Good morning... "Hi Sue," she emailed me this week. "We are visiting Eastern Europe and were in Vukovar Croatia 🇭🇷 yesterday. There was a terrible civil battle there between the Croats and the Serbs in 1991 when Yugoslavia broke up. This Christ figure survived though the Serbian Orthodox Church of St Phillip and Jacob, where it had been, [...]
Good morning... Yesterday, I muted Gameday football to watch the funeral of a thirteen year old girl who died last week in a small engine plane crash at a nearby airport. Afterward, I sat in bed and quietly wept. How did each of her parents speak of their only child with such soulful eloquence? How did her pastor [...]
Good morning... The sun set on three lives in three days in my own personal corner of the world. Friday, the middle school daughter of a middle school teacher at our school tragically died in the crash of a small engine plane. Saturday, a lifelong friend who was in our wedding finished his grueling battle with ALS. Sunday, [...]
Good morning... We cannot fix, avoid or deny the pain of people in our community, but God can draw us near. We cannot say, do or express the perfect thing at the just right moment, but God can love through us. We cannot stop grief, tragedy or excruciating loss, but God can hold in our heart those stuck [...]
Good morning... Yesterday I woke in deep prayer for the families and friends of the two young fathers from our community who died in a horrific helicopter crash. As I waited for our microwave to heat up some day-old coffee, words from a hymn repeated often in our childhood church strangely sang up through the sorrow in my [...]
Good morning... "I have been out of touch but reading and connecting with you most mornings," she wrote. "I am so heartbroken and encouraged by the beautiful and tragic story of Eliza." "When I saw the title of your message I'll Walk Through The Valley," she continued, "I thought to myself, 'I haven’t heard that song in a [...]
Good morning... I was deeply touched by the song performed at the celebration of life for twenty-eight year old, Eliza. When I got home from the reception following the service, I googled the song title and found the music video below, performed by the original artist sitting at the piano, staring ahead, and singing through her own dark [...]
Good morning... In God's great timing, I snapped this photo the day before I received an important email. I took a picture of this large, makeshift ark for a friend in Florida who was deeply touched by our grief podcast in December. Especially she loved our encouragement that God quietly builds for us a protective ark to live [...]
Good morning... This spring, amid the Corona mayhem, we received a large manilla envelop addressed to me. I looked inside to find a stack of letters wearing my handwriting, letters I had written from our new home in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania reaching out to my long long time friend in Mableton, Georgia. The first letter in the pile [...]
Good morning... After watching footage of the massive explosion rocking Lebanon's capital city of Beirut this week, I turned on the news to see the touching story below. Titling her homemade video Beauty From Ashes, a granddaughter filmed her grandmother playing “Auld Lang Syne” on the piano amid wreckage from the blast. The familiar song, based on a 1788 [...]
