Drunk in Love: The Danger of Infatuation in Dating*

Tags

infatuation, love

“No one can understand love who has not experienced infatuation. And no one can understand infatuation, no matter how many times he has experienced it.” ~Mignon McLaughlin

Guest Writer Phillip Holmes

Recently, an old friend messaged me and asked for prayer. He had come home from work to discover an empty house and an absent wife and child. No, his house hadn’t been robbed and his family hadn’t been abducted. His wife left him. Continue reading →

“And what’s romance? Usually, a nice little tale where you have everything as you like it, where rain never wets your jacket and gnats never bite your nose, and it’s always daisy-time.” ~DH Lawrence

Single You Will Be the Married You*

Tags

dating, self, singleness

“The outward man is the swinging door; the inner man is the still hinge.” ~Eckhart

Guest Writer Phillip Holmes

Joining a gym won’t instantly transform your physique. Starting a blog won’t immediately make you a good writer. Purchasing a piano won’t make you a musician. The same principle is true for marriage. Getting married will not make you a good spouse or a better person. Continue reading →

“We don’t know each other’s secrets quite so well as we flatter ourselves we do. We don’t always know our own secrets as well as we might. “ ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

She Is Me: Loving Your Wife As Your Own Body*

Tags

marriage

“Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” ~Robert Heinlein

Guest Writer Phillip Holmes

Recently, my wife and I started having family worship again, a time set aside each day for us to read the Scriptures and pray together. Although we pray and read on our own, we need time in the Bible together as well. Continue reading →

“While duty measures the regard it owes With scrupulous precision and nice justice, Love never reasons, but profusely gives, Gives, like a thoughtless prodigal, its all, And trembles then, lest it has done too little.” ~Hannah More

When Adults Misbehave

Tags

children, divorce, remarriage

When Adults Misbehave…Children Pay

“Familiarity breeds contempt—and children” ~Mark Twain

A person doesn’t remember every day of his life, but I do remember Saturday, 22 March 1958. It was a bleak, dreary day. The dawn of spring, with the hangover of winter. My dad had taken us to the river to look for arrowheads.

Let Me Call You Sweetheart

Tags

love, marriage

Valentine’s Day: February

“Marriage is more than four bare legs in a bed.” ~Hoshang N Akhtar

Not long ago some of us seniors were feting an old man on his centennial birthday. He was still nimble-minded enough to think rationally and strong enough to walk (without a walker), drive his own car, play piano and sing, even provide the evening entertainment. But inevitably, because memory occasionally fails even the fittest of us, it turned out to be the kind of stuff my mother used to laugh about when she and my dad went to their monthly luncheons for retired ministers. He and his blunders had us all in stitches.

Monsters Inc

Tags

Christian nurture of children, parenting

The Domestic Circle*

Tags

family, home

Practical Christian Theology
Guest Writer Thomas DeWitt Talmage

“Go home to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you” (Mark 5:19).

Many people are longing for some grand sphere in which to serve God. They admire Luther at the Diet of Worms and wish they had such grand opportunity in which to display their Christian prowess. They admire Paul making Felix tremble (Acts 24:25) and wish they had some such grand occasion to preach righteousness, temperance, and judgement. All they want is an opportunity to exhibit their Christian heroism.

The Old Folk’s Visit*

Tags

grandparents, seniors

Practical Christian Theology
Guest Writer Thomas DeWitt Talmage

“I will go and see him before I die” (Genesis 45:28).

Jacob had long since passed the 100-year milestone (cf Genesis 47:9, 28). In his day persons were distinguished for longevity. In the centuries after, persons still lived to great age. Galen, the most celebrated physician of his time, took so little of his own medicine, that he lived to be 140 years old. A man of undoubted veracity on the witness stand in England swore that he remembered an event that happened 150 years before. Lord Bacon speaks of a countess who had cut three sets of teeth, and died at 140 years.

Woman Enthroned*

Tags

ministry, women

Practical Christian Theology
Guest Writer Thomas DeWitt Talmage

“There are threescore queens” (Song of Solomon 6:8).

Solomon, by one stroke, sets forth the imperial character of a true Christian woman. She is not a slave, not a hireling, not a subordinate, but a queen; and in my text Solomon sees sixty of these helping to make up the royal pageant of Jesus. Crown, courtly attendants, and imperial wardrobe are not necessary to make a queen; but graces of the heart and life will give coronation to any woman.

Trials of Housekeeping*

Tags

family, home

Practical Christian Theology
Guest Writer Thomas DeWitt Talmage

“Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to help me” (Luke 10:40).

Yonder is a beautiful village homestead. The man of the house is dead, we assume, and his widow is head of household: Martha of Bethany. Yes, I will show you also the pet of the household: Mary, the younger sister, with a book under her arm, her face anxiousless and at peace. Company has come. Christ stands outside the door and, of course, there is a good deal of excitement inside the door. The room is hastily refreshed, the hair is brushed back, and the dresses are smoothed.