April 2012
April 26, 2012
My wife, Carol, has been away working as a writer-in-residence in Atlanta and she comes home tomorrow. Yippee! At last! Let me tell you that bachelor living has lost its allure.
April 23, 2012
Charles W. “Chuck” Colson, who died this weekend, wrote an outrageously good book more than 35 years ago called Born Again. All the ink obituary writers have been spilling about his involvement in Watergate and then his heroic work reaching out to the incarcerated with Prison Fellowship make him sound at best like a second Paul, a man who switched sides.
April 19, 2012
The legendary (and NCAA championship-winning) basketball coach John Wooden used to say, “Make each day your masterpiece.”
How do I do that? I was thinking as I dropped by the shoe-repair shop at lunch to get my shoes shined. I’d have to pray about this one.
Unwittingly, I had stepped into the middle of an argument. A young woman, near tears, was saying to the owner, “I can’t give you cash. I only have a twenty-dollar bill. I have to give you a check.”
April 17, 2012
My cat Fred always gives me a hard time when I come back from a vacation. He’s a rescue cat, who was found wandering around the subway platform in Harlem nine years ago, very near Frederick Douglass Boulevard. Hence his name.
“Were you afraid you were abandoned again?” I ask him. “Did you not like your cat sitter?”
He runs around the house, yowling, and then sulks in a corner. I check his food dish. Full. I look at his water dish. Plenty of water. And the cat sitter has left the radio on for company.
April 12, 2012
Who’s in your Amen corner?
I was talking to a couple of my colleagues here at Guideposts who do a lot of preaching, and I think it was Lemuel Beckett who said, “When you need encouragement it’s good to look to your Amen corner.”
I’d never heard the phrase but I latched onto the idea immediately. What a great thing to have in life! Those people you can look to who will say Amen when you’re out on a limb.
April 10, 2012
What do you do if you find yourself sitting next to Jesus on Easter Sunday?
April 5, 2012
It was an Easter moment that came a little early.
I was running through the park on one of these beautiful spring days that we’ve been having. I came down the hill and chased through some cherry blossoms that were falling like snow on the path. A mini blizzard of white and pale pink blew up around me.
April 3, 2012
It’s odd how a painting can be an answer to prayer.
I’d been dreading the prospect of Holy Week. The story of the last week of Jesus’ life is so sad to contemplate. Thirty-three is too young to die. Crucifixion is a horrendously painful death. But more than anything, cutting closest to the heart for me was thinking of how Jesus had to face rejection.
Rick Hamlin is the executive editor of Guideposts magazine and the author of 10 Prayers You Can't Live Without. To learn more about the book and explore your own prayer journey, watch this video.
