On a visit to my aunt and uncle as a teenager, one day I was left to babysit my two young cousins.
Category Archives: Stories and Excerpts
Embracing the Child, Part Six: Acquiring a Child’s Heart
Currently I’m at work on a novel—a sci-fi/fantasy about angels and aliens—and while writing this essay I noticed that my story actually contains all the gateways to childhood that I’ve been describing.
Embracing the Child, Part Five: The Childhood of Faith
If childlikeness were a country, it would have many border crossings.
Embracing the Child, Part Four: Recovering Our Childhood
When my daughter was four years old I caught her standing on a chair and reaching up into the medicine cabinet to get a bottle of pills. Is this a picture of you?
Embracing the Child, Part Three: Join the Infantry!
There was a time in church history when the highest service one could offer the Lord was to be a Soldier of Christ.
Embracing the Child, Part Two: Fear of Ice Cream
My first trip overseas was to London, where I drank in the sights and sounds, the cobbled laneways and old buildings, the galleries upon galleries, like a man who had just crawled out of the desert.
Embracing the Child, Part One: Weary Willy’s Smile
Happy 2024! How better to greet this new year than with a reflection on childhood—or more specifically, on childlikeness?
Commotion! — A Brand New Christmas Story!
Here it is, folks—my brand new Christmas story for 2023! Suitable for reading around the tree on Christmas Eve …
The Anteroom of the Royal Palace: A Parable
As we approach December it’s time for a reminder of my book 21 Candles: Stories for Christmas. Here’s one of those stories, which a friend liked so much that he read it to his family every Christmas Day for over three decades. Read on …
Dreambums: A Parable
The following story was originally published in 1989 in my book The Furniture of Heaven & Other Parables. Reading it now over three decades later, it strikes me as more than a little prophetic. See what you think. (Also available as a video.)