The plagues of Egypt. What an awesome, awful story. It has always made me shudder and wonder why a loving God would bring such curses upon the entire country of Egypt when it was Pharaoh who made all the decisions.

There is an old hymn that asks the question, “Ere you left your room this morning, did you think to pray?” The better question would be, “When you left your room this morning, did you think when you prayed?”

In the beginning when God looked upon the vast chaos of eternity and the darkness of the water, He said, “Let there be light,” and saw the light was good.

The treadmill of life doesn’t afford the time to stop and think, let alone sort out the pieces and put them where they belong. We blindly go from one task to the next seemingly without rhyme or reason.

The glass on the table is half full of water, is still half full no matter how you look at it. Looking at the glass half full or half empty is a state of mind.

When I was in college, I studied classic English literature: Milton, Shakespeare and Donne. Their writings were beautiful and referred to the Bible without apology.

We only need to take a stroll through YouTube or watch the news to realize the following scripture is part of our daily life. The world is not the walk in the park of yesterday; it is a daily battle.

In our breakneck-speed society, we have invented marvelous tools to make sure we are going the right direction. We have evolved eons past the astrolabe and the North Star. Yet, with all this concern about directions in our physical world, we don’t seem so concerned about our spiritual direction.

Happy New Year! Throw the confetti. Blow the whistles. Kiss your sweetheart. The old man of 2025 hobbles out the door and the new infant year leaps in with vigor and hope.

In children’s Christmas movies, Santa streaks through the air in a magical sleigh drawn by reindeer, leaving a spray of twinkling stars in his wake.