I’ve been studying the Lord’s Prayer in the middle of the night. Not every night, but once or twice a week I find myself lying awake for a couple of hours, for no particular reason. Lately I’ve employed this time by reciting the Lord’s Prayer, very slowly, meditating on each phrase, until I fall back to sleep.
What follows is a passage I originally wrote for my book The Mystery of Children, but which didn’t survive the final edit. It tells of a time in my twenties when I was a caseworker with Big Brothers, an organization that matches men with fatherless boys in a mentoring relationship. The stories I could tell from this period could fill a book. This is just one.
There are dozens—maybe hundreds—of names and epithets for Jesus. The photo below shows the cover of a notepad that I keep on my desk, featuring just a few of these.
In 1989 I published a collection of parables entitled The Furniture of Heaven. Now here’s a parable from a new book I’m working on.
There’s something I want very much—something big—but I can’t make it happen. I have to wait for it, knowing it may never come. I have to wait in faith, prepared to let it go. I just have to let God have His way. I don’t even feel right about praying for this thing anymore. I’ve given up my rights. And so, in this waiting, I have peace.
On Christmas Eve at 8:00 a.m. Frank Chase put the key in the lock of Jingle Town, his Christmas store.
Like many people, one of my top ten favorite novels of all time is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Here is a Christmas story she wrote about how that marvelous book came to be. Published in McCall’s Magazine in 1961, I’ve shortened it slightly, but you can read the full version here.
Robert Hudson, a retired Senior Editor at Zondervan, has written many books including The Monk’s Record Player and The Beautiful Madness of Martin Bonham: A Tale About Loving God.
As we observe Remembrance/Veterans Day this year, let’s take inspiration from Walt Whitman.
“Do you think I have come to bring peace on earth?” said Jesus. “No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on there will be five in one household divided, three against two and two against three” (Luke 12:51-2).