Whispers of Truth

Today my two youngest children drove away from home in a caravan of three vehicles packed with their belongings. It’s not as if they went very far—just thirty minutes down the road. It’s not as if I won’t see them, but they aren’t here now. I will no longer wait up to know that all are safe within my walls (or abdicate that late-night task to my husband, the night owl of the family). All my babies have grown up and flown the nest. (Well, maybe these last two were pushed, but they’re gone.) They took their beds—the many-times painted iron bed that I inherited when I moved away from home and came to Auburn. Daddy sanded and spray-painted that bed mauve; it was the color at the time and I loved it, but now seeing the same color kind of makes me sick because I still remember how much of that pink color existed in my bedroom. The queen sleigh bed we couldn’t afford to buy but that I was so excited to buy to replace the full-sized iron bed went, too. They took the high-backed oak ba...

When people say, “It’s the thought that counts,” they really mean it. I’m not just saying this because I’ve given subpar gifts that I put no thought into or even received gifts that were less than stellar. I’m saying this because when it comes to sin, thoughts really do matter. As I was reviewing the first seven chapters of Jeremiah for tonight’s Bible study, I came across a verse I’ve read many times, at least four recently; however, as often happens, the same verse doesn’t always speak the same way twice. This time I was reviewing the early chapters of Jeremiah in a NKJV chronological Bible looking for all the ways Jeremiah’s writings intersect with the writings of the other books of the time period. In Jeremiah 6:19 God says this: “I will certainly bring calamity on this people—the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not heeded My words nor My law, but rejected it” (NKJV).   I looked at this verse in parallel translations, some literal, others more interpretat...

The focus at school this year has been to live like a warrior . Pray like a warrior. Teach like a warrior. Play like a warrior. Serve like a warrior. Maybe you’ve seen it looking something like this after a victory with a visual in the form of a picture and hash tag: #fightlikeawarrior. Personally, I love the unifying nature of a good motif running through literature, and I can’t help but feel the same way about the one attached to everything related to my school this year. You feel it though, don’t you? The but running through the last statement I wrote. But even warriors fall. That’s what I was thinking as I sat in church yesterday. The thought ran across my mind fleetingly that warriors get defeated in a war—at least the warriors on one side of the battle do. If there is a war, two parties are fighting because peace is unattainable, and short of an armistice, one side is going to be declared a winner and the other a loser. When there is a war, there are always casualties, l...