June 2017 Humble Barney Part 2: Edged Out? The rest of the story follows, but first let’s take a look back to the start of Barney’s tale . . . [Click here for Part 1] Barney, along with Paul the apostle, were good missionary-mates all through their dangerous and successful first outreach to Cyprus and …
April/May 2017 Humble Barney A True Story in 2 Parts From our survey of admirable, successful and model-able Bible characters in the February eTouch (click here to read that one), I mentioned that my two choices were Ruth (loyalty, faithfulness and more), and the bi-cultural Joseph of Cyprus, better known as Barnabas. For the purpose …
March 2017 How Not To Interpret Dreams A song from Disney’s Cinderella goes, “A dream is a wish that your heart makes.” (Quote that to someone who just had a nightmare!) The wishfulness in that song, recently led me astray. I seldom remember dreams. We all dream, but for me, only fragments seem to remain …
February 2017 Father-like He Tends and Spares Us . . . It happened again. . . A few months ago I woke up to that old Sunday School chorus—“Wide, Wide as the Ocean.” This time it was the wonderful words and beautiful old melody of a song that was rolling around in my inner music-chamber; …
January 2017 Are You Living by Faith—or by Fate? Some people live by fate; their theme song might well be, “Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be.” Nice song; bad theology. This is fatalism—’whatever will be, will be.’ Today we’ve kind of boiled it all down to that most disagreeable of expressions, “Whatever!” That …
December 2016 Born in a Barn If someone insults you by asking, “Were you born in a barn?” they’re making it clear that they think you have no manners and are behaving like an animal. Or perhaps a friend rudely remarks that, “You’re from the other side of the tracks,” (meaning that you originate from the poor …
November 2016 Armed & Dangerous Right outside our window flows a river, about 100 yards wide, which as I sit before my laptop, is about to start freezing over for our winter. Imagine with me that I’m going to step onto that thin and still-forming ice—metaphorically speaking of course! This will be both slippery and …
October 2016 Fearfully and Wonderfully Made Fearfully? Really? The meaning of the word ‘fearfully’ in Ye Olde English is ‘extremely’ or ‘to the highest degree’; and the word fearfully has little or nothing to do with being frightened (unless you’re thinking about the Fear of the Lord; but that’s something that is Joy Dawson’s territory—you …
September 2016 For 40 years God has taken care of all our family’s daily material needs—even though we went into missions with not a single promise of support. Our extended families, our friends and our church—thought we were crazy to take four young children into the unknown at their tender ages—and gave us little encouragement …
August 2016 Wide, Wide as the Ocean . . . Wide, wide as the ocean, high as the heaven above; Deep, deep as the deepest sea is my Savior’s love. I, though so unworthy, still am a child of His care; For His Word teaches me that His love reaches me everywhere. …