Author Archives: Sarah Young

Playing in Plum Creek

Years ago, an old farmer was attending our church. He saw my baby, and he asked me how I would have liked to give birth underground in a sod hut in winter. I shook my head. That sort of roughing it isn’t for me. It was hard enough to have a baby in winter withContinue reading “Playing in Plum Creek”

Taking the Pain of the People

Being a witness to suffering is suffering itself.  Holding your child down on a hospital bed so that medical professionals can help them doesn’t make the pain easier.  Helping at the site of a car accident leaves you feeling shaken and helpless.  Hearing the wailing of a bereaved spouse, parent, or child echoes through heartsContinue reading “Taking the Pain of the People”

A Review of Emma C. Fox’s Heart of Stone

In George Saunders’s A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he wrote about the inner workings of the Russian short story. He said, “The part of the mind that reads a story is also the part that reads the world.” Emma C. Fox’s young adult sequel, Heart of Stone, challenges readers to do more than simply read aContinue reading “A Review of Emma C. Fox’s Heart of Stone”

The Force of a Story

Author Wendell Berry transforms the ordinary of everyday into wonders too wide for comprehension.  A humble barber (Jayber Crow) follows Dante’s path through 1950’s Kentucky before discovering that love and heaven dwell together.  A war widow (Hannah Coulter) gives birth after her husband’s death but finds what it means to truly live.  A tobacco farmerContinue reading “The Force of a Story”

Garden Saints

I don’t know what sparked my mischievous mind the first time, but there was only one answer when my grandmother asked if I’d put mud on the head of her garden saint. The damp potting soil fit the curvature of my chubby hand, and it sat delightfully atop the head of the stone saint, armsContinue reading “Garden Saints”

Playground Philosophy

Vacation Bible School is not for the faint of heart, and I am very thankful for the army of people who helped do two in my community last week. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time supervising the playground. It led me to contemplate the deep differences between poetic justice and karma, evenContinue reading “Playground Philosophy”

Jesus is Enough

Or, When Drowning Makes You Thirsty… For the woman at the well, carrying much more of a burden than her water jar.  For the hypocritical Pharisees who didn’t really want answers to their questions. For Mary and Martha, drowning in grief.  For Thomas, doubting the intangible, fearful of what the tangible might mean. For theContinue reading “Jesus is Enough”

A Beautiful Thing

I once spoke at a women’s event where a man, who was helping prepare food, thought it enormously funny that I was both a lady speaker and a Southern Baptist. He joked that he would turn his chair around every time I opened my mouth, as famously happened at the Southern Baptist Convention when AnneContinue reading “A Beautiful Thing”