Emily Parke Chase
Welcome back to the third in this series of Advent devotionals on the theme “Waiting for God to Appear.” When my children were little, they found it harder and harder to wait as the holiday drew near. We agreed that they would each be allowed to open one gift on Christmas Eve. One year my …
Read More Advent 2017 – Day 3Are Christmas packages starting to appear under your tree? You can see them. You might even shake them. You can lift them and test the weight. But you know you can’t open them yet. Welcome back to the second of our Advent devotionals on “Waiting for God to Appear.” In Genesis 6-9, Noah learned what …
Read More Advent 2017 – Day 2If you have looked around you, signs of the Christmas season are everywhere. Colorful lights decorate houses and trees, malls are full of frantic shoppers, carols float through the air. Children wait impatiently for the holiday to arrive. But before Christmas arrives, an important season must come first. It is called Advent, a time of …
Read More Advent 2017 – Day 1Now that my husband and I are officially old and living in a retirement setting, we have been asked to participate in a course at Messiah College where first-year students interview oldsters about their life journey. The students interview their subjects on three different occasions and then write up a paper drawing some conclusions that …
Read More Free FallRecently I picked up a coffee table book about the Ghost Army of World War II. This entire army unit was assigned the task of subterfuge, to make a small unit of about 1000 men appear to be a force of about 30,000 soldiers. They used an arsenal of inflatable tanks, false radio transmissions, and …
Read More Ghost ArmyTowards the end of May, my husband and I moved to a retirement community. We’ve had a month or two to settle in to our new apartment, so last weekend, my mother came from Massachusetts to check out the accommodations. We laughed: Most residents here have plenty of gray hair, and none of them can …
Read More Family ReunionEver have a James Bond moment? Theater-goers hold their breath during movie chase scenes. They watch stuntmen screech around corners, drive over cliffs and do controlled spins. Stuntmen don’t have to worry about an unexpected vehicle that might appear barreling down the highway. For them, every movement has been carefully choreographed and thought out ahead …
Read More A James Bond momentMy husband and I are still in the throes of downsizing and moving to a retirement setting. Our backs ache, our minds whirl. One moment I think we have made progress, and then the next, we open another closet and feel overwhelmed by the piles of clutter within. How did all this stuff accumulate over …
Read More A moving experience…My dad turned exactly 100 years old last October. He now lives in the nursing wing of a senior residential facility in Massachusetts. My mom is able to visit Dad every day. Recently, when she stopped by his room, she found him sound asleep so she sat down beside his bed to read until he …
Read More The “Wow” FactorDid you take time off for a vacation over the December holidays? My son is a high school teacher, and after a week or two away, he finds it a challenge to harness his students and settle into grading papers. How do we transition back into the saddle early in January? During December I typically …
Read More Ride on!