Devotionals

A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford Do you want a medical doctor with a good bedside and pleasant personality or one who has the knowledge, the integrity, and the wisdom to tell you honestly what you need to do in a health crisis? Do you vote for a...

A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford The other day a service man left my backyard gate open. My little dachshund Schatzi could have easily escaped to the vast, threatening world outside if I had not seen it and closed it. It reminded me of a day long...

A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Handford Odd how reading a passage of Scripture can bring back old memories. This week, I came to Ecclesiastes 10:10 in my daily Bible reading: “Cutting logs with a dull ax makes you work harder. A wise man will sharpen his ax....

A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford A supervisor burst into my husband’s office one morning, almost hysterical. “You’ve got to make those girls respect me!” she cried. “They don’t have any respect for me!” Walt was the CEO of my father’s publishing...

A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford You remember those tedious lists of names scattered through the Bible, don’t you? Somebody “begat” somebody, or somebody belonged to some tribe or other. One day recently, the two chapters I was to read in my Bible...

A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford One morning my child said to me, “Mother, please be tender with me today.” Unusual request. What was behind it, I wondered. “I will be tender, I promise,” I answered. “Do you want to talk about it?” “No.” That day I...

A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford Friends invited several of families over for dinner one evening. We were congenial. The conversation was lively, important, and uninhibited. But suddenly one of the guests, a fourteen-year-old, interrupted. He...

A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford “The universe has lost its soul of loveliness,” George Romanes wrote as he wept. Why? Because he came to believe Darwin’s evolutionary theory was true. And if Darwin was right, then the Bible was wrong, and that...

A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford I’d never even seen a river birch until Walt and I moved to South Carolina. When I saw my first one, my heart was completely smitten! The patches of dusky pink bark that peeled off were big enough to write a love...

A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford Why do good things happen to bad people? People more often ask, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” But it’s also important to find out why good things happen to bad people, because, obviously, they really...