Over the years I have been privileged to write an extensive array of books, articles, blogs and quotes.  During special times of the year, I search these writings for quotes to both enrich and enlarge our celebration of that particular season. For Mother's Day, I have selected a handful of quotations that express the power, importance and wonder … [Read more...]

We tend to rather blithely categorize times of crisis simply as happenstance occurrences that reflect the frequently volatile and somewhat unpredictable nature of life.  Because we tend to conceptualize crisis in this manner, we readily place times of crisis in this convenient “us-versus-them” category so that our focus is on managing the crisis … [Read more...]

Self-esteem is really the accumulation of beliefs that we have collected about ourselves.  We arrange these many beliefs in some sort of composite much like a tile mosaic.  Each piece is some shard taken from some experience or encounter or event or circumstance that has come our way at some time in our lives.  These many pieces are selected based … [Read more...]

Fear – How We Create It Fear.  We all have it.  Sometimes it’s just this slight apprehension, or this bit of inner angst, or this uncomfortable twinge that we experience.  At other times it’s utterly overwhelming, leaving us helplessly paralyzed and violently shaken right down to the core of everything that we are.  At certain times and in … [Read more...]

We all create expectations.  But how often are our expectations a wholesale surrendering of ‘what could be’ to ‘what is?’  How often are they borne of a discouraged soul and a frightened heart that cannot see beyond the realities of the moment so as to envision a brighter reality standing at-the-ready in the next moment?  How many times have we … [Read more...]

Endings can be incapacitating and painful for a variety of reasons, most of which we never identify because we’re too caught up in the loss to see anything but the loss.  We don’t really identify what we’re actually doing with whatever the ending is, or what the ending is actually doing to us because we’re too lost in the loss to even begin to … [Read more...]

“Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’” - Isaiah 30:21 A detour that holds itself out as the road from which it deviated is a path to regret.  Yet, it seems that we embrace such deceptions and spend more time on the detours of life than the road of life … [Read more...]

What we want is opposite of what we have.  We want world peace, but instead we are beset with world chaos.  We want the hungry fed, but millions go hungry and millions more die from that very hunger.  We want medical cures to the diseases that ravage lives, families and nations, but untold thousands perish hourly.  We want communities that are free … [Read more...]

Easter is an incredibly rich time.  It is a reminder of the fact we are terribly fallen, but it is a far, far greater reminder of the phenomenal opportunity we have of being restored.  It is inconceivable that God would die on a cross and rise again. Despite our depravity, that death was indeed solely for us.  That is both the striking message and … [Read more...]

Easter is time of new beginnings.  More than that however, it is a time when we renew our belief in new beginnings. In a world of harsh endings and abrupt conclusions, Easter reminds us that there is always something new on the horizon even if we can no longer see a horizon.  Easter is a promise that no ending, regardless of how decisive it … [Read more...]