“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” President Reagan challenged the Soviet Union leader in 1987. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy had stated, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” voicing the support of the United State for democratic West Germany two years after the wall was erected. The wall marked the separation of West Berlin from East Berlin […]
Freedom
As Independence Day nears, I’m thinking about the word, freedom, and what it means to me. This is only what it means to me, mind you. I don’t know what it means to you or if you have thought about it. I think about those brave souls who sailed in a frail boat across the […]

An Ordinary Day
When everything is going well, we take it for granted…hot water, for instance. Yesterday, I discovered that my water heater had gone out. Following the directions, I tried many, many times to relight it. It refused. So, today, I’ll need to call someone who knows more about cantankerous appliances than I do. And, I’ll continue […]
Of Presidents and Trees
Presidents’ Day–no mail, banks closed in memory of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. I wonder, today, how many will think of the contributions to our country these two men made? Or, to how many will it mean only banks closed, no mail? In time, how many will remember that George Washington was born on February […]

Etta Bend Devotional–Tep Willis
Etta Bend Devotional January 18–“Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store” (Deuteronomy 28:5). My great-grandmother, Catherine Serepta (Tep) Barker Willis, was an outdoors person as was my grandmother and my mother. I can picture her now, wearing a long-sleeved blouse (she would have called it “waist”) and long skirts that reached the tops of […]

Precious and Priceless Peace
The older I get, the more I enjoy the blessing of peace; not just peace, mind you, but peace that comes of being free and contented and pursuing my own dreams. In school, we learned about “pax romana” or the peace that Rome imposed upon conquered nations. That is not peace at all but a seething […]

