Sarah Dixon Young's Blog: Love Much, page 11

Attentive Hearkening

The older I get, the more my hearing is impaired by background noise.

Noisy rooms are the worst, and if I am nodding and smiling at you, you can be fairly confident that I can’t hear what you’re saying. 

Ephesus was a noisy city. 

Besides the regular hustle and bustle of city life, there was also the temple worship of Artemis and the practicing of magic spells adding to the cacophony. 

The Apostle Paul had to put forth supreme effort just to be heard, as he took the Gospel to bo...

The Curator Returns

This is the sequel to the short story entitled, “The Curator,” written by Sarah Dixon Young last year for Halloween. You can read the original story here .

I sat in the waiting area while the Curator hissed at someone on the telephone.

“Well, of course I will have to release those artifacts.” He paused. “Yes, I understand that those specimens do not belong to this museum.” He sighed. “Yes. I see that your representative is here.” He hung up, and his hood shaded his face as he walked to...

Whose Weapons are These?

While cleaning the garage recently, I threw a handful of sticks out into the side yard.

My youngest son yelled in protest, “Those are my weapons!”

I tried explaining that they were only sticks, but he carefully explained how they were daggers and arrows and scimitars.

I tried a different tack. “They are not sharp enough to butcher chickens,” I reasoned.

“But they are sharp enough to kill orcs,” he said without hesitation.

I wonder if the Apostle Paul was as exasperated with the Cori...

Marching Orders

I knew the dictionary definition of prostitution.

I just wasn’t prepared for the delusion that came with it.

“And then, I bought him for the drugs he could give my friend,” she said.

I had questions: “Bought him? With money?”

Giggles. “No.”

I said gently, “It sounds like he bought you.”

“Oh no. I definitely bought him.”

The girl suffered under the delusion that she was calling the shots. She had given the marching orders. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

...

Wholly True

Now that I am almost 40, I am realizing that the carefree, barefoot days of my childhood are catching up to me in the form of cracked callouses and fallen arches. 

The soles of my feet are not beautiful and cause me a few moans and groans these days. 

Perhaps that’s why these verses caught my attention: “Son of Man,” God said to the prophet Ezekiel, “this is the place of My throne and the place of the soles of My feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the people of Israel forever.” ...

Too Much Jesus

At what point do you become a fanatic?

In the nineties, D.C. Talk sang about Jesus Freaks. In the 2000’s, medical missionary Kent Brantly contracted ebola while sharing the Gospel with patients in Liberia. Just this year, an entire North Korean family, including their two year old, was imprisoned for owning a Bible.

These seem like extreme examples, but how far should we take our Christian faith?

The drug and alcohol recovery programs near where I live encourage leaders not to refe...

Every Joint

We have a classroom skeleton named Henry.

He has been a part of our classroom for eleven years, and it shows.

When my oldest child was nine, Henry lost a leg in an unfortunate incident with a toddler tantrum. I never could find it.

When we moved, Henry lost his eye sockets, and my practical child said, “Skeletons aren’t really supposed to have eyes, anyway.”

Somewhere around the time my youngest child began walking, Henry’s left arm fell off, was reattached backward, and has for...

Daily

When I go out each morning to start my day and feed my animals, I often view it as just routine. However, my cats, dogs, and chickens view it as the time during the day when they will receive the sustenance they need to go about their daily routines. 

The cats wait for me in the barn. One dog brings his own bowl for me to fill. The red rooster follows me until he gets his corn. The daily routine is essential, and even exciting, to them because they know I will provide them with what they...

Building Houses

Johnny Cash wasn’t known for his theology.

It was his iconic voice humming into the microphone, “Hello. I’m Johnny Cash,” that attracted attention.

I recently heard his song called, “Jesus was a Carpenter.” In it, Cash sings,

Jesus was a carpenter, and He worked with a saw and a hammer

and His hands could join a table true enough to stand forever

And He might have spun His life out in the coolness of the morning

But He put aside His tools and He walked the burning highway...

Throwing Stones

I teach my kids that it is never okay to throw rocks at passing cars, but the other day, I picked up a rock to chunk at oncoming traffic.

I live on a dirt road where there isn’t much coming or going, but as I was walking, a little white pickup truck barreled down the hill. There is water on either side of the road. The driver left the blacktop at about seventy miles per hour. What else was I going to do?

I stooped and picked up the largest rock I could find. If I couldn’t get far enough o...