Though summer is truly my favorite season hands-down no doubts, I’ve always loved spring, even with its inconsistency and variability. The first few days of decent weather – like the last couple days here – always feel like an exhale after the stillness and quiet of winter. This is our first spring here at our…
Category: Miscellaneous
New Endeavors
We’ve undertaken new endeavors here at the Barton household in 2022 as a family: reading through the New Testament over the course of a year. (Thanks to the pastor at church who did all the leg work of finding plans and printing them and making them widely available at the beginning of the year.) It’s…
Eyes Up!
The state department of transportation in my area utilizes electronic message boards to convey what it considers to be useful information or helpful reminders. Sometimes it is indeed useful – missing person alerts, detours and delays, traffic issues, and weather alerts – and sometimes the messages fall into the realm of punny safety tips. Recently…
Brought Near
“Bow down and worship, righteous seer: / The Lord our God is here / Approachable, Who bids us all draw near.” – Christina Rossetti, Epiphany* It “just so happened” that I was reading Ezekiel, Hebrews, and portions of Leviticus and Deuteronomy at the same time shortly before the end of the year. That convergence of…
A Light in Dark Places
One of the pleasures – yes, I said it: pleasures – of a lengthy daily commute is the opportunity to listen to audiobooks without spending weeks on each one. Sure, I probably could read with eyes faster than I listen, but the drive is time that I wouldn’t have spent reading with my eyes anyway…
Visualization
Recently I listened to an interview1 with a beach volleyball player and Olympic gold medalist Alix Klineman. I was plugging along at work, giving the interview really just half my attention – if even that much – until she described being down in the middle of her first qualifying match for a tournament as a…
The Goodness of the Lord
Take time to enjoy the little things, they tell us, the simple pleasures that make life enjoyable. I will be the first in line to agree with that philosophy. Lingering over a steaming cup of good coffee in the quiet stillness of the early morning. A stunning view of a gorgeous landscape spread out before…
The changing of the seasons
Fall is not my favorite time of year. Sure, I enjoy air temperatures lower than 90, and the break from high humidity is nice. Sunsets before 8pm and frost on the grass heralding the slow, long haul towards winter though are all less enjoyable. The lengthy shadows as I drive towards home after work and…
Oh Be Careful Little Eyes
One of the most popular storybooks when my kids were too young to read was a treasury of farmyard tales. It wasn’t just preferred by my kids; I loved it too, not least because there was an accompanying CD of all the stories, so I could push play and find a few minutes’ space to…
Reputations Based on Speech
One of the lesser known facts about our family dynamics is that of the two adults, I’m the bigger sports fan. That doesn’t mean that I’m a raging fanatic, only that if any kind of sporting event is playing in our house, it’s because I turned it on. Similar to my tastes in reading, where…