Christmas is Coming Christmas! The very word brings joy to our hearts. (Joan Winmill Brown, British actor & writer) It’s still three weeks till Christmas, yet the anticipation has begun. Brown continues, “No matter how we may dread the rush, the long Christmas...
Plan Ahead December, being the last month of the year, cannot help but make us think of what is to come. (Fennel Hudson, rural lifestyle author) Children (even grown-up children) welcome December and look forward excitedly to Christmas. Others are already complaining...
The Seasons May and October, the best-smelling months? I'll make a case for December: evergreen, frost, wood smoke, cinnamon. (Lisa Kleypas , American novelist) Some people like spring freshness; others wait eagerly for summer heat. Fall colors are favorites for many....
December It is December, and nobody asked if I was ready. (Sarah Kay, American poet) We say that time flies, and when we reach December, we wonder how it arrived so quickly. And yet, we knew all along that it was coming—like every other month on the calendar. Or every...
Learning from Life Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know. (Pema Chodron, Buddhist nun) Some lessons in life seem to be never-ending. We might struggle against them, try to wish them away, or ignore them, but they are aggravatingly persistent....
Success Success is built on the ability to do better than good enough. (Zig Ziglar, late motivational speaker) Have you ever worked on a project until you were just tired of it and wanted to quit? You may have said, “It isn’t what I wanted, but it’s good enough.”...
Thanksgiving As antitoxins prevent the disastrous effects of certain poisons and diseases, thanksgiving destroys the poison of fault-finding and grumbling. (Clinton C. Cox, minister) This is a good reminder for us on this Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. Cox continues,...
Endurance It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. (Confucius, ancient Chinese philosopher) While that axiom would certainly not apply to the 100-meter dash in an Olympic contest, it surely has a broader and helpful application to life in...
Sincerity Those who have virtue always in their mouths, and neglect it in practice, are like a harp, which emits a sound pleasing to others, while itself is insensible of the music. (Diogenes, 4th century B.C. Greek philosopher) Today we night say rather crudely, “Put...
Choosing When the choice is to be right or to be kind, always make the choice that brings peace. (Wayne Dyer, self-help author) Have you ever been in an argument about who won the World Series or who was the vice presidential nominee in a specific year? In such a...
Others Goodness is about character—integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage, and the like. More than anything else, it is about how we treat other people. (Dennis Prager, talk show host) When we say that someone is a “good person,” what do we mean? How...
Relationships Relationships always take precedence over our rights and rank. (Mike Lee, pastor) We stand strong on the rights of individuals, and many people today are demanding to have what they consider to be their rights, no matter who may be in the way. Some of...