Category: Tragedy
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No time to sleep
(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.) by Marti Fischer My heart hurts. This is Makenna Lee, fourth grader from Uvalde, Texas. Yesterday morning that priceless smile of hers brought joy to those who knew her as she wished them goodbye before heading off to school. I imagine she had thoughts of summer…
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Above the Noise and Strife
(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.) Be Thou My Vision is a 365-day devotional book I first published in 1995. It’s a devotional book based on selected lyrics from traditional known and lesser-known hymns. I wrote it on the premise that lyrics written by Christians over 100 years ago might speak…
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Sing your way through it
I’ve had some very painful moments in the last few weeks, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. The pain literally sent me howling a few times. It was 3 or 4 days until the doctors and nurses found something that would quiet it down. What I discovered, however, was an amazing calming effect that singing brought.
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A Call to Failure
by Marti Fischer What to do with failure? Hide it? No, unless you like being alone to yourself. “So how are you?” someone inquires and you say, “I am fine. I am all right. I absolutely couldn’t be better.” And if pressed to continue, you will find past successes to tell about. But you will…
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Death in the City 2
O Lord remember what has come upon us Look down on our nation The crown has fallen from atop our head Woe, for we have sinned Why forget us Lord forever Why forsake us so long Turn us to you, and we shall be restored And renewed as of old Or have you rejected us?…
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Fifteen miles of answered prayer
Our daughter, Anne (everyone calls her Anney) is an E.R. doctor in a hospital on the west end of Honolulu. This particular hospital serves a high percentage of poor indigenous Hawaiians. She often says she works in a third-world country. She’s a character, and often has us in stitches just telling us about an ordinary…
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The end of all things is near
Make no mistake, it feels a little like the end of the world out there, if you do get out. I was out driving at 1:30 am Sunday night and during a twenty-minute stretch on the most traveled road around here, Pacific Coast Highway, better known as PCH, or Hwy 1, I saw a total…
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No Little Town; No Quiet Night
O little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie; Above thy deep and dreamless sleep The silent stars go by. The little town of Bethlehem is not so little today, and not so still. It’s a place where nights can be full of exploding shells instead of silent stars going by. “If Jesus…
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Grace Turned Outward — a dynamic story
Susan Burton is a hero. What she has done with her life is extraordinary, although she would deny that. She would simply say, in her own words, that her life is just Grace Turned Outward.
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Left behind
I almost turned around and went back up north to see Ron again yesterday. I got to thinking about what I wrote about in yesterday’s Catch — how I went there for myself, to renew the blessing I received from him years ago — that maybe I need to go again, focused on him this…
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A pock on the skyline
I looked at my phone this morning and saw “Wednesday, September 11” right under the time, and thought, “Oh my goodness, it’s 9/11.” I guess I knew it was coming — I knew it was somewhere in the vicinity — I had heard rumors, but it hadn’t really registered. On the one hand, it’s just…
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What to do?
Have you noticed how easy it is to grow numb over shootings and mayhem and death? What’s going on right now defies rational thought. You open your newspaper and find articles about two mass shootings inside of 24 hours where two people have killed 29 and injured over 50 (we have a tendency to ignore…