Near the dawn of the twentieth century, Mary McDowell lived worlds apart from the brutal stockyards of Chicago.

My three-year old son, Xavier, squeezed my hand as we entered the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. Pointing to a life-size sculpture of a humpback whale suspended from the ceiling, he said, “Enormous!”

The Brisbane City Hall in Australia was a dazzling 1920s project. White stairs boasted marble from the same quarry Michelangelo used for his David sculpture.

Though he didn’t normally carry money with him, Patrick sensed God was leading him to tuck a five-dollar bill in his pocket before leaving home.

As a blizzard bore down on my state in the western United States, my widowed mother agreed to stay with my family to “ride out” the storm. After the blizzard, however, she never returned to her house.

One wouldn’t normally think of butterflies as being loud creatures: after all, the flapping of a single Monarch butterfly’s wings is practically inaudible.

The topic was Leviticus, and I had a confession to make. “I skipped a lot of the reading,” I told my Bible study group. “I’m not reading about skin diseases again.”