“Vanity” means pride and arrogance, bedroom furniture or the lyrics: “You’re so vain. You probably think this song is about you.” Ecclesiastes sings this song, too, except it sings it about us: “Vanity, vanity, everything is vanity.” At least, that was the old translation. The NIV changed the translation to “meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.”…
Jack and I took a hotel room near the airport to make the morning drive short. We still had to get up at 4:30 a.m. The in-room coffee maker wasn’t working, so I was operating on a caffeine deficit. No matter – we’d arrive at the airport three hours ahead of our flight. Plenty of…
Dave Larsen’s debut novel, Green Street in Black and White, compactly narrates the backstory of the upheaval of Englewood, a middle-class Chicago neighbourhood, as integration began. The book poses as fiction, though it tells painful truths. The names have been changed – I suspect to protect kind, scared, belatedly guilt-beset white Christian sisters and brothers….
Christmas may not look the same for me now that I’m blind, but it means even more than it used to. My memories of the season are blurred around the edges – the powder-white world is a little more grey, the sparkle of stars a little less bright – and while the lights of the…
Jack and I are planning an early winter vacation. Lord willing, we’ll trade some of the short, dark days of December for tropical breezes and warm sunshine. Mmm… we’ll linger over morning coffee in the dappled shade of a palm tree, wiggle our toes in the powdery sand and float blissfully on the turquoise waters…
After the city, the garden /
is quiet, the leaves green /
enough to absorb every cry.
Gretta VanGorkum immigrated to Canada with her family at age seven. She grew up in the Chatham, Ontario area and began her working days at the Bank of Montreal. She soon started dating Bill Heyink, whom she knew through church and youth group. They fell in love, were married and were blessed with a daughter…
January days are short, and evenings draw in quickly. After the bright sparkle of the Christmas season and the New Year’s fireworks, quiet winter settles around us with its early shadows and dark nights as we shift back to routine and daily life. This feels fitting. After the vibrant storytelling of the nativity, Love Incarnate,…
Small town events are big excitement for kids. Somewhere around age 12 I remember eagerly anticipating an upcoming parade with my then bestie, Lee. Lee was a fun-loving, kind-hearted friend. So, when she announced that she was personally going to participate in the parade, I was genuinely excited with her. She would be a baton-twirler,…
It’s that most wonderful time of year! The time to tune your car radio to Christmas songs and get a headstart on the holiday cheer. Maybe you’re groaning, but I love the final six weeks of the year, when we get to deck the halls and be merry! I also deeply appreciate Advent, including the…
When we were children, our father used to make fun of the Roman Catholic folks’ veneration of Mary. I guess it was considered acceptable to make snarky comments because Dad considered veneration of Mary to be idolatry. I think quite differently about Mary now. If we can be encouraged to emulate the “sweet singer of…
What do you want for Christmas? I remember this question from my childhood, part of recess-time chatter. In January, the question would shift: What did you get for Christmas? In my family, we’d make a big deal of writing our names on a piece of paper and then each choosing a name randomly, meaning we…
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