creating a space for grace in your life

“Every Christmas I used to go home to west Tennessee.” (Fred Craddock tells the story in “Craddock Stories”.)“An old high school chum of mine, I called him Buck, had a restaurant in town, every year it was the same.  I'd…

Two men visiting Hong Kong, noticed the ubiquity of street vendors, all pushing their carts along, pell-mell, in and out of traffic.  Attempting to gain the attention of any potential customer, the vendors would shout repeatedly, "Sale! Sale! Good items…

A fire rages in a two-story house. A young boy's head is visible leaning out a second-floor window. His voice is piercing and plaintive, "Daddy, help me! Daddy, where are you?"Smoke (from first-floor-flames) billows from shattered ground floor windows, now…

In the emergency room, Benny's face is black and blue, caked in dried blood, his eyes pinched shut, his lips swollen and bleeding.  In the middle of the night, two men had broken into Benny's home, beaten him severely, and…

Somewhere along the way, every one of us has wrestled with discouragement, disillusionment or defeat (only exacerbated by a disappointment in ourselves).And yes, our pandemic year illuminated all of this.And this weight of our world is real. The George Floyd…

Physician Richard Selzer describes a scene in a hospital room after he had performed surgery on a young woman's face: I stand by the bed where the young woman lies, her face, postoperative; her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A…

“I’m saying goodbye,” I tell the sheep. “This will be my last Sunday with you all.”They look, but say nothing, maybe waiting for a punchline.“I know, I wanted to tell you sooner, but there’s been a lot on my plate.…