Musings

By Kirk McCarley Power can intoxicate.  Our natural tendency is to crave it.  Those with the most wealth, best possessions, greatest attractiveness, loudest voice have it.  The others of us are left to clamor first for that proverbial seat at the table and then merely an opportunity to be heard. I...

By Victoria Ostrosky There are a dozen or so miracles of Jesus healing specific people recorded in the scriptures, but we know that Jesus healed many more as He traveled the towns and countryside.  The last verse in the Gospel of John says “Now there are also many other things...

By Sean Dietrich 10:40 P.M.—New Year’s Eve. Hank Williams is on my radio. My wife is sleeping in the passenger seat. My coonhound is in the backseat. To bring in the year, we’ve gone for a drive on county roads that weave along the Choctawhatchee Bay. There are no cars out. The...

By Pastor David Holland And while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. She gave birth to her first child, a son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the...

By Sean Dietrich Christmas Eve night. The mountains of North Carolina were giant silhouettes in the darkness. Sheriff Andy Taylor sat on the bench outside the courthouse, watching the stars. It had been a hard year. Maybe the hardest of his career. The sheriff was downhearted, which didn’t happen often. But...

By Rick Moore Albert Einstein said, “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” He also said, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” He added, “Logic will get you...

By Kirk McCarley In government service, position classification is an important and sensitive endeavor for not just human resources staff, but the employees who are impacted by it.  For the uninitiated, the premise is that each job has a certain monetary value based on either or both the mental and...

By Victoria Ostrosky “It only takes a glimpse of hope to make somebody not hopeless.”  Chet Walker finally learned that lesson after nineteen years of drug use, and now he fully comprehends the furious longing that God has for us. In Brennan Manning’s book The Furious Longing of God he explains...

By Gueary Clendening Many years ago, My wife, Linda and I lived in Illinois. Memories of driving to southern Illinois to spend Christmas with her family are truly cherished memories! On one particular Christmas, we left on Christmas eve driving down on Interstate 57. We were traveling at night and...

By Pastor David Holland “I have been young, and now am old; Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, Nor his descendants begging bread. He is ever merciful, and lends; And his descendants are blessed.” (Psalm 37:25-26, NKJV) There I stood in Capernaum, where Jesus once provided bread for the multitudes and...