[I've decided to run this post from last year once again on Memorial Day. Thank you to every honored Veteran. God bless you all. --Sam] —–   —–   —– It is the business of a sinful world to turn our eyes away from Jesus – to the more pressing, familiar-seeming things around us: “a newsboy shouting [...]

It’s harder to write a meaningful radio song than a thoughtful album; when you have only three minutes to make your point, it’s easier to be catchy than deep. It can be harder to write a short story than a novel; you need to accomplish the same things – character development, rising conflict, resolution – [...]

Creative people of all kinds – from writers to inventors, gardeners to entrepreneurs – are often asked a funny sort of question: How do you get all your ideas? “They honestly didn’t know,” writes Isacc Asimov. “To them it was an impossibility to even think of one. … Could I say I don’t know? When [...]

There was an old man from Peru who dreamed he was eating his shoe. When he woke in a fright in the dark of the night he found it was perfectly true.”   You may think that this story’s absurd but there is more to the tale that I heard. He had skipped all his [...]

Behind a big old house, in a big old garden, in a big old tree, lived the happiest grey squirrel in the world. Well, that’s not quite true: He lived in three trees. On nights that were warm and beautiful, he slept high in the swaying top of the oak tree, as close to the [...]

If you have children between the ages of four and ten, I commend to you the Bible Story Book by Elsie E. Egermeier, who sounds like a Dr. Seuss character, but isn’t. Originally published around 1922, Elsie’s (can I call her Elsie? Egermeier is SO hard to spell!) book provides a chronological overview of the [...]

He who plants a tree Plants a hope. ~ Lucy Larcom Andrew Peterson has told many stories, some in song, others in novel form, to stir holy imagination. Here’s a story to introduce a song that tells a story. Andrew’s song, “Planting Trees,” is one of many lovely songs on Counting Stars. Get it at The Rabbit [...]

I’m bad at keeping up with trendy ideas. I only recently ran across an idea from 1898, written by Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst in his still-respected book, The Painter in Oil: Talent is just another name for the love of a thing.” But I’m a quick learner, and soon found an essay by Seth Godin, which [...]

My friend Vincent Anastasi is a songwriter of some local repute, and his local shows (which he plays with his two oldest boys) are always great fun. But I want to share a song he wrote with his youngest son, who loves Mother Goose. It seems that, behind the innocent nursery rhymes, there is a [...]

Reading through the Old Testament with my kids (via Eegermeir’s Bible Story Book) has taught me a lot. Simplifying things to the bare essentials does much to reveal themes in the greater story. Today I am struck by the reason given for Israel’s frequent slides into idolatry. We are told that, over and over, they [...]