Ever notice how at dusk in late autumn your eyes, alarmed by the early dark, begin to home in on lighted windows, flitting to their flaxen glow as eagerly as sparrows to corn? …

Stepping from cool interior gloom onto the glaring patio, I’m momently overcome, raise a hand to shade my brow as though sunlight were an angel saying, “Lo!” Near my feet: luminous tulips, amethyst petals forming scarlet-tipped chalices. My hostess, like a gigantic moth in her billowy orange dress, flutters from blossom to bloom, pausing to dandle and sniff. I toddle behind…

A lull in our sidewalk chat: You eyed the gnarled pear tree profusely in blossom, rejuvenated it seemed by the pruning it got in March’s ice storm. “Got to sharpen the chainsaw,” you said. “Meant to cut her down before now.” Stunned, I barely managed to demur. “Really? It’s kind of…

Run in such a way as to take the prize. Everyone who competes in the games trains with strict discipline. They do it for a crown that is perishable, but we do it for a crown that is imperishable. I Corinthians 9:24–25, Berean Study Bible Dad, you’d be the saint…

For Mom This odd windchime made of stone, pearl- and ocher-whorled slices of agate dangling from a drift- wood stick worn smooth as bone. Hang it in a window till spring to adorn the view of bare trees, gray sky, snow. All winter let it be still except when you…

All morning he sits in his little room at a book- and paper-strewn table, mostly gazing at the sun-flooded courtyard. Just outside the window a blowsy rose dangles, floppy dollop of yellow. Under the little apricot tree, a gangly geranium splatters scarlet against the shady white wall. A motorcycle revs…