Si Dieu nous a faits à son image, nous le lui avons bien rendu.” [If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor.] – Voltaire, Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750) Voltaire was a French writer/philosopher whose mockery of human nature is uncomfortably incisive. Here Voltaire shows why God told the Israelites, over and…
Quick, what’s a doctor like? Smart? Friendly? Caring? Clean? What’s a teacher like? Stern? Patient? Funny? What about a policeman? Cowboy? Priest? Magician? Mother? From an early age, we come to understand people by the roles they play. It doesn’t seem to matter that people themselves are unique – we expect doctors to be clever,…
Sometimes it feels my parenting experience is made up of just two alternating moments. One moment, I really doubt all the, “Don’t hit your sister; Yes, you have to eat all of it; Are you listening to me? But I asked YOU to do it; JUST STOP SHOUTING! – I mean, please don’t shout,” is…
Winter has been long this year, biting deep across much of North America. Where crocuses and snowdrops were bursting and glowing in previous years, now the stubborn mud refuses to give way. It’s affecting everyone at my house – I see us straining to catch a patch of blue sky, a sprout of green in…
I have a confession: This week, for the first time, I sat down with my three kids and read multiple chapters of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. This feels like a confession because it feels years overdue. I’ve been excited to share The Chronicles of Narnia with my kids for as long as…
I love celebrating Christmas, and I love almost every Christmas tradition I’ve ever met. But once I had children of my own, I realized the idea of Santa Claus was eclipsing the joyous miracle of Jesus’ arrival among us. This made me feel decidedly Scrooge-like. Now, strange as it may seem, scowling and fuming about…
America’s current crop of bright young things, like every crop before them, seems sure they’ve invented some new ideas. Like smoking pipes, home-grown vegetables, and over-sized mustaches. Of course they didn’t, but don’t get me wrong, I’m also a big fan of… well, some of those things. They also seem to believe they’ve invented a…
My little boy is awesome. Logan is three, and taller than a lot of four-year olds. He loves to roughhouse, to be outside, and to ride roller-coasters. He’s also afraid of the dark, the vacuum cleaner, and bugs small enough to be bullied by bacteria. Knowing myself as I do, I shouldn’t be surprised by…
[I’ve decided to run this post from last year once again on Memorial Day. Thank you to every honored Veteran. God bless you all. –Sam] —– —– —– It is the business of a sinful world to turn our eyes away from Jesus – to the more pressing, familiar-seeming things around us: “a newsboy shouting…
Creative people of all kinds – from writers to inventors, gardeners to entrepreneurs – are often asked a funny sort of question: How do you get all your ideas? “They honestly didn’t know,” writes Isacc Asimov. “To them it was an impossibility to even think of one. … Could I say I don’t know? When…
If you have children between the ages of four and ten, I commend to you the Bible Story Book by Elsie E. Egermeier, who sounds like a Dr. Seuss character, but isn’t. Originally published around 1922, Elsie’s (can I call her Elsie? Egermeier is SO hard to spell!) book provides a chronological overview of the…
I’m bad at keeping up with trendy ideas. I only recently ran across an idea from 1898, written by Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst in his still-respected book, The Painter in Oil: Talent is just another name for the love of a thing.” But I’m a quick learner, and soon found an essay by Seth Godin, which…
