Monday, May 11, 2026
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Around the table on Mother’s Day
The Lord takes delight in his people.
At each of our places, the boys put a white piece of paper. A set of watercolors was there for two people to share, and brushes, and water. We began to paint the pages. And soon words began to appear on each of our pages …
If you could pick one sound/song that makes you feel happy and safe, what would it be?
Oh, the Lord is good to me.
And so I thank the Lord,
For giving me
The things I need,
The sun and the rain and the appleseed.
Oh, the Lord is good to me.
Machiko grew up in the Japanese countryside, and the silence there was sometimes overwhelming to her. When she visited her grandparents in the city, the sound of city traffic gave her a sense of safety. And the emotion persists whenever she hears heavy traffic.
For Dave the opposite. When I visited Mom and Dad’s house in the country outside Lincoln, Illinois, the sound of silence filled my ears. So unlike the busy sounds of Lincoln Avenue in Urbana, where we lived for decades. My ears led the way into solitude, there outside the tidy brick house, beside the old gas tanks no longer in use, across from two blue Harvestore silos a few hundred feet south into the pasture.
What was your first trip, and how did you get there?
Andi and family made a trip when she was eight to the Outer Banks, and then up the Blue Ridge Parkway to a potter’s studio and the 700 Club, and then Washington DC. We drove a big blue 1980 Ford van, decked out inside with carpeting and stuff.
What is your favorite holiday tradition?
Miles: the pigs in the blanket on Christmas breakfast. Andi: the long stockings full of candy and fruit, and then eventually buckets to hold it all. And really, everyone loved everything about Christmas.
What was something that was really hard for you and now you can do it easily?
Play tennis, play chess, speak English. Read!
If you could build a secret hideout anywhere in the world, where would it be and what would be inside?
By far the best-loved question. Margaret: deep in the Outback. Machiko, a place to sit inside and see everything outside, cozy. Dave, my new bed beside the window, looking out on the outdoors, seeing everything from my secret vantage point. In Alaska, a cabin alone in the woods, filled with all I need to live.
If you had $5 when you were ten years old, where would you go and what would you buy?
Jasper: I’m not ten years old, but I would buy Legos. Aki: buy baseball cards. And Dave too.
What is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning now? What did you do when you were a child?
Dave: Now: think I should be reading the Bible and sometimes doing it. Then: hearing Dad holler for me to come and help him with the milking after he’d been out there alone for an hour and a half.
What is one prayer you would have for these little ones?
Surround her with your angels, Lord, and give her good sleep.
Andi’s creativity and stick-to-it-iveness makes her an easy choice for the one to be in charge of celebrations. Happy Mother’s Day!
I have told you these things so that when their hour comes
You may remember that I told you.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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