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There were two rules when I was growing up to apply the spoils of discovered treasure. ‘Finders keepers, losers weepers’, and ‘Share, share, share alike.’ The first rang with fairness and personal glory, but tended to create envy. The second rang with fairness and graciousness, and was always warmly received and widely appreciated. But of…

The Marshmallow Test – where a single marshmallow is placed on a plate before a child, with the direction given that he or she may either eat it straight away, or wait until the supervisor returns to the room after an undisclosed period of time, and receive two marshmallows – was actually first conceived hundreds…

Before there was Auld Lang Syne, another song was sung to mark the departure of good company – The Parting Glass. It’s a Gaelic song that pulls the heart-strings very tight and makes the tear-ducts very wet: “So fill to me the parting glass / And drink a health whate’er befall / And gently rise…

Sometimes a Bible verse seems too good to be true. Like that verse from David’s Psalm: “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you” (139:17,18). Are these…

Begone foul beast that grips my weary throat. You are unwelcome! Yet thou art still within my house? Canst thou not see the door, at least the gateway to the street? Why dost thou love to linger from moistened crown to chill-filled feet? First the head, and then the nose, and then the tonsil stairs;…

Lemons are growing on my tree! Lemons, as in, plural. Six of them, and one of them is starting to turn yellow. I’ll now have to look up when to pick them. I dare say one day before the possum picks them. And I’ll have to schedule a day to have fish and chips, just…

When choosing the songs for last Sunday’s service, I was caused to research the background story of the old hymn ‘How great Thou art’, and discovered that the original version was penned by Swedish pastor Carl Boberg. Apparently, he witnessed a tremendous thunder storm, which passed quickly to leave a clear sky and birds singing…

What a beautiful line. I was listening in on a song on the way to work, and through the speakers came this profound dissertation on marriage, expressed in about a hundred words. After noting that the knot was tied, years ago, and that many marital seasons of summer and winter had passed, came this beautiful…

The very excellent and emotive line, ‘Lone wandering, but not lost’, comes from the pen of American poet William Bryant, who paints in words the path of a solitary waterbird flying to its home at dusk. The poet feels sure that the bird’s lonely but careful flight is a picture of his own, and like…

I was reminded recently of that famous devotional poem ‘Footprints’. Its author describes life as a walk on a beach with the Lord. Typically two sets of footprints are left in the sand, but as the poem observes, sometimes there is only one set to be seen, and usually coinciding with the hardest moments of…