67 results for tag: Stuart Segall

The Winding Path of Life – Stuart Segall

I saw this quote, and it is so me. I am a slow reader — painfully slow in reading or keyboarding. “Some assembly required” usually sends me hurrying to the toilet. I am the poster child for the words “late bloomer.” So, when I saw this, my oh my, did I want to write about it. That understanding speaks to humility and patience. It reminds us that life is a shared classroom, not a competition. Each person is learning their own lessons, shaped by their experiences, timing, and challenges. The boy and the old man in the painting embody that truth: one just beginning to learn, the other still learning even after a lifetime of walking the ...

The Bridge of Compassion – Stuart Segall

Doesn’t this scene hold a quiet truth about the human heart? A man sits on the ground, worn by life, folded into himself as if the world has pressed him inward. Beside him, his dog drinks from a simple metal bowl, unaware of status or circumstance, only aware of thirst and loyalty. Then a hand enters the frame, not to judge, not to question, not to measure worth, but simply to offer bread. It’s a gesture so small it could be missed, yet it carries the entire weight of what St. Francis meant. When someone can look at a creature, a dog, a stranger, anyone who cannot repay them, and still choose kindness, it reveals the architecture of their ...

“I Will Be With You” – Stuart Segall

I had this image from many years ago when fires on both sides in CA. forced the herd into the water where the rancher's dogs guided them, as seen here. My life these days has felt much like being in the waters, looking for the outcome of events surrounding me. Today, in a spiritual sense, I visualize the herd moving through the rising water as if guided by something older than instinct, something placed within them by the One who teaches all creatures how to find their way. The dogs swim ahead, small silhouettes cutting paths through the uncertainty, like the quiet guides in our lives who go before us without fanfare, sensing what we cannot ...

Friendship Under Pressure – Stuart Segall

We talk about friendship easily. We use the word often. We say someone is a friend because we enjoy their company, share a few laughs, or feel a sense of familiarity. But true friendship is not revealed in comfort. It is revealed in endurance. It shows itself when life becomes unbearable, when the air grows heavy, when the ground beneath someone’s feet turns to ashes. Most of us imagine we would stand by those we love in their darkest hour, yet very few have ever been tested in a way that proves it. There is a kind of suffering that strips a person down to nothing, and there is a kind of friendship that refuses to walk away from that place. ...

A Lesson From a Propeller Inspector – Stuart Segall

A Lesson From A Propeller Inspector: I have spent too much of my life sticking my head into moving propellers I should have known better than to approach. I’ve always been drawn to understanding why people think the way they do. There’s something meaningful to me about circling an issue with someone, hearing their reasoning, and validating their experience afterward by letting them know I’m wiser for having listened. Sometimes their insight genuinely changes me, and I walk away enlightened. Other times, I simply understand them better, even if I don’t agree. It’s one of the few things I’ve consistently done well on this long, ...

At Your Lowest? – Stuart Segall

“At your lowest, you learn a lot” Months ago, my wife went in for what was supposed to be a simple day surgery. I was told to drop her off at 3:00 and pick her up at 5:30. Instead, two weeks later, I finally brought her home from the hospital. During those days, I often wondered if she would ever come home at all. I slept by her side most nights, watching, waiting, praying. When she did return, I became her round-the-clock caregiver. Now, more than two months later, she is finally recovering, but during that long stretch, I reached the lowest point I can remember, both physically and mentally. “At your lowest, you learn a lot” ...

Patches of Godlight – Stuart Segall

C. S. Lewis, his line opens like a clearing in the woods. It says that there are moments in life when truth doesn’t arrive through study or theory, but through encounter. A single beam of sunlight falling through trees tells you more about the sun than any astronomical textbook, because it is experienced, not analyzed. It touches your skin, warms your face, and reveals the world in a way that no diagram ever could. Lewis calls these moments “patches of Godlight” because they break into the ordinary with a kind of quiet radiance. They are the unplanned, unearned flashes when something holy brushes against your day. A trip into a ...

The Resume of Life – Stuart Segall

"If you don't use your experience, your past is wasted, and you are betraying yourself." Alan Shepard Sometimes the past becomes a teacher only when we finally stop running from it. These words from Alan Shepard reminded me why our stories matter, and why sharing them might help someone else breathe again. Sometimes the only way forward is to let your past speak, not to shame you, but to guide you. His quote reminded me again that nothing we have walked through is wasted, and maybe what I have lived can help someone else breathe a little easier today. This quote carries a quiet but unmistakable truth. Your past is not something to escape or ...

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

CLICK HERE to read now (PDF Format) 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 ...