pmerrill – Page 11 – 300 words a day

The hard stuff

The Bible has a lot of hard stuff inside – things we may not want to hear or even try to understand. And it’s even harder to think about, since we hear different messages from just about every direction – messages that go against the grain of what God intended for us to live and […]

by Paul Merrill

Writing with excellent pens can make a difference in someone’s life.

I love pens. (Jon loves pencils.) We both love writing by hand. The very best ballpoint pens I have ever found are made by a German company called Schneider. What do quality pens have to do with following Jesus? Good question… Stride is the company that distributes Schneider pens in the USA. Stride employs people […]

by Paul Merrill

Like a kid

Miguel lives more than a day’s drive away. We don’t get to see each other very often. We’re good friends from way back. So we try to catch up every once in a while via Skype. About six months ago, life wasn’t treating him very well. Business was down and it was really discouraging. I said […]

by Paul Merrill

Old gloves

I have this pair of old gloves. My parents gave them to me when I was in high school. They were not top-quality back then, but they still work fine. However, I’ve had to stitch up the seams about a million times – even this week. Our culture functions around the concept of planned obsolescence. […]

by Paul Merrill

Words matter

When I was a kid, this was a popular saying: “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” (It dates back to 1862, but I am not that old.) But words do hurt. I recently heard a talk where the leader asked everyone to remember either words that hurt them or words […]