When my cat Mickey had an eye infection I put eye drops in his eyes daily As soon as I placed him on the bathroom counter he rsquo d sit look at me with frightened eyes and brace himself for the spurt of liquid ldquo Good boy rdquo I rsquo d murmur Even though he didn rsquo t understand what I was doing he never jumped off hissed or scratched me Instead he would press himself closer against me mdash the person putting him through the ordeal He knew he could trust me When David wrote Psalm he had probably [... more]

I know Daddy rsquo s coming home because he sent me flowers rdquo Those were my seven-year-old sister rsquo s words to our mother when Dad was missing in action during wartime Before Dad left for his mission he preordered flowers for my sister rsquo s birthday and they arrived while he was missing But she was right Dad did come home mdash after a harrowing combat situation And decades later she still keeps the vase that held the flowers as a reminder to always hold on to hope Sometimes holding on to hope isn rsquo t easy in a [... more]

When our congregation built our first building people wrote thankful reminders on the wall studs and concrete floors before the interior of the building was finished Pull back the drywall from the studs and you rsquo ll find them there Verse after verse from Scripture written beside prayers of praise like ldquo You are so good rdquo We left them there as a witness to future generations that regardless of our challenges God had been kind and taken care of us We need to remember what God has done for us and tell others about it Isaiah exemplified this when [... more]

I love a good game of Scrabble After one particular game my friends named a move after me mdash calling it a ldquo Katara rdquo I rsquo d been trailing the entire game but at the end of it mdash with no tiles left in the bag mdash I made a seven-letter word This meant the game was over and I received fifty bonus points as well as all the points from all of my opponents rsquo leftover tiles moving me from last place to first Now whenever we play and someone is trailing they remember what happened and hold [... more]