At the edge of the yard on my dad’s property grew a large bed of vibrant orange tiger lilies. Every year as early summer came, they popped up and opened toward the sky. They were not just another patch of old-fashioned flowers; they had been planted 60 years before by ...

Happiness bubbles up quickly when things are going well, yet it is a fickle feeling that plummets just as quickly. Joy is something deeper– an assurance of what will be,  because God has promised it. The tides of life that sweep happiness away cannot steal true joy from the soul. ...

My dad really saved things—old gas receipts from 1960, the bill for my sister’s birth in 1968 ($160), his yearbook from 1947, and a war ration booklet from 1942 that belonged to my grandfather.  Ration booklets held stamps that Americans had to shop with to purchase rationed items such as ...