Musings

By Pastor Doug Stauffer On December 31, the clock struck midnight, and one second later, we stepped into 2025. Many hearts are full of hope, eyes fixed on the horizon. Like every new year, the coming year brings a fresh slate, a chance to start again, grow and live more...

By Sean Dietrich I‘m sitting with my Methodist mother-in-law in the living room. We are replaying old memories like worn out records. There is a ballgame playing in the background. Braves are winning. She sits in her wheelchair, nursing a nightly glass of Metamucil. I am sitting in a fold-up rollator...

By Sean Dietrich A television is playing in a Birmingham bar. The talking head is shouting politics. Most folks in this joint are below thirty, and aren’t even watching TV. They’re transfixed with the opiate glows of their smartphones. The bartender looks thirteen. He stares at the television screen and says...

By Michael Janetis Father’s Day evokes such a wide span of emotions across the board. For some it brings joyful memories of a man who was a reflection of God’s love, provision and protection in our homes. While for others, it’s a reminder of broken promises, disappointments, abandonment, unresolved pain...

She Is… by Shane D’Fury She is warm, comfortable to hold against my chest. She’s an effective thought, the perfect spark to ignite a...

By Sean Dietrich Morning on an American interstate. A caravan of large bucket trucks travels southward. There must be a hundred of them. Maybe more. These are utility workers. Hurricane Ida plowed into Louisiana like a Peterbilt semi yesterday. These trucks are heading to ground zero to join the 25,000 other...

By David Saviola, Arborbrook There once was a wealthy landowner who went out at daybreak to hire all the laborers he could find to work in his vineyard. After agreeing to pay them the standard day’s wage, he put them to work. Then at nine o’clock, as he was passing...

By Dave Holland “She’s the most beautiful girl in the world with the prettiest voice I’ve ever heard,” mused my seven-year-old boy brain as Mom sat at the piano singing ‘What a Friend We have in Jesus.’” Tragic events, two failed marriages, and alcohol battered Mom’s life, but I never lost...

By Sean Dietrich A few years ago, I attended my first Catholic mass in a busy church outside Birmingham. It was Easter Sunday. I sat in the nosebleed section. People greeted me with the words, “He’s risen.” And because I was not raised under a rock, I answered with: “He’s risen indeed.” I...

One of the most memorable lines in the classic novel The Old Man & the Sea is “Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.” Written in 1952, this memorable book won the Nobel Prize...