Truth Compendium

Showering with a "Ducha" This morning I was reading Hebrews 11:13-16. It says:   All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country— a heavenly one . Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. Having just returned from a trip to Honduras, I could relate to being a “foreigner and a stranger.” I also will admit that by the end of the week, I was ready to return to my home country. But as I pondered the passage it didn’t take long for me to realize that as a believer I really wasn’t home yet. Later, as I wound the old kitchen clock that...

I like words. Sometimes for entertainment I will read a dictionary!  This is a practice I developed after I got my first dictionary in high school; I’d look at all the definitions besides interesting pictures!!  Since then I have compiled a small dictionary collection; besides the one from high school with all the presidents pictured up to Richard Nixon , I have my Mom’s, Fred Stroop’s, and a Webster’s unabridged dictionary given to me by a dear friend who heard I liked dictionaries! I even had my Dad’s Japanese dictionary from WWII--I finally gave it away to someone who had lived there and could read it. So when it came to prayer I got tired of using the word “help” when praying about specific needs. I didn’t want to get bored, or tire God with my repetitive prayers by repeatedly using the word “ help.” So I undertook writing a list of words to use in its’ place. Here is the list I wrote down:  “guide”; “direct”; “convict”; “enrich”; “strengthen”; “illuminate”; “...

Overcoming Obstacles to Faith Sheila Zimmerman, writing for Betty Hawkins I’ve known Betty Hawkins for a while, but it has only been recently that I decided to undertake this difficult task: to write her story in such a way that it doesn’t turn into a book, but to give enough information to attest to the fact that God worked a miracle in Betty’s life. Our church has been learning from the book of Joshua about the victories God that brought about in his life, and in Israel’s history, as they undertook the initial conquest of Canaan. How would they get past the massive walls of Jericho? Pastor Bruce asked people in the congregation to write their own personal stories of victory and post them online for others to read. When I told Betty I thought she should share her story, she asked me to write it for her. Born in 1951 in Shanghai, China, Betty was the middle child between two spoiled siblings. Irene was the oldest. She could play the family’s piano all she wanted whil...

I love spring in Texas. Everything is blooming all at once, and the lure of seed packets practically calls to me from the shelves of the garden center. “Pick me! I’m beautiful! What you see on the packet is exactly what I’ll look like in your garden!” So I buy a seed packet of Molten Lava amaranthus with the hopes that what is pictured on the seed packet will grow into a gorgeous plant in my garden.  Like many who arrive in Texas from other locales, like yankee-land or California, I needed help to succeed in gardening in Texas. I had several friends who helped me get started. In addition to their help, I decided to follow Neil Sperry. I listened to him on the radio, bought his “boot book”, which I read it from cover to cover, and recently I purchased his new book with the adirondack chair on the front. One Saturday while listening to him, I decided to give call him on his live radio show on KLIF. This was a big step for me as I’ve never called a talk show. I asked him ...

Recently my husband and I had the time to drive out to west Texas to the Davis Mountains. I had long wanted to see the “stars at night...deep in the heart of Texas.” I had often wondered what it would have been like to look at the stars as Abraham did when God said that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars of the sky. Living around so many lights in the city has kept me from even being able to imagine stars that numerous. I wanted to see them for myself. How could the God of such inexplicable creation have an interest Abraham, or in you or I, for that matter? King David in writing Psalm 8 must have had a similar sense of wonder, for it says,   “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;   What is man that You take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him?” While at the welcome center at the McDonald Observatory in West Texas we were shown the Orion nebula through a te...