Home is the dearest spot on earth, and it should be the center, but not the boundary, of the affections.

I really wanted to retire and rest and spend more time with my children, my grandchildren and of course with my wife.

I knew he wouldn't die, because his life was like the roots of a tree that went miles into the soil and miles around its trunk and came up in my cousins, in their faces and their voices and their character. I didn't think you could kill a tree that big. Not even God could kill a tree that big.

But a girl should never get over needing her mother.

Prayer is your highest privilege as a parent.

Now is not Boaz, with whose servant girls you have been working, a relative of ours? In fact, tonight he is winnowing barley on the threshing floor.

So he came near and kissed him. When Isaac smelled his clothing, he blessed him and said: “Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field that the LORD has blessed.

Then David asked, “Is there anyone left from the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for the sake of Jonathan?”

No matter how much you want to cut your family out of your heart, you can't. The bond is born when you are born, like an organ in your body. There is no surgery to remove it. When it is diseased, you live with a dull ache telling you that something inside you is not right.

This is the beautiful paradox of the Child Who made His mother; the mother, too, was only a child.

Sisters are created not by blood but by love.

Now a man of the house of Levi married a daughter of Levi,