I am so glad you visited. I hope that you will drop in regularly and come to consider me a friend. First, introductions: My folks called me Christi; my classmates called me Chris; my given name is a call to be a follower of Jesus: Christine means Christ-like! It reflects my parents’ deep desire for me (and themselves). Even without Read more…
For years I have fought them! Those pesky little critters that ruin the grapevines! They suck the juice out of the leaves and leave behind a fungal infection that pock-marks the leaves and eventually destroys them. Since the leaves are the food-making factory for the vines, you can guess the result: pathetic fruit production. These are vines that, in years Read more…
We finally got around to watching “Amazing Grace” this week. It was an utterly satisfying film. It depicts some of the life of William Wilberforce, who was the primary force behind banning the slave trade in the whole British Empire in 1833. After 66 years of pushing, pulling, and risking his life, he died three days after the Abolition of Read more…
It was a land barren, desolate, nearly without life…needing comfort. Many places that could be described as desolate are at least beautiful, colorful, or interesting. This was a waste-land: flat, sparse, featureless, dry, dull-looking. This was a place we just wanted to get through as we traveled over 4500 miles to Minnesota and back for our grandson’s wedding. It was Read more…
I have been sitting in the post-resurrection passages during this time of year known as Eastertide. (Thanks to the folks at Lectio365.) Today we were in John 21:15-19. One of the things that caught my eye was the way John see-saws between the two identities of the fearful, forceful, flaky fisherman who was declared to be “the rock” of the Read more…
In the year since my last post, I have had my other shoulder joint replaced. It was six weeks in an immobilizer, which looks like a cross between a hockey goalie’s gear and a medieval torture device, designed to hold my arm in the appropriate position until my bones grew around the new titanium mechanism that will allow me to Read more…
So…her phone is on the fritz; her ride-share doesn’t show up; she forgot to put a birthday letter in the mail. Any of these is enough to make her frantic; to have all of them come down at once is enough to make any of us frantic! “Why?” is always the question. Why is this happening to me? Why is Read more…
Wow. It’s been a minute! Since my last post I have directed a five-day vacation Bible school drama with a teen cast, thrown a cast party, traveled 3600 miles in a pickup truck (a fancy new hybrid one), sewn a bridal veil, danced at a wedding in a vintage Art Deco theater, reconnected with some cousins, visited two grown children Read more…
God is in the middle of granting one of the desires of my heart, I am in the middle of a recovering from a shoulder replacement…a surgically induced five-weeks-in-a-sling sabbatical. One of the things that usually happens on a sabbatical is that normal income-producing work is suspended. I don’t have a nine to five job, so figuring out what to Read more…
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be satisfied. — Matthew 5:6 God uses famine to satisfy His people. We know so little of famine in our country. Droughts that cause crop failure are limited in their effect because our transportation system is so vast and fast that if we can’t get wheat from Kansas, Read more…
I have chickens. Hens, but no roosters. That means that they lay eggs that will never hatch into chicks. It got me thinking about fruitfulness. . . I wonder if they produce those beautiful, extra large, brown speckled eggs expecting them to hatch. I wonder if they are disappointed when they don’t. Do they feel a sense of failure because Read more…