago, I blogged about “Looking Backward, Looking Forward,” grading myself on my 2017 New Year’s resolutions and sharing my resolutions for 2018. Writing annual resolutions was fairly new to me. For 46 years life revolved around husband and children, and I felt little need to set life…

Meditations for Advent: 4. Moving Toward Joy In a normal year, on Christmas Day, as people around the world celebrate the birth of Jesus, our destination—JOY!—is in view. We can see the top of the mountain we have climbed. Looking back, we can see how far we’ve come. This year…

 Meditations for Advent: 3. Moving Toward Joy The third stage of our journey toward joy is more difficult than what has gone before. Last week we focused on practical things we can do to strengthen our relationships. In Philippians 3, the Apostle Paul calls on us to examine ourselves, to…

Meditations for Advent: 2. Moving Toward Joy When I originally wrote these meditations in 2017 I had been widowed eight years and I had every reason to expect that Christmas would be joyful. There is no way I could have anticipated a year like 2020, when even those of us…

  Meditations for Advent: 1. Moving Toward Joy Are you ready to celebrate Christmas? This year has been a hard year on many fronts. Many have suffered grievous losses. On top of record wildfires and hurricanes, our divided people coped with anxiety caused not only by the pandemic but also…

Introduction When I visualize my mother, the first image that always comes to mind is of her with her worn Bible across her knees, index cards and pencil at hand, preparing her Sunday School lesson. Her old King James Version was falling apart, the spine of its cheap leatherette cover…