By: Forrest Palmer From time to time, I tune into a cable television channel and see reruns of “The Waltons.” Having spent my teen years in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, I knew that the creator of that series came from Skyler, not far from Charlottesville. Even...
By: Sue Moore Setting: A meeting of young adults, encircling a wise elder YA 1: Who can we look to in the Bible so that our families will be perfect? Elder: Ah, perfection is only found in one person, Jesus,and even his family had its issues. His cousins wanted to be...
By: Elizabeth Caldwell “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in God’s sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.” I imagine that a lot of us remember that song. You probably...
By: Karen DeBoer I have three vivid memories from a church picnic I attended as a child—hearing the adults laugh, seeing the minister wearing shorts, and watching my normally no-nonsense Sunday school teacher compete in a sack race. It was a stark contrast to the...
By: Jan Snell When we look outside our windows, it is clear that our creator is a big fan of diversity. Yet in 2013, a cereal commercial has generated hate mail to the company that produces the cereal. Why? Because the commercial depicts a little girl, her Caucasian...
By: Hye Jin Hwang One night, when I was young, I shook my mother awake in the middle of the night “Mom, I have a stomachache. I can’t sleep!”. “Oh my dear, where does it hurt?” My mother’s hands were already on my stomach though her eyes were still closed. “Let’s pray...
By: Rod Hugen The French have a lovely saying, “Vive la différence!” It is a delightful reminder to celebrate what makes us unique and inimitable. Nowhere should our differences be more celebrated than in the church. In the last chapter of Romans, Paul sends his...
By: Alex Bisset The title says it all. For so many people in our churches and in the world today, family is a loaded word. It serves to remind us of the father who abused us, the mother who abandoned us, the marriage that fell apart, or the children who refuse to...
By: Mary E. Speedy 99 Ways to Raise Spiritually Healthy Children by Kathleen Long Bostrom. WJKP, 2010. Bostrom offers fun, practical, and thought-provoking ideas for nurturing the spiritual lives of children, parents, and families. Each of the 99 entries includes a...
