Pictured above: Garrison Keillor (1942- ) ————————- By Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days, 1985, from pages 242-248.    Uncle Virgil Bunsen’s death caught almost everyone by surprise, though they hadn’t even known he was alive. He moved to Nevada in 1925 and didn’t keep in touch, so not many people at his funeral knew […]
3057) Life is Too Short Read More »
    Cindy and Cathy are identical twins. Their parents were alcoholics and the girls had a dreadful childhood. Their dad died while they were still in high school when he rolled his car after a night of drinking. Their mother took an overdose of pills and died when the girls were away at
3051) The Healing of Memories Read More »
From my sermon for the funeral of Roger, who was once a member of the church I was serving, but had long ago moved away. I knew Roger’s brother Mike, but never met Roger or any other members of the family. Mike told me that Roger was at one time a hard worker and a
3006) Funeral Sermon for Roger Read More »
  (…continued) Doug and Gary were having coffee on a Monday morning.  Doug said, “I was trying to find something on the radio on my way to the golf course yesterday, and I happened to run across one of these hellfire and damnation preachers.  I kept listening just for laughs, but it turned out
2980) A Bit of Insider Information (2/2) Read More »
   With such huge swings in the stock market every day now, we could all become billionaires in no time at all– if only we were able to look into the future. That would never work, of course, because if we could all look into the future, there would be no such thing as
2979) A Bit of Insider Information (1/2) Read More »
From the Journal of Lancaster County Historical Society (edited), 1902, by Hiram Erb Steinmetz. *******************************    Peter Miller (1709-1796) was a minister in the German Reformed Church in his early life. He was born Germany and came to America as a minister of this church in 1730. He served as pastor of Bethany Reformed
2945) Pardon Who? Why? Read More »
From The Daily Study Bible by William Barclay:    Here is the eternal principle:  Forgiveness is a costly thing.    Human forgiveness is costly.  A son or a daughter may go wrong; a father or a mother may forgive; but that forgiveness has brought tears; it has brought whiteness to the hair, lines to the
2932) Forgiveness is Costly Read More »
From the novel Jubilee (1966), by Margaret W. Alexander (1915-98); (Quoted in Conversations With God: Two Centuries of African-American Prayers, ed. by James M. Washington, pp. 213, HarperCollins).    Before she realized where she was going she found herself deep in the woods… where there was a chapel-hush.  She heard birds softly and sweetly singing, but most
2921) A Prayer for Mercy Read More »
   All three of these aspects of forgiveness described by Lewis Smedes in yesterday’s meditation are illustrated in the life of Malachy McCourt (1931-2024), which he describes with a flair in his several books. Malachy was the brother of Pulitzer Prize winning author Frank McCourt of “Angela’s Ashes” fame.    The McCourt home
2890) The Healing Power of Forgiveness (2/2) Read More »
   Most of you can think of a time when you were terribly wronged by another, and it hurt, and maybe still hurts. Perhaps you were wronged by someone you had loved and trusted, and then it hurts even more. Somebody you were counting on let you down. Someone you trusted broke that trust
2889) The Healing Power of Forgiveness (1/2) Read More »
