Ever had someone cuss you out in a nonstop blue streak of the worst possible names? I have. I tell you, teachers put up with a lot. When I gave a kid (who was also rude and sassy) a low grade because zilch effort had gone into an assignment, his mother made an appointment with me. I had a hunch what might lie ahead, so I asked both my administrator and a teaching peer to sit in on the conversation. It was more like a confrontation. Every awful word in the book was screamed at

I grew up in a church-going family, but Sunday meant one thing for me: doughnuts. Sunday was a big production. My sister and I got dropped off early, about 8:30 a.m., for girls choir practice, then we sang for the 9 a.m. service up front in the choir pews, which faced each other in front of the altar. The service was a liturgical one, which would have made me nod off except that much of it I spent on my knees on a hard wooden kneeler. I think that was the design of that thing

I was having such a great time with friends at a book convention. Each day was spent strolling the miles of aisles looking at new book releases, meeting other authors and publishing house folks, and looking at other bookstore products. Evenings were spent gadding about to fun restaurants. After dinner one night we decided to splurge calorie-wise and go to a chocolate restaurant. Yes, there were endless chocolate desserts and drinks. I decided on a double whammy: chocolate che

My dad was brilliant and kind. He once said, “There should just be one law: Be nice.” Doesn’t that make sense? If we made all our decisions based on the consideration for how they affected the people around us, what a better world this would be. When put to the test by legalists, Jesus said the greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God “with all your heart and with all your soul and without all your mind.” Then he added that the second greatest commandment was to lov

Jesus included everyone in the conversation. He spoke with a Samaritan woman–who wasn’t part of the Jewish faith in-crowd, being half-Jew and half-Gentile. He spoke with a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years–also considered unclean by the religious leaders of the time. He spoke with a Canaanite woman–who would have been part of a group of people who served other gods. Reading the passage about the Canaanite woman today in Matthew 15, I had to pause and reflect: Do I

Scripture says that God will reign over the earth. When I think about figurehead kings and queens around the world, I wonder how others view that scripture. My God is not a figurehead. He does not just hold a title with no more authority than today’s royalty that cuts ribbons and waves to a crowd affectively. My God is not the sum total of someone’s fashionable cross piece of jewelry. He created the stones and jewels and wood in that necklace. My God is not something that is