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Thoughts pass through the mind like a breeze rustling through the forest, coming and going, carrying spores looking for fertile soil. Sometimes they remain. Other times they are lost in the dark night of forgetfulness. There is life in a thought, some measure of attention it seeks, even if brief, demanding an answer perhaps just for self, audible only to the mind thinking it. Until… Until this thought passes the lips. The passing chances the ears of someone other than you, so

Books populate these shelves, dry bones with stories and histories, words languishing in aging bindings that once engaged interested eyes. Within those bindings are the truths the writers wished to share, the window on their world each hoped would enter yours and enlighten you. Interspersed on the shelves are pictures, mementos, and remembrances purchased in some gift store, reminders of a trip you took or time shared with a friend. A singular book was your friend at one time

A symphony of light permeates the forest this morning. In quiet reception, nature allows those streaming and stretching flecks to angle through the canopy, favoring mountain laurel and wild azalea blossoms. Cracklings of diffused light fall past the blossoms, reaching the forest floor, leftovers from a cosmic journey, satisfying ferns and pine seedlings at light’s end. The landscape did not refuse the water from yesterday’s rain. So the creek ambles and serpentines, carrying

Handlebars—not the normal image that comes to mind when sitting at a desk, unless the walls surrounding this desk enshrine a life, a career, a past to contemplate as one contemplates a recipe for supper or eyeing a book on the shelf you read long ago and eyeing it again caused you to open it. The recipe begs a grocery list, so you go to the grocery store and move down one aisle, then another looking for honey mustard or a salty prosciutto to go with a good, crusted artisan lo

A golf shot is a harmonious collaboration between a good eye and sure hands while disharmony and a bad eye festers doubt in a competitor’s constitution. Doubt never hit a golf ball well while the approaching examination of clearing a lake or a facing bunker assert their ground. A well struck golf ball for the shot at hand must possess in the mind of the golfer a steel certitude of intent and in the very least a mustard seed of faith in order to have a chance. This, of course,

“It is impossible to believe that He loves such as Cornelius or Vavasor as He loves a Christopher. There must be a difference! The God of truth cannot love the unlovely in the same way as He loves the lovely. The one He loves for what he is and what he has begun to be; the other He loves because he sorely needs love—as sorely as the other and must begin to grow lovely one day.” George MacDonald (From Weighed and Wanting) If there comes a time when we think God does not love u

Another Masters tournament has come and gone. Inherent in this rite of Spring is a truism. No matter the calendar, the week before finds Winter lingering like a bitter herb, but when The Masters comes, a flood of good feeling washes over every golfer, every fan, every azalea-loving botanist tuning in to watch. The opening tee shot signals Spring has begun. The week unfolded with the rising and falling of our golf heroes alongside the ebb and flow of birdies and bogeys. Media

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24, NKJV). Traversing this ravine called life confronts the rushing rivulets of time rippling over and between life’s rocks of hard testing. But we walk on, climbing from who we were to whom we are to become, wrestling life’s bothering rocks and crevices. Always the journey is outside of us an

Dear Reverend Counsel, I wish to deepen my relationship with Christ, but I find in every devotion a thread I think is part and not the whole of scripture. I find this confusing. Can you recommend a way to read scripture, as I earnestly desire to know and do God’s will? Sally Dear Sally, Yours is a good question. I will do my best to frame it. I concede seeking God can sometimes be like attempting to find a misplaced object that you left in a room. You know what you are look

Johnny isn’t from Four Holes, and he doesn’t live there. But, he could be, and he could. Johnny is the gatekeeper up on the mountain, and this means letting you in or keeping you out, but mostly it means to stop and listen to the wisdom of his years. He possesses a particular knack for reading nature, things like tasting direction and smelling time, reading the width of the wooly worms band, and how a tree will grow when buffeted by the wind. Johnny knows nature’s signs and p

Meanwhile, back in Four Holes signs of an early Spring appeared. The Tupelo gum trees in the swamp showed flowers at the base of the leaves. Of course, those good folks knew these old trees could not be fooled. Blackberry Winter almost always came despite all the global warming talk. But no worries, Tupelos had deep taproots and thick leaves. Billy Cowan was having his own crisis. He belonged to a community group named “For Four Holes” or FoFoHo for short. Each member had bee

Peadar woke early. The day held much ahead, and he knew all he had to accomplish required skill and centered attention. If all were to be done, he could not entertain any distractions. Following his morning routine and his mind already anticipating the day, he drove down the driveway. Leaving, he barely noticed the man on the street. Besides, there wasn’t enough room in his mind to attend to anything but what was before him. The day’s thoughts filtered out anything else in hi

Are you the same person today as yesterday? Such a question conveys a common understanding, or a misunderstanding, that any answer refers to the self, that in some psychological context, this self, is either better or worse. If all that is relatable, in other words all that we see and experience, the life outside of us, this question places limits upon us. The result of asking whether we are better or worse suggests we remain standing where we are, where we have always been.

So, what is it about gratitude? What is it Mrs. Simpson introduced to our spiritual life? The suggestion is but a beginning to a deeper and more intimate life with God yet frightening because of the implications to an ever-present desire to remain where we are. God calls His children to movement. If our moment of belief is like standing on a dock waiting to board a ship that will set sail on the open and uncharted sea to some unknown destination, the dock is the safest point

While Young Billy went outside to play with his friends in the neighborhood, he entrusted Mrs. Simpson with his prized Ohtani baseball card. When dark ceased their play, Billy went to Mrs. Simpson to retrieve his card. Now in hand, he turned to go home. Then, he heard her voice. “Billy, did you forget something?” He returned the words with a blank stare. “Billy, you must always say ‘thank you’ when someone has done something for you.” Perhaps we have traveled too far for grat

Like most folks in Four Holes, the days were molasses—sweet, slow—but mostly with the lid screwed tight and sitting on the shelf. The residents moved at the speed of mosey and their excitement came by biting into a good ham sandwich with Durkee’s mustard, a satisfying mellow twang spread on Sunbeam bread—only Sunbeam. A day in Four Holes dripped and never poured. Seems they just knew better and were content with life. There was one anomaly in Four Holes no one could explain.

Oh, that we should ascend to God in prayer becomes the way we place ourselves before Him, the way in which we plead, and in the pleading admit our need, our lack, our desire to become whole. Our prayers offer a revelation, though not always at the moment of praying, that He should answer in His time and in His way. This sojourn we are on, this desire to know Him and understand, this apparent silence of this seeming unanswered prayer, must mean our Lord wishes to reveal someth

Of all the challenges a Christian will face in life, what he perceives to be God’s silence may be for him the most troublesome. God’s silence, at times, particularly those times when life challenges our strained desire to hear Him, is the most difficult to abide. Such a silence calls us to listen, to hear the Spirit’s whisperings, to still our lives and grow deeper in our faith. Yet, how do we respond but with an all-too-present willingness to fill the void with anything and

There was once a man who lived in the countryside of a certain region. Every day he rose to tend the field so he could eat. When the yield was good, he would take and sell a portion of his harvest and store the rest for the time when the yield was less plentiful. He came to rely on his skill as a farmer because he knew no others would do for him what he could do for himself. Then one day, a great famine plagued the land. The soil did not yield. The rain did not come. The land

Rain weaves through the forest this morning. Whispering their silence in the breeze, the mountain laurels seem to say we were here before you and will be here after. Outside the window, the creek dances with ripples joyfully etching the landscape in time. Seeking refuge and rest, the squirrels chose not to come out to play in the rain. Creation is renewing this morning and one can only sense God saying, “Be still. See what I am doing in you.” Abiding God’s hand, nature only k