Pencil in His Hand: A Mother's Journal of Stories, Thoughts, and Poems.

  Should Christians Only Read The Bible? I should imagine, that if you're anything like me, you would like to have a definite answer to this question.  Serious, diligent Christians who sincerely wish to serve God and to love Him with all of their hearts, souls, and minds, do in fact ask this and many other questions to do with daily Christian living. So, should Christians whose desire is to please God only read their Bibles? (Aside from recipes, messages, lists, instructions, and essential documents, that is.) Must they pass by all of the tempting covers of a myriad Christian novels and non-fiction books? My perhaps unsatisfactory answer, is "perhaps." Now, you may feel disatisfied with this, but hear me out. I say "perhaps" because I really can't tell you what to read or not to read. That is the job of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, you may need to fast from light reading in order to spend more time in God's Word. You may even have to say no to the writin...

 A New Blogging Season Plus Latest Poems. Summer day at the river Dear Readers, If you read   The Searching,  you may have also noticed my note about the need to blog less frequently due to time restraints. Now, although I don't have a great deal of writing time, I do enjoy a little writing in the afternoons. With this in mind, I plan to post shorter blog posts containing whatever the Lord places on my heart. I envision the blog being like an online journal of sorts, and I am hoping that it will be a blessing to you, my readers, as well as to my children some day. Although I won't be posting private details, I will be posting sincere musings from my heart, including poems and flash fiction. As for publishing, I have slowed down a great deal in that area. I had a large amount of content which I wanted to self-publish. This goal has been achieved, with the result that I now have a nice variety of books available. God willing, I will continue with the self-publishing ro...

  Free Stories & Chat, Plus A Writing Update. Jesus Saves Free stories, plus more! :) *In this post: 3 free micro stories with salvation and sanctification themes, plus chat and a writing update.* Welcome! A blessed 2024 to all of my readers. :) Welcome back to my blog: a little place of hope and encouragement. Here you will find a shelf full of free reads as well as links to all of my books. (I have self published a selection of inspirational stories as well as poetry and a couple of small devotionals on Amazon.) You can find all of the links here:  My books Please consider leaving a review on Amazon, or on the blog for those which are available here. Reviews really help by giving readers more confidence to purchase a book from an unknown author. Thanks so much. :) Feel free to browse the blog for some encouragement today. I have had a break from blogging, but not from creative writing this past month. If a new story impresses itself on my heart and mind, well, it has to ...

  Romance in Fiction Most people like a bit of romance in the stories they read. After all, true love and wedded bliss are wonderful gifts from God.  The Bible tells us that God is love.  He is also just. That does not change the fact that God is love though. Of course, God's kind of love is on an entirely different level from ours: His love is so amazing, so beautiful, and is embodied in Jesus' death for us. So, most people would agree then, that love is good, and should feature in our stories and poems. It is especially important in my view, that we share God's love for the world when we write. I would say that that is essential. But what of romantic love? Should Christians write romantic stories? And should we read them? I'd say that the answer depends largely on how the romance is written. For a Christian to write and/or read romance in good conscience, it needs to be clean. Another important criteria, is that the characters, must be realistic. Many male characters ...

  Every month we would walk down to the bus stop, then catch a turquoise blue bus into the big city. A little girl, her sister, and their mother.  It was easily my favourite day of the month. Our first stop was the big bank where Mom would join the queue, her old-fashioned bank book in her handbag. After that, we would head to various shops. The material shop was high on Mom's priority list. She loved to sew. We'd get bored quickly, although we'd try to make the minutes pass by paging through pattern books. Sometimes, we'd pop into the bookshop: Adam and Griggs. All three of us loved books, so I'm not sure how we managed to get out of there! And then, there were payments to be made of course. A highlight was having lunch, just the three of us at a restaurant: toasted cheese and tea for Mom, hamburgers and milkshakes for us. So many happy memories, all lovingly entwined around our sweet mother. As far as the places go, one of my favourites was Colombo. A very old-fa...