Just up the road from my home is a field with two horses in it. From a distance, each looks like every other horse. But if you stop your car or are walking by, you will notice something quite amazing. Looking into the eyes of one horse will disclose that he is blind....
I was fifteen years old when I felt called to preach. My home church pastor said that I should get as much experience as possible. Obviously, there was not a great demand for fifteen-year-old novices who were long on enthusiasm but short on skill. So, my pastor sent...
About fifteen of us children were outside my aunt Seneva’s house, playing in her dirt yard. The sky began clouding over, the wind started picking up, lightning flashed far off in the distance, and suddenly I wasn’t thinking about playing anymore; I was terrified… Aunt...
The image on the slide screen was cavernous and beckoning. As the gathering in the San Pedro chapel took in the translucent greens and blues of the watercolor, we heard its artist, Sister Doris Klein, C.S.A., offer these words: “In the cave of our hearts…in the fabric...
I personally know a family whose most meaningful Christmas truly embraced its spirit. [In 1986 this family thought of a needy family in their congregation that was struggling just to survive.] The parents and their two children discussed together how to help this...
There is a couple I know who earn very good money, and yet they live simply, without any status symbols or luxuries, with money set aside for charity. It’s a trimmed-down life for them and their six children. Every month the mother gathers the six children around the...
A woman in my church, Rachel, lost her twenty-three-year-old daughter in a tragic accident; she lost her legs and then took several weeks to die. Rachel said, “I can’t pray. People think I’m terrible because I can’t pray.” Lay off her! I thought of those who would...
Miss Watson, she took me in the closet and prayed but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it wasn’t so. I tried it. Once I got a fishline, but no hooks. It warn’t any good to me without hooks. I tried for the...
Ignace Jan Paderewski was, at one time, both the prime minister of Poland and a virtuoso pianist. A story is told about a mother who brought her young son to hear him perform. The boy was just beginning to learn the piano and she wanted him to hear a master, so she...
When I was a little boy, I studied piano. My mother was my teacher. When it came time for recital, my mother made me go over the conclusion again and again. I had to get it down perfect! “Keep on practicing the conclusion, Bob. Learn those last measures!” she used to...