59 results for tag: Stuart Segall
Longfellow – Stuart Segall
The riders move through the mist and golden light as if on a pilgrimage, not of conquest, but of reckoning. Their cloaked silhouettes, half-claimed by shadow and half-revealed by dawn, become a quiet emblem of the human journey. Each one bears a flag, a story, a wound.
The forest around them, warm with illumination yet heavy with fog, mirrors the paradox of understanding. Clarity and obscurity coexist in every attempt we make to truly see another person. Longfellow’s words slip through the scene like a whispered truth: "If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life enough sorrow and suffering to ...
The Land of Freedom – Stuart Segall
"We are on the move now ... Like an idea whose time has come, not even the marching of mighty armies can halt us. We are moving to the land of freedom ..."- Martin Luther King Jr
As I look around the world we live in, I am asking myself questions of the heart and conscience to try to see it from a higher view, a mountain top view. This is about mercy and justice, not politics of any kind.
Dr. King’s words, “We are on the move now, like an idea whose time has come…” carry a spiritual insistence that feels almost prophetic in 2026. The United States is living through economic strain, global conflict, and a deepening sense of political ...
The Tree That Refused to Quit – Stuart Segall
On a mist-covered hillside stands a tree that should not be alive. Its trunk is split, hollowed, and weather-scarred, the kind of wound that usually marks the end of a story. For years, it must have been dismissed as a lost cause, a remnant of what once stood tall. Anyone passing by could be forgiven for assuming its life was over.
But then something unexpected happened. From the very place where the trunk was torn open, a new evergreen began to rise. Small, improbable, and stubborn, it grew out of the scar itself. Not as a replacement for what was lost, and not as a return to former strength, but as a quiet declaration that life still had ...
Running Head-on Into Grief – Stuart Segall
I ran into an older man I'd known years ago. I saw sorrow in his face from a distance, and he had not yet seen me, so when I saw him coming, I almost hid due to my own pain and depletion, but I didn't. Life hasn’t been gentle with this guy. His marriage fell apart long ago, friendships faded, and outside of a modest relationship with his son, he doesn’t have many people left in his world.
When he saw me, something in him just broke open. He started sobbing, not the quiet kind, but the kind that comes from a heart that’s been carrying too much alone. He told me he had just put down his little dog, the one companion who’d stayed by his ...
An Enemy and a Reality Called Depletion – Stuart Segall
As I age, depletion is one of my “enemies”. As a chaplain to others, I get so exhausted and depleted when I have helped someone on their journey home that I have to renew, refresh, and rededicate myself to the simple, profound, and miraculous words of our Lord. I am as needy and dependent on them as anyone! So, this one is a “for me…a for us” one as much as any other I have written.
When life starts pressing in on us, we can take a moment to settle ourselves in the quiet of God’s presence. That peace we’re longing for isn’t something we have to chase; it’s something we can return to, again and again, ...
When a Man Comes In the Night – Stuart Segall
There are seasons in my life when I’ve come to Jesus the same way Nicodemus did, quietly, cautiously, carrying more questions than answers. Not because I didn’t believe, but because belief alone didn’t settle the ache. I’ve known what it is to move through the dark with a heart that’s curious, conflicted, and still somehow reaching for God.
I’ve spent years trying to make sense of things by effort, by discipline, by holding myself together. But there comes a point when the old frameworks don’t have the hold anymore, when the soul starts whispering for something deeper, something truer, something that can’t be earned or manage...
Compassion and Covenants – Stuart Segall
Imagine a quiet field at dawn. The lion rests beside the ox. Rabbits nestle in the grass. Birds circle overhead, not in fear but in rhythm. The weapons, once symbols of power, lie broken and forgotten, like old stories no longer needed. And in the center of it all, a covenant: not a contract, but a promise. A divine whisper that says, “You are safe now.”
This verse, one of my favorites, is a vision of radical peace, a promise not just of human safety, but of universal reconciliation. It speaks of a time when violence will no longer be the language of survival, and when even the wild and the vulnerable will rest without fear. The lion ...
Time, Tenderness and the Hourglass We All Carry – Stuart Segall
Every life is carried inside a vessel of time, and that vessel is always moving—finite, fragile, and full of meaning. In the painting, this truth is rendered with striking simplicity: an elderly man and a young child stand hand in hand before a radiant sunset, their silhouettes dark against a world alive with molten golds, deep oranges, and the first gathering blues of evening. Though their faces are hidden, their presence speaks volumes.
Within each silhouette glows an hourglass. The elder’s is nearly empty, the sand pooled at the bottom like the weight of years lived—years shaped by love, mistakes, endurance, and the slow accumulation ...
April 2026
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Brad Jersak Why Did Jesus Die? – pg. 2
Greg Albrecht Time & Eternity – pg. 5
Stuart Segall Table for Two – pg. 7
Late For The Movie – Stuart Segall
Life is like arriving late for a movie.
As a boy, going to the movies filled me with pure excitement. I lived for the “coming attractions,” longing for the day each story would finally reach my screen. Because I depended on others for a ride, I arrived late more often than not, slipping into the dark theater already wondering what I had missed and trying to piece it together. And since I usually watched alone, I’d leave with questions about the parts I didn’t quite understand. So when I came across the quote below, it carried me straight back into those memories.
Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was ...
All Times Friend – Stuart Segall
A Friend Loves At All Times.
I am such a work in progress, often sloooow progress, but my mind was so on this proverb.
“A friend loves at all times” (Proverbs 17:17) is not just a statement; it’s a quiet commitment. It speaks of a love that doesn’t flinch when the weather turns, doesn’t vanish when the laughter fades, doesn’t measure its presence by convenience or gain. This kind of friendship is not seasonal or situational. It’s steady. It’s rooted.
To love “at all times” means through the ordinary and the aching. It means showing up when the house is messy, when the words are hard to find, when the heart is heavy or ...
The Seekers – Stuart Segall
“A child on a farm sees a plane fly overhead and dreams of a faraway place. A traveler on the plane sees the farmhouse and dreams of home.” — Carl Joe Burns
I have been the boy on the ground looking and longing upward at the plane. And I have often been looking out the window of the plane. Here are thoughts on longing, perspective, and the way desire bends toward what we don’t have. This is so simple, and yet so real to most people.The child, rooted in the soil and what once was the simplicity of rural life, looks up and sees possibility: the sky, major movement, the speed, or, for others, the escape. The plane is not just metal and ...
The Reality and Beauty of Being Simple – Stuart Segall
The journey of my life has always reminded me, whenever I look in the mirror, that I’m a pretty simple person. Nothing particularly lofty seems to be happening above my eyebrows, and no one has ever accused me of being strong. I look for the arms of Popeye, but I see the arms of his girlfriend, Olive Oyl.
Last night, while praying, I came across a scripture that stopped me. I saw the word simple and thought, “Well… simple, Stuart, that’s me.”
Psalm 116 speaks of a God who is gracious, righteous, and merciful; a God who “preserves the simple”; a God who saves when we are brought low; a God who invites the soul to return to rest ...
Hinds’ Feet by Stuart Segall
Life has never been a straight road for me. It has been a winding climb that has been marked by valleys of loss, stretches of loneliness, and moments where the ground beneath me felt too fragile to hold. Yet, just as often, there have been glimpses of light when I needed it most! There were unexpected tender mercies and the quiet strength to take one more step upward when I thought I couldn’t. My story is not one of ease, but of endurance. In the world of psychology, I would be labeled a “survivor” profile. One of stumbling and rising, of learning to trust the One who steadies my feet when the path at times seemed ...
Speaking Sheepishly – Stuart Segall
Three gentle creatures standing obediently before a barrier that holds no real power offer a quiet parable about perception and divine perspective. The gate is symbolic not of confinement, but of the illusion of confinement.
There are no fences, no walls, no true enclosure. Yet the sheep remain, as if the iron bars were sacred law. God sees an open pasture. We feel the weight of impossibility; God sees the ease of a step to the side. The image invites us to laugh gently at ourselves, not in mockery but in compassion, realizing how often we mistake the appearance of confinement for reality.
To us, our struggles often feel like that gate: ...
Reflections of Him – Stuart Segall
I still, almost daily, serve those who carry a poor or unhealthy self-image. Since we were made in His image, one of the most powerful ways to rediscover and feel that truth is to serve and uplift others, just as the Lion did, and still does. When you bless and esteem others, the next time you see your own reflection, I have a hunch you’ll be surprised by what you see.
Why? Good question. If we were made in His image, then every act of compassion, every moment of grace extended, is a return to that likeness.
There’s something quietly transformative about serving others, especially those burdened by a wounded sense of self. In that daily ...
The Greatest Illness Needs the Greatest Too – Stuart Segall
“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread, but there are many more dying for a little love.” — Mother Teresa
For someone like me, who moves through the world with a reflective spirit and a reverence for presence, this quote feels like a call to ritual: to notice the invisible hunger in others, to offer warmth not as a transaction but as a sacrament. It reminds me that love, simple, attentive, ...
Can You Remember When? – Stuart Segall
There’s something quietly profound in this moment, in this scene that speaks to my heart. It is me, it is a child, absorbed in the earth’s textures, surrounded by blooming life, unaware of the digital tides that shape our world.
I heard someone speaking the other day, that “we are the last generation on earth that knows what life was like before social media”. Now, this is not a lament for technology, but an elegy for unfiltered presence, for the silence that once held us, for wonder stumbled upon in gardens, creeks, and conversations unrecorded. In my counseling, I see this becoming a lost understanding: the art of being, without ...
Wild Geese – Stuart Segall
Editor’s note: photo above is of Trumpeter Swans, not Wild Geese, but … close enough. You “get” the picture!!
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert. repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the ...
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