each and every day
On March 31, 1979, Jamie Livingston took out his Polaroid camera and took a photo. He continued snapping at least one shot a day until the day he died, October 25, 1997. There are pictures of friends and dinners and quaint artifacts of Jamie’s life. By viewing Jamie’s photographs, we discover that he was a Mets fan and a filmmaker.…
butterflies and breathing
As I stepped into The Butterfly Garden, a room populated with 800 colorful-winged beauties, a black and yellow specimen landed on the front of my shirt. We eyeballed each other. It wasn’t going to budge. Now, I’m not a huge fan of anything that resembles an insect—especially when I’m wearing it like a corsage, and especially when it’s the size…
time well spent
Her name is Mary Jane. Having married a steelworker, she’s seen the boom and death of a Pennsylvania steel town where they happily raised their children. When the town no longer held any promise for them, they moved to Florida to enjoy their latter years. Today, though, she misses her husband even though he’s been gone a while (she’s uncertain…
it's only money
Grigori Perelman won the Millennium Prize from the Clay Mathematics Institute for solving a problem that had stumped mathematicians for a century. When told that the prize came with a $1 million award, Grigori, a reclusive genius who lives with his elderly mother in Russia, said that he would need to think about whether to accept the money.
Grigori may…
ultimate healing
What Cancer Cannot Do
Cancer is so limited . . .
It cannot cripple love.
It cannot shatter hope.
It cannot corrode faith.
It cannot destroy peace.
It cannot kill friendship.
It cannot suppress memories.
It cannot invade the soul.
It cannot steal eternal life.
It cannot conquer the spirit.
—Author Unknown
I love those words. They beautifully reflect the truth found…
if tomorrow never comes
A heartbreaking story on the cover of the newspaper had everyone talking. A groom was found dead hours after his wedding dinner. One of his friends said: “He was a very cheerful person and had just gotten married. Nobody could believe he was dead just hours after celebrating his wedding.”
Life is truly uncertain. Everyone is just a heartbeat away…
what matters most
I’ll never forget the time a friend phoned me after he had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. He was so pumped about all the things that were becoming clear to him, and he wanted help in writing a book that he could share with others.
My friend could hardly contain his excitement. He was so stoked that it was…
dying wish
Last year, Amilcar Hill and Rahwa Ghirmatizion were married at their child’s funeral. Now before you start to cast stones (instead of rice) at them, realize that they were simply striving to honor their son Asa. Prior to the 7-year-old’s tragic death in an automobile accident, he had been repeatedly asking his mom and dad—who had never legally wed—to tie…
we have this day
Debbie Middlemann was telling me about her mother, Edith, the 94-year-old widow of Francis Schaeffer. Francis wrote powerfully and often about the dangers of euthanasia and the gift of life, and now his wife and daughter were putting his beliefs into practice.
Debbie said that hospices in her country slowly euthanize their patients, giving them ever-increasing amounts of morphine as…
the story ends well
Randy Pausch was a respected professor at Carnegie Mellon University when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2006. Pausch fought hard, but the cancer spread ferociously.
A month after he was told he had 6 to 9 months of life left, Pausch gave his now famous "last lecture." A devoted family man (wife Jai and three beautiful kids), Pausch's…
old faithful
Billy Graham preached in person to more people in the 20th century than any other evangelist. He proclaimed the good news to an estimated 100 million during his crusades, with nearly 3 million coming to faith in Jesus. In an interview with NBC in June 2005, he was asked how he would want to be remembered. The then 86-year-old Graham…
beware
David Wayne Sharpton, 54, has won the Georgia lottery three times—raking in $350,000 in 2004, $1 million in 2005, and $2.5 million in 2007. The repeat winner continues to work at his job as a restaurant-oven repairman, even though his winnings have provided more than enough money for him to retire. "Am I the luckiest man alive?" he asks. "I…
