“But when it finally happened to her, the whole thing was far more illuminating than she had thought it would be and went all the way back to her girlhood. Vanity, selfishness, conceit, superficiality, covetousness, ambition—all of them tumbled off the top bookshelf of her mind and were just lying there on the floor, waiting for someone to pick them all up and throw them away.”
Thruppa-da-da
“So he just sat, not paying attention to much of anything. But occasionally a phrase from the prayer book would create a little spiritual thruppa-da-da, much like what happens when you forget to put the lawn mower in the garage for the winter, and try to get it started in the spring. Nothing much there, but occasionally there might be a noise that might indicate that at some point in the indefinite future there might be something there. Every three weeks or so, the Rev. Jane Hutchens, for that was her name, would read something profound that Thomas Cranmer had written in the sixteenth century, Lord knows why anymore, and Chad would shift in his seat. Thruppa-da-da.”
Letters Are Back!
Letter to the Editor: Regarding 1 Corinthians 6 and "Whose Ox is Being sued" The text of 1 Corinthians 6 is straightforward enough in its prohibition of Christians taking one another to ...
Not a Sailing Boat, for Pity’s Sake
“He had been very diligent in his own way, but he was like a guy putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a lighthouse, but one where things got mixed up in the closet, and the picture on the box lid was that of a sailing boat. He was diligent, but was making slow progress.”
Not an Understated Effect, in Other Words
“The talk had been on confession of sin, and the effect of it had been the equivalent of dropping a hand grenade in your average living room goldfish bowl.”
One Like Unto the Other
“Martin had been far more discreet about his amours than Chad had been, and speaking quantitatively, if illegitimate dalliances were corn, his Nebraskan combine had not cut so wide a swath, and this meant that many on the leadership team did not even know that they were getting a minister like unto Chad.”
Quite a Bit of Butterscotch
“This was not really supposed to mean anything in particular, but the elders were not about to press him on it. All they wanted was for smooth words to flow over them (and everybody else in the audience) like molten butterscotch, and it was looking as though they were going to get everything they were paying for, which was quite a bit of butterscotch.”
The Wrong Kind of Together
“He was professional, cut, chiseled. His slacks had a crease in them that could cut weeds if he walked through a field of tall grass, not that he did this very often. His one idiosyncratic feature was that he always looked like he was chewing beef jerky whenever he talked, but most people who even noticed it thought it made him look masculine in that jaw-jutty way that you see in Eddie Bauer catalogs.”
Brim Full
“Radavic couldn’t quite catch what he was saying, but Bradford could see the prosecutor’s neck get bigger. He had never seen a neck so full of righteousness” ().
With a Big Spatula
“The judge told the bailiffs to get a medical spatula crew, scrape Mr. Warner off the floor of his courtroom, and take him somewhere else.”