Heart Hope by Olga

After many years of dining at The Minturn Country Club, we have discovered that it is always a treat to have lots of spoons when eating the Minturn Tater. After a big steak dinner cooked on the grill, the dessert tops it off. Chocolate chip ice cream shaped like a baked potato rolled in sweetened cocoa, smothered in whipped cream and sprinkled with nuts caused our family to act like a bunch of piranhas while scarfing it down. Two year old Griffin was offered a bite, but refused. We all knew he would love it if he would try it, but instead he was demanding something quite different. He had spotted a small cup filled with a white substance that looked like it could be a kiddie cup of vanilla ice cream, but he was wrong. We tried to coax him toward something else, but he would not give up and the cries got louder and louder. Finally he was given the container of sour cream. The table filled with people was riveted toward him as he drew a large spoonful to his mouth.  You know...

Usually the most acknowledgment I get from people I pass on the path as I walk to work is an occasional nod of the head or an intermittent hello; however on one particular morning as a couple rounded the corner the woman was clearly excited and wanted to share her news with me. She exclaimed that a snake had just jumped out (her words, not mine) from the tall grasses and was resting in the crack of the sidewalk. She suggested that I should be careful. Her husband on the other hand described the snake as a tiny little harmless thing. I assured them that I would be fine and that I felt certain that it was only a grass snake. In fact, I had been expecting to see the reptile since just a couple of weeks before I had spotted a shed snakeskin in one of the indentations in the walkway. They were correct, just around the bend the snake was awaiting my arrival. The slithery creature didn’t move and could have been easily mistaken for a crack in the pavement or a streak of t...

The covers of the notebooks were varied, all obviously for a little girl, with pinks and purples…stripes and checks…hearts and butterflies…Bible verses and quotes. One even had a tiny little lock on it to protect the writer from intruders into her private thoughts. The journals held secrets, deep dark secrets of years gone by and thoughts locked away in a mind and body that had not been protected. The words written on the pages had been torn from the covers and burned in a grill on a hot summer day;   the skeletons that were left served only as reminders of what once was. Although the covers remained, the pages were gone, turned to ashes. The fire curled the edges of the pages first consuming the words written there, eventually turning the paper to a fine gray powder that would dissolve on your fingertips. The fire obliterated the diaries that had been so meticulously used to record the pain and hurt from years gone by, but fire doesn’t just destroy. It can also be...

A fun fact for the week in our company newsletter said: Rats multiply so quickly that in 19 months, two rats could have over a million descendants. I don’t know the source or even what it has to do with my company, but assuming it is true, that’s a whole lot of babies and if it’s not true, I still believe that a pair of rats can have hundreds of offspring in a short period of time. Rats reproduce profusely. On the internet I have read that the record for human reproduction in a lifetime is 69 children to one woman which includes many twins, triplets and quintuplets to get to that number. Now that seems like a bunch of children even though it pales in comparison to the rat family’s offspring.  Have you ever stopped to think about reproduction of Christians coming to faith (not by the number of children they have, but how many actually come into the family of God)? How fast do they reproduce? How do they reproduce? Are they actually reproducing? My friend who lives in China an...