Where Else?

Okay, there may be a few places, but: Where else would our hackles rise as we hurry past a grazing moose? Where else could we hear, from our porch, a wolfpack singing songs of the hunt? Where else could we see bald eagles launch from the branches of a cottonwood? Where else do lengthening days…

Rockin’ and Rollin’ at Hell’s Gate

            On a rainy February day, my family left the civilized interstates of Northern California, and set out for the Far North, via the Alaska-Canada Highway. My son, Tom, had just turned two (months that is), and my sons, Matt and Ben, were 11 and 8. My wife, Carol, and I were in our energetic…

Acre of Iron

A lament for Alaskan elders who still burn wood for heat, stock their freezers with caribou and silver salmon, and never throw anything out — in case a neighbor needs it.       Oh, how things have changed in Alaska——–             Mr. Percival lives in what neighbors call the “junk yard.” His ramshackle workshop squats near…

Tsunami of Grace

In these days of uncertainty, I’ve been soaking in Romans 5:20-21 lately.——— It says: God’s law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were. But as people sinned more and more, God’s wonderful grace became more abundant. So just as sin ruled over all people and brought them to death, now God’s…

Peerless

A 55-year-old memory trotted through my brain a while back… ©Richard Drebert —— I huffed clouds of breath as I pedaled to McFee’s Dairy before school. I was 10 years old, and proud to clear 35-cents-an-hour PLUS a bowl of Malt-O-Meal and crunchy cheese toast — my pay for scrubbing concrete floors in the milking-barn.…

Aligning to Convictions

If we knew King David’s history — adultery, family upheavals, excessive bravado, volatility, bad decisions — would we vote for him if he were running for office? Yet David was a man whose personal odyssey aligned with God’s historic intentions. Many of us would hesitate to vote for this mercurial man, if we failed to…

Grand Season

As we walked, my granddaughter Edie’s song reminded me what really matters. Together we listened to the chorus of wind as it whispered to cottonwoods and birch trees, “Get dressed for winter.” It’s hard to wrestle time from the grasp of obligations — and then give it away. But those memories linger in the heart…

Margie’s Memorial

 © 2020 Richard Drebert. All Rights Reserved.  Starkey could barely see over the snow berms piled on either side of the highway. The forest, costumed in powdered sugar, stretched for uninhabited miles, and the old man pondered how that life had lost its sweetness. Margie was gone. He sipped bitter, cold coffee from a metal Thermos…

Ruby Chronicles

God unexpectedly delivered a furry “person” into our lives that helped fill an uncomfortable gap we felt by sustained social distancing. This is her story — and ours. (More to come).

Cold Contradiction

At subzero, the Knik Arm freezes several feet thick, while beneath its silty crust a violent tide surges and recedes. Tidal pressures split the crust along veins and faults, and irregular icy shards the size of trucks and buses breach the surface. My wife and I stood on the banks of frozen Peters Creek as…

Near Christmas Calamity

The day after Christmas, we discovered a giant spruce tree leaning toward the corner of our house. A little wind and crash! The tree would have gouged a sky light into our bedroom! To make matters more interesting: The spruce inclined within inches of a metal storage shed. The tree couldn’t be felled without flattening…

Lighting the Path

Charles Templeton and Billy Graham had been charismatic, soul-winning evangelists who worked together in the 1940s—before Templeton renounced his faith in Christ and became an atheist. Templeton was in his 80s when he completed his book Farewell to God, and in it he recalls a frank discussion he had with his old friend, Billy: “In…

Our Living Space

Do I take time to think? To take stock of my relationship with God? THIS is a believer’s reality: God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam…

Anyways

“Anyway” means: In spite of everything; without regard to drawbacks or consequences. “Anyway” is the powerful fulcrum that, with proper positioning, leverages our choices. Anyway can help us “lift” the impossible. We position negative and positive “anyways” every day. We eat it anyway, or look at it anyway, or go there anyway. The gauge blinks…

Midnight Gardener

The Midnight Gardener arrives in February to trim back willow and alder branches encroaching on our paths. Mule ears prick toward every sound—her nostrils flare, two craters in a prodigious roman nose. Our gardener leaves a trail of cloven imprints in her lumbering wake, and her long, stiff shanks carry a gaunt frame draped with…