PlainSpeech Messages | Find YOUR way to GRACE.
I recently read a message I’d given in 1984 and felt a mixture of embarrassment and surprise. Embarrassed because it seems inadequate now, and surprised by how much my worldview has changed. Twenty-five years from now, I might read these messages and have a similar reaction. I offer no guarantee that my work or words will endure the eroding effects of time. I can only assure you these thoughts have been helpful to me, and perhaps a few others, today. With that qualification, I offer them to you.
~ Philip
NEW!
Things That Give Me Hope (2)
Last week, we began thinking about the things that give us hope in these challenging days, because it is far too easy to feel hopeless, so we need to think intentionally about the developments that give us hope, and I said one thing that gave me hope were the...
Things That Give Me Hope (1)
I was thinking this week of Mr. Hoban, an elderly neighbor of ours when I was growing up on Broadway Street, there in Danville. He was a veteran of two wars—World War I and World War II. He was so gentle and kind, his activity as a soldier seemed incongruent with the...
Do’s and Don’ts in a Time of Change (11)
I learned this week that a kid I knew growing up had passed away. This seems to be happening with more frequency, and I am usually saddened by the development, but this time I had mixed feelings. I met him when I was ten years old, and my family moved across town to a...
Do’s and Don’ts In a Time of Change (5)
I was up at Life’s Journey this week visiting Stacey Denny’s mother, who’s in hospice there. They have a bookshelf in the lobby filled with religious books, including a book called Heaven, written by a man named Randy Alcorn, whom I met 30 years ago when I started...
Do’s and Don’ts In a Time of Change (10)
I’ve been thinking this week of my Baptist grandmother, who took it upon herself to make us fit for civilization. Fortunately, I didn’t see her often. When my father and mother were first married, they moved 120 miles away from her, to give themselves a little...
Do’s and Don’ts In a Time of Change (9)
When I became an intentional Christian, as opposed to a Christin who was dragged kicking and screaming to church by my mother, I decided to read the Bible. I did that for several years, because a man I knew told me the government would confiscate all the Bibles, which...
Do’s and Don’ts In a Time of Change (8)
I’ve been thinking about Georgie Baker, who last week shared the happy news that she was wrapping up her degree in social work. Georgie was two-years-old when we first met. She would come to meeting with her grandparents, Ralph and Gan, and when the other children...
Do’s and Don’ts In a Time of Change (7)
Well, what a good Thanksgiving we had. It might be my favorite holiday. I like the constancy of Thanksgiving, the timelessness. Thanksgiving in 2024 feels like it felt when I was a kid in the 1960s, the same menu, some of the same people, the same conversations, and...
Do’s and Don’ts In a Time of Change (6)
We’ve lived in our house twenty-five years now, the longest place either one of us has ever lived, so this past summer we decided to freshen up the homestead, starting with the most important room, yet also the most humble, that place where the most pleasant and...
Do’s and Don’ts In a Time of Change (4)
Our gratitude to Mike Goss for bringing the message last week. I was at our farm in Paoli and Jackson was down with Covid in Richmond, after attending a Quaker pastor’s conference at Quaker Haven, which I was supposed to attend but couldn’t because of a funeral....