Mrs. Hawthorne's Trust

Heartbroken Nathaniel went home to tell his wife he had been fired from his job. Sophia surprised him with an exclamation of joy. "Now, you can write your book!"

"Yes," replied the man, with sagging confidence, "and what shall we live on while I am writing it?"

To his amazement, she opened a drawer and pulled out a substantial amount of money. "Where on earth did you get that?" he exclaimed.

"I have always known you were a man of genius," she told him. "I knew that someday you would write a masterpiece. So every week, out of the money you gave me for housekeeping, I saved a little bit. Here is enough to last us for one whole year."

From her confidence came one of the greatest novels of American literature, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Rich Mullins's Repentance

The late musician Rich Mullins taught me an invaluable lesson about the true meaning of repentance. One rainy day he got into a blistering argument with his road manager, Gay Quisenberry. Angry words ...