Devotionals

Thinking about the New Year with Elizabeth Rice Handford Every New Year’s Eve my father, a pastor, encouraged the church family to make some fresh decisions, new choices, about how we’d change things in our lives in the new year. For several years, I remember, when I...

A Word of Encouragement with Elizabeth Rice Handford Christmas 1945, all the newspapers said, was the most wonderful Christmas ever! If you’d been living then, you’d have thought so, too. Our dear country had been fighting ruthless enemies for four unending years....

Elizabeth Rice Handford asks, “Why was Jesus’ name so important?” This was no ordinary Baby. His birth had been planned literally before time began. But the news was so awesome, the Father couldn’t help but reveal His name 700 years before the Child would be born. His...

A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford What if you had never ever heard about Christmas? What if you’d never seen a Bible? What if you didn’t know the precious, familiar story that Jesus, God’s only Son, came to earth just so He could bring us to God?...

A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford It’s a cold, bleak rainy December morning, and I’m staring out the window. I’m trying to motivate myself to start doing the “eleventeen” things I need to accomplish today. But the sky is so gray, the cold...

A Gentle Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford “Endgate! This is endgate!” Ben greeted Walt, his pastor, at the door, waving a beer bottle. “This is the last drink I’ll ever take, I promise,” he said tearfully. The poor man’s wife had called us because her...

A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford Ebenezer? Ebenezer who? If it were Christmas, you’d understand my talking about Ebenezer Scrooge. He’s the stingy boss in Dickens’ story, “A Christmas Carol.” He’s that scowling misfit who mutters “Humbug!” until...

A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford Last week, I found myself thinking, “When it rains, it pours.” I was beset by all kinds of problems. I needed a new house cleaner. A pipe broke in my bathroom; another in my sprinkler system. The roof over the guest...

A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford The child was bullied at school. When he protested to the teacher, she labeled him a troublemaker, and disciplined him instead of the bully. A co-worker made a costly mistake, but blamed her innocent office-mate....

A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford You may feel you have good reason not to vote in this election. (I write not as a Democrat or Republican or Independent, but as a simple Christian burdened for our country.) “My one vote won’t make any difference,”...