Eight years ago this month, an ambulance transported my son to the Johns Hopkins pediatric ICU. A profound disorder had compromised his ability to cough, and the common cold was making it too hard to breathe. Day after day the…

“This illness does not lead to death,” Jesus said, and I smiled at the poor cynics who would find this line irresistible. 

Dear cynic, you quote the Scripture as proof against itself. God said thus, and thus didn’t happen. “This…

“It almost makes you want to go to war.” 

Such was the effect of the fife and drum corps at colonial Williamsburg as they marched by.

Music in wartime is an ancient tradition. Why? Why should something so beautiful, lively…

Songs have a way of becoming mementos for persons, places, events, and feelings. The weekend of May 31 is a special one for me. Let me use two songs to tell you why.

Years ago, he and I were eager…

This morning's soundtrack consisted of highway noise, a stirring son, and the call of our neighbor's rooster. If you've lived near a rooster, you know he doesn't just crow once to tell you the sun is rising. He crows to…

Journey of the Magi

by T. S. Eliot

‘A cold coming we had of it, 
Just the worst time of the year 
For a journey, and such a long journey: 
The ways deep and the weather sharp, 
The very dead…

There is a carol whose music you have heard, but I doubt you have ever sung in a congregation. 

"The Coventry Carol" is a commemoration of the children who perished at Herod’s order.  

Those children were victims of an ancient…

“It almost makes you want to go to war.” 

Such was the effect of the fife and drum corps at colonial Williamsburg as they marched by.

Music in wartime is an ancient tradition. Why? Why should something so beautiful, lively…

It must have been twenty years ago. At a November youth group meeting, we divided into little circles and said or prayed something we were thankful for.  

I looked down at my hands. One of them had scars on both…

Once upon a time, not so long ago, free spirits could walk to the edge of the cotton factory ruins on the Shenandoah River. These are square-cornered stone walls two or three feet wide with a drop of, oh, ten…

It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun's light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, calling out with a…

One morning I came across a reference to a Hebrew word in Proverbs 3:3. The word is hesed, and it is powerful. Hesed unites three concepts in one quality: love, strength, and steadfastness.

Think about it. What is love…