Dear Friend,

In his book The Pressure’s Off, psychologist Larry Crabb tells this story from his childhood.

"One Saturday afternoon, I decided I was a big boy and could use the bathroom without anyone’s help. So I climbed the stairs, closed and locked the door behind me, and for the next few minutes felt very self-sufficient.

Dear friend,

Sin demands to have a person be alone. It withdraws the individual from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him or her, and the more deeply the person becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is the isolation.

Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed, it poisons the whole being of a person.

Dear Friends,

Margaret Cregg, my high school classmate, wrote that in the mid-1990’s her uncle, Father Walter Sangster, began to notice some uneasiness in his throat and a dragging in his leg. When he went to the doctor, he found that he had an incurable disease that caused progressive muscular atrophy. His muscles would gradually waste away, his voice would fail, and his throat would soon become unable to swallow.

Most of us have now learned to live with voicemail as a necessary part of our daily lives. But have you ever wondered what it would be like if God decided to install voicemail?

Imagine praying and hearing the following:

Thank you for calling Heaven.
For English, Press 1.
For Spanish, press 2.
For all other languages, press 0.

Yvette, who is a young mother in Washington, D.C., recently told me her remarkable story, she wrote:

"It was the end. I knew it. I could no longer fight. I sat here emotionless. I was totally alone. Others had tried to help -- doctors, nurses, parents, husband, children. But they were gone. Hours earlier I had come into the hospital on an emergency basis. I had back pain so severe that at times, it dropped me to my knees. This was not my first hospital stay. I had been sick for a long time it seemed...

Dear Friend,

Lent is a time of refreshment and renewal. The word “Lent” comes from the old English, “lencten," which means spring. Lent is meant to be a "springtime" for the church. In Lent we participate in works of charity, prayer, and penance. Oftentimes people give up something in Lent and this is certainly a laudable practice. However, it is also good to do more prayer, more works of charity, etc.

Dear Friend,

C. S. Lewis once provided a powerful image of the difference between heaven and hell.

He described hungry people sitting at a huge banquet loaded with delicious food. Every person had a meter-long fork and knife attached to their hands (that’s about three feet long). The scene in hell was one of anger, frustration, and fighting as people scrambled to feed themselves. They could reach the food with the long knives and forks, but they were too long to feed themselves. The conflict, screaming, and unfulfilled hunger continued for eternity--that is hell.