On the phone this afternoon, our fifteen year old granddaughter Mariah asked us to “Come back!“ Come back? Are you kidding me?

We had left her house in Branson only the night before. She’s getting used to seeing us now that we are there so often checking on and working on the house we’re building down the hill from them.

She put pictures of the house in progress on facebook. She’s pretty excited. We were home alone for awhile yesterday. Her mom and brother were at an out of town ballgame, and her dad and papa were working on the electrical work for the house.

Mariah came upstairs after her shower and found something rare—a quiet house. I like quiet, so while she was downstairs, I had turned off the television and the music and sat reading in silence. She flopped down on the carpet near me, and covering herself with lotion, said, “Ma, this is so relaxing!“ She was amazed by the rest that comes from quiet. 

I started this blog over a year ago for a couple of reasons.

During the twenty-eight years I taught at Ozark Christian College, I often started class with a devotion I had written. I did this especially in my analytical grammar classes, which afforded me little opportunity, except in sentences I selected to diagram, to connect personally with my classes about the things of God.

I’m sorry or happy to say that the typical grammar student remembers my devotions far more than he or she remembers how to join subordinate clauses to main ones.

A former student and I attended a conference recently which featured a verse from Colossians that sent me into a grammar fit such as I have not had in years. I couldn’t rest until I had diagrammed the glorious monstrosity and began to discover at least some of its implications.