In the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Into each life some rain must fall.” We’ve certainly had our share of literal rain this past month, but today’s figurative rain came in the form of a text from a friend letting me know that Dolly Parton had died. Somewhat in disbelief, I fact-checked it online and quickly saw the many headlines confirming it. Even though I knew she was 80, it seemed she would be around forever.
It’s hard to articulate why such news seems so personal, but I think...
In 1970, Stevie Wonder released Signed, Sealed, Delivered, which became one of his biggest hits and part of our cultural fabric and collective memory. For most of us, when we see that title, our minds play the music and lyrics. Go ahead. Take a moment. I’ll wait on the soundtrack in your head. 
George Washington Wallace. That was the full name of one of my great, great, great-grandfathers, who my family has always referred to as “Grandpa Wash.” He and his wife, Grandma Mary, lived in a log house about thirteen miles from my North Carolina home, near a community called Trade, where it’s said the sun first rises in Tennessee. Over the course of nearly two decades, Grandpa Wash and Grandma Mary had ten children – four girls and six boys, two of the latter dying in infancy.
In the spring...
Three of the four gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – speak of the curtain of the temple in Jerusalem being torn in two at the same moment Jesus died on the cross.
This was the curtain that separated the larger portion of the temple from the chamber known as “the Holy of Holies,” which contained the Ark of the Covenant and was considered to be the earthly dwelling place of God’s presence. In this sense, the curtain symbolized a barrier of separation between a holy God and sinful humanity.
The...
It’s been quite a while since I’ve read Bible scholar and Christian theologian Charles Ryrie’s book, "So Great Salvation," but one of the chapters that has left an enduring impression on me is titled “Of Course He Is Lord.” In this chapter, Ryrie makes the fascinating distinction between “objective lordship” and “subjective lordship.”
The former speaks to the truth that Jesus Christ is Lord of all, whether anyone chooses to acknowledge it or not; it is simply a fact. The latter refers to the...
About a month ago, on my drive home from work, a pickup truck pulling a trailer rounded a sharp curve and crossed the center line. I moved over slightly, but the truck kept moving further into my lane, almost to the point of wiping me out. I was nearly in the ditch line when, in the nick of time, the other driver corrected. I was shaken but relieved there had been no collision, and I thanked God for sparing me.
This morning, I had a similar experience, but this time, I was the one at fault. As...
One of my 3x great-granduncles was Matt Banner, who, when he inherited a portion of his father’s North Carolina plantation, asked that it be sold so that he might be educated at a school of dentistry in New York City. He subsequently established a thriving dental practice and drugstore in Dalton, Georgia, where he met his future bride, Addie. Aunt Addie was a graduate of the Knoxville Female Seminary in Tennessee and a teacher, and she and Uncle Matt married in 1856. At their wedding, she...
About a week ago, I wrote about “a door of hope” that is mentioned in the biblical book of Hosea, and I want to continue some thoughts along that theme.
As a recap, God instructed the prophet Hosea to take a prostitute named Gomer as his wife. They would have three children – Jezreel (meaning “to sow/scatter”), Lo-Ruhamah (meaning “no pity/mercy”), and Lo-Ammi (meaning “not my people”). In the midst of these events, Gomer would be unfaithful to Hosea by committing adultery.
These dysfunctional...
When my grandpa, Iris Harmon, was a boy in the 1920s, he lived in a rural community in northwestern North Carolina. Life for him and his brothers and other boys like them in that neck of the woods pretty much consisted of helping on their family farms, but whenever they had the chance, they looked for ways to have fun.
One outlet was baseball, but because weekdays were workdays, their games had to wait until Saturdays. That never seemed enough, so in order to be able to practice throughout the...
Yesterday, I mentioned that my gladioluses are in bloom.
For some time, I have known the proper spelling of this flower is “gladiolus” rather than “gladiola,” but I admit to not having been sure what to call multiples of them. According to Merriam-Webster, the plural of gladiolus can be “gladioluses” or “gladioli.”
Upon further reading, I learned that “gladiola” and “gladiolas” are the informal, Anglicized, singular and plural versions of the word. These versions are also referred to as “...
In recent weeks, daily emphasis on an appreciation of God’s creation has become a priority for me. It’s not that I’ve never previously appreciated it, but both quantitatively and qualitatively speaking, it has been sporadic and lackluster at best. My communal time with God within the “walls” of His natural sanctuary has been inconsistent and interspersed with long periods of taking His handiwork for granted.
Several factors and recent influences have converged to renew this appreciation within...
The boy was born in the Blue Ridge Mountains of rural North Carolina on the tail end of the Great Depression. He entered the world in an old cheese factory that had been converted into a dwelling. His mother had a terribly difficult delivery, and it was so traumatic that the boy would be an only child.
Within the following year, the boy and his parents moved into a small wooden shack, and a month after the boy’s first birthday, a devasting flood hit their region. The mountains became so...
In light of our nation’s 250th birthday, my mind drifts back to 1976, when, as a grade school student, I was the proud owner of a bicentennial lunchbox, exactly like the one pictured here.
As a history nerd, I preferred the Founding Fathers to “The Fonz,” Donny and Marie, and Evel Knievel. Rather than Marvel superheroes, the various sides of my cool lunchbox featured George Washington, Paul Revere, Betsy Ross, Valley Forge soldiers, and Boston Tea Partiers.
Not only did this lunchbox serve a...
As I was reading in the book of Hosea today, a short but beautiful phrase caught my attention:
“A DOOR OF HOPE”
In the preceding verses, God had portrayed the idolatrous Kingdom of Israel as an unfaithful wife and the Valley of Achor as a place for her judgement. To symbolize the strained relationship between God and Israel, God instructed the prophet Hosea to marry an adulterous woman, and among their children were Lo-ruhamah and Lo-ammi. “Lo” being the Hebrew word for “no” or “not,” the...
C. S. Lewis once stated that, when we are offered the infinite joy that accompanies the promises of God, we are “like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.”
This has made a lasting impression on me, and I think about it regularly.
Throughout my life, I have often had tightly held ideas of what my life should look like and consist of. I have frequently pursued goals without committing them to...
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
I can’t say for sure, but I do know that, when you get a group of Baptist men together for a few hours with a handful of chainsaws and axes and a couple of wood splitters, it’s enough to fill two small dump trucks. The old adage doesn’t lie: Many hands make light work.
That was what happened this morning, when nearly twenty men from our church gathered at our pastor’s place to cut up wood for the benefit of a fellow member....
This morning, I spoke to around a dozen kids at a summer reading camp. Although once upon a time, as a student teacher, I taught middle schoolers, kids are not my typical audience, particularly over the course of the past few years of being invited to speak about a true crime book I wrote. Still, I accepted the invitation with equal measures of curiosity and slight trepidation. Kids can be a tough audience in that they are super discerning and can see straight through you if you’re not on top...
This Father’s Day marks my 20th year without mine. It’s hard to believe two decades have passed since I last saw him and heard his voice. Still, I was blessed to have him in my life for 41 years, and with the realization that not everyone is that fortunate, I don’t take those decades with my dad for granted nor the many wonderful memories I have of him.
For thirty years, he was a high school business teacher, and in the summertime, in addition to tending his yard and garden, he helped his own...
This past weekend, I completed a task I had been avoiding all spring. I pulled weeds. My prolonged neglect of them had resulted in their spread and multiplication, but since I live alone and seldom have visitors, I had convinced myself that addressing them was not a matter of urgency.
Who cares? They’re not bothering anyone. Nobody’s around to see them but me. But my mama and daddy raised me right, and I like things to look neat and well kept. I saw them, I cared, and ultimately, they bothered...
My multiple times great uncle, Isaiah “Zade” Wilcox, was born in 1796, and his own great uncle was the renowned frontiersman, Daniel Boone. Uncle Zade grew up as a farm boy in Wilkes County, North Carolina. Described as a natural genius, he learned to make wagons and to manipulate iron and steel, which enabled him to become a good blacksmith and gunsmith.
As an adult, Uncle Zade stood around 5’10” and weighed about 165 pounds. He was a good-looking man with a fair complexion, blue eyes, and...