Anna Caruso

It seems that the rearing of children calls for many strong and resilient traits of character, but probably none is so necessary as the patience of love.  Talk to the parents of a confused and defiant teenager.  Many of them could tell you a story that would simultaneously boil your blood and break your heart.  The story has numerous variations, but the plot is essentially the same.  A child is born, and in one of those beautiful mysteries of life, a father and mother fall instantaneously and forever in love with that baby.  Joyfully, they take up the task of […]

Most of us have experienced various kinds of encounters with God.  We have seen Him, for example, in the world of nature.  We have felt His presence under breath-taking beauty of a starlit night.  We have almost read His signature in the lower right corner of a sunset. We have also met Him inside of our own hearts and minds.  We have felt His comforting presence in times of sorrow and His troubling presence in the time of sin.  His image is indelibly stamped on every one of us; and try as we might at times, we can never completely […]

Some time ago, I heard the story of a young woman; I thought it would be appropriate to share it with you today.  Her husband was a cancer victim, so weak that he was almost paralyzed and bedridden.  She had three small school-aged children and one in her arms.  She worked to support her family.  After work she rushed home to cook, wash, scrub and care for her husband and children.  Surprisingly, she had a faint smile on her face all the time.  When asked how she was doing, she said, “It’s God’s will.” There were no tears, nor anger, […]

                  In the Bible, we find this simple statement, “Jesus wept.”  That statement is made in connection with the death of a young man named Lazarus.  People have speculated for centuries as to why Jesus wept.  It seems to me that Jesus wept because other people were weeping.  Their grief became His grief.  Jesus always identifies with the hurts of people.  And those hurts include yours and mine.  We too are involved, whether we realize it or not.  This world of ours is connected by a network of need.                 If we […]

We often make jokes about people who talk to themselves.  But the truth is that this is something we all do, and we do very few things that are more significant.  Every deliberate move we make can be traced back to some conversation that we had with ourselves.  Virtually everything that we do today has its background in something that we said to ourselves yesterday. The problems that each of us face may be different at times from each other, but our approach to solving them is essentially the same.  We talk it over with ourselves.  If we are wise, […]