Musings

By Sean Dietrich JOHN—My angel story takes place when my wife was dying, and I watched everything go downhill in a matter of months. And every night, I would hear a voice tell me “You can get through this, John.” On the night she died, I heard that voice again. And...

By Pastor Jeff Wade, The Rock of Panama City Beach One of the things I love about September is that it begins a seasonal change. Living in Panama City Beach, we all know there are still many hot days left ahead here on the beach, but like it or not,...

By Sean Dietrich Morning on an American interstate. A caravan of large bucket trucks travels southward. There must be a hundred of them. Maybe more. These are utility workers. Hurricane Ida plowed into Louisiana like a Peterbilt semi yesterday. These trucks are heading to ground zero to join the 25,000 other...

By Sean Dietrich Today at the store I watched a young guy hold the door open for a mother of three. He trotted ahead and threw open the door with a grand flourish as if to say, “After you, mademoiselle.” The woman stopped cold in her steps. She had a baby on...

By Pastor Jeff Wade, The Rock of Panama City Beach As I write this today, it’s the first of August and it’s hot on the beach. It’s been kind of hot these past few days. It’s been the kind of heat that makes you want to stay inside and do...

Pastor Jeff Wade, The Rock of Panama City Beach I think that freedom is objective and most of us have our own definition of what that is, what it’s used for, and what we should do with it. For example, although we live in a free country, a person who...

By Sean Dietrich DESTIN, Fla.—I’m in a traffic jam. Standstill. Cars are backed up to the horizon. I am stuck among them, trapped on Highway 98, suffocating within a cloud of blue exhaust and unspeakable misery. We are moving at 0.002 miles per hour. I look out my window and see...

By Sean Dietrich On my kitchen counter is a pound cake, sitting on a pedestal, beneath a glass dome. Pound cake is the food of summer. It can make or break the entire season. A summer without pound cake is like church without singing. Or Monet without color. Or Andy without...

By Dave Holland It happened one summer day when I was at Dad’s house. He lived deep in the desert. We were roofing the addition to the house he shared with his new wife. The sun blistered us with 105 degrees of pure hell as I slapped down the black...

By Dave Holland “She’s the most beautiful girl in the world with the prettiest voice I’ve ever heard,” mused my seven-year-old boy brain as Mom sat at the piano singing ‘What a Friend We have in Jesus.’” Tragic events, two failed marriages, and alcohol battered Mom’s life, but I never lost...