Early in Jesus’ ministry he preached at the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. He read a passage from Isiah which began with these verses:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
to comfort all who mourn’ (Isaiah 61:1-2)
Read MoreI suppose we’ve all had the experience of hunkering down during a storm. The last hurricane was Irma in 2017, about 4½ years ago. The storm came in strong during the day on September 10th, 2017 and blew hard most of the night. We had our 3 younger children plus 2 of our daughters-in-law with us that night, all huddled together in our family room, watching the news, watching movies, playing games and hoping for a lot of things.
We hoped that we wouldn’t lose power. That none of the oak trees around our home would fall on it. That our new roof would withstand the winds. We prayed that people across the state would be safe and that help would come quickly to those who needed it.
Read MoreWhen my husband and I were first married, we lived in Arizona while he finished graduate school. Everything about the state was different from our native Virginia, and it was a wonderful time of adventure. On weekends, we liked to explore, and we’d often heard about a long-deserted silver-mining settlement named Jerome, where (among other oddities) one-half of the rough, 19th century town jail apparently still stood… the other half of its single jail cell having long ago collapsed, sliding down the side of the mountain below where the town had once stood.
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