The first copies of Oxpatch and the Hill - Dixieland Memories are shipping this week. We didn't make it in time for Christmas, but at least we got them out during 2007. This book has been a long time in the making. I think I first started making notes about it fifteen or twenty years ago. When it did come together, it wasn't without a lot of help. I won't review the acknowledgements here--they're all in the front of the book--but I am grateful to a lot of people.

Now, I'm on with more projects. Eagle Behind the Curtain is a novel I wrote back in 1995, but didn't publish. It's a story about a retired super-spy, now in business, who embarks on a mission into Soviet Russian in a stealth airplane to bring out a doctor who has discovered a remarkable and effective cure for cancer. The story explores Soviet culture during the last days of communism. It has plent ...

I was praying and thinking during my long drive home tonight on a dark, rainy night about the hurts we experience in life. One of my sons is experiencing the heartbreak that comes with the unexpected end of a treasured relationship. Others close to me are experiencing disappointment for a variety of reasons. Most of us know at least some of that emotional pain that is at times more intense than physical pain.

As I contemplated the pain we all experience at various times during our lives, most often the result of people betraying or disappointing us, I thought of the scriptures that tell us "All things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28)

I thought about the many times in history when something that seemed bad was used by God to bring about something good, and I wondered. What if we could come to the realization when we're in a painful circumstance that it's something Go ...