Words of Hope

“This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” Shakespeare got it right. But I’m not sure he got it all. Not all in this one phrase we like to quote, anyway. To be true to yourself, […]

Why do so many things have to get worse before they get better? Or to get better? Instead of “No pain, no gain,” can’t we live by the mantra John Bytheway jokingly suggests? “No pain? Good!” Life would certainly be easier. When you feel broken, there’s not much you wouldn’t give for easier. For a

Overgrown. Choked with weeds. Brittle and brown. Mostly dead. That was the secret garden Mary Lennox discovered, and I find my hope for the future often bears a gloomy resemblance. But under all its decay, that garden was wick–that’s Yorkshire for “alive”. And in that, too, my hope for the future runs parallel. Reading has

We’re told in Proverbs to train up a child in the way he should go. Very often, they’re trained up instead in the way we go, which, unfortunately, isn’t always the same thing. If you could watch yourself like they–or anyone else–does, would you see anything you’d be proud to have them emulate? I don’t

Listening to an orchestra is one of my happy places. Except I don’t listen to an orchestra. I listen to French horns and trumpets, snare drums and cellos, timpani, violins, flutes, trombones, oboes. Music is richer when you hear each instrument that makes it, tuning in to their individual parts, listening to their unique sounds,

Meltdowns. They don’t just happen at nuclear power plants. When life jostles your equilibrium and stretches your nerves like a brittle rubber band around a bundle of circumstances it’s too small for, it doesn’t take much to turn you into an emotional Chernobyl. One wrong word, one hiccup in your plans, one miniscule irritation and–BOOM!

Paul counsels that we be not unequally yoked with unbelievers. It’s most often applied to marriage, and this post isn’t breaking the mold. I’m aware I’ve never been yoked, equally or otherwise, with a spouse, so don’t worry. I’m not about to tell you how to be equally yoked with yours. These are just thoughts

The ring I wear on my left hand is what hope looks like. Well, it’s what mine looks like, anyway. Some might say it’s bent completely out of shape. I rather think it’s bent into shape. No, this slightly warped, oblong little band doesn’t look as nice as the perfect, unabused circle it was in

It’s lonely to walk a road almost no one among your acquaintance is walking or has ever walked. Easy to resent thoughtless words and actions that grate on your frayed nerves and plunge daggers into your empty heart. But my dad once walked a road I didn’t understand, and the gift of grace I believe

There are two kinds of death. The kind where your heart stops, and the kind where your heart is all that hasn’t stopped. The first is obvious. Everyone knows when a body is dead. But few people know when your hope is dead, or that you’re virtually lying in the tomb next to it. Because