Orphan

By Tony Robledo

Imagine.

You are a child, small and unnoticed, who wakes every morning to the bustling sounds, chuckles, and shrieks of other orphaned children. It’s the only kind of waking world you’ve ever known. Every morning, the lingering smell of ammonia from the night cleaning crew. Every morning, a nurse wiping up accidents in the hall outside your door. Every morning, alone in a room crowded with other children. You have no parents, no mist of memory, no whisper of a past, no foggy recollections. Only a small, strange mark on your chest. There was no paperwork, just a name tag tucked into a whimpering bundle on the back stoop of an orphanage waiting to be found, to be heard, to be loved. You are a child, small and unnoticed. And today is no different.

Caring for the Soul

By Kyle Tennant               

For the last week or so I’ve been thinking about transitions, about that inexorable movement from A to B, B to C, C to D… It’s been on my mind because I’ve just recently made one of the most important transitions in all of life: I graduated from college.

This transition was a little longer than the norm; though I walked the platform during Commencement exercises, it was not a moment of completion. I still had a three credit hour course hanging over my head, to be completed online. I did so within eight days. The purgatorial feeling of this transition, the never-ending-ness of it, was strange.

The Glory of Grace

By Matt Tully

A few days ago, while driving home from an ice cream date with my wife, Tenth Avenue North’s song “Oh My Dear” began to play on our car stereo.  If you have never heard to the song before, I’d encourage you to listen to it.

The songwriter recalls a difficult time when his future wife, with tear-filled eyes and a trembling voice, confessed past sins to him that had previously been kept hidden.  He sings,