Devotionals

A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford I’ve been cleaning out my clothes closet this week and came across the Interim sweater I wore in the days when my husband Walt and I were chaplains for employees and patients at Interim Healthcare in Greenville, SC....

A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford In Indiana, mustaches are illegal if the bearer has a tendency to kiss other humans. Why did Kansas pass a law, “If two trains meet on the same track, neither shall proceed until the other has passed”? Obviously,...

A Lament from Elizabeth Rice Handford I remember my zoology professor at Wheaton, Dr. Russell Mixter, teaching us about God’s marvelous design of the human hand with its “opposing thumb.” Ever since I broke my right thumb in two places in a fall last month, oh, my...

“Goblin Mode”: A New Term for an Old Bad Habit A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford Every year the Oxford Dictionary editors consider what new words ought to be added to their dictionary. This year 300,000 people voted to choose the new word, and...

My Sister Jessie Is with Jesus Elizabeth Rice Handford shares comfort in mourning       Photo by Tom Kilpatrick It’s hard for me to tell you I lost my sister and dear friend this week. I was tempted simply to choose a Scripture about Heaven with you,...

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...