A few winters ago in Stockholm, Sweden, an eighty-four-year-old woman sat for two months on her balcony before a neighbor discovered she was dead. The woman was found sitting in a chair, dressed in a coat and hat, her forehead leaning against the railing.

The psalmist said, “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty” (Ps. 91:1). Do you have a place of shelter where you seek only His face? Do you spend time in that secret place? Have you given prayer the priority it deserves? And when you pray, do you remember that it is the Lord’s face you seek?

The smell of homemade clam chowder greeted me as I walked through the front door. After kissing the kids and hugging the cook, I settled into my favorite chair, loosened my tie, and kicked off my shoes—just in time to watch the beginning of the game.

Last fall one day at the church, I spotted a visiting gentleman who was shaking hands with a half-dozen folks he’d never met before. Then he looked at me, and with a grin and a twinkle, he whipped out his hand. It was a hand you could strike a match on, toughened by decades of rugged toil.