Emphasis Preaching Journal

In an Appalachian coal town a single parent was asked how she kept her life on an even keel. For the two years since her husband's sudden death, she had taken in laundry, cooked meals at the county jail, baked pies for two restaurants in town, sat for the neighbor's children, and still managed to care for her three sons, all under the age of ten.

"I won't claim it's been that easy," she said to the inquirer, a middle aged woman who had grown to admire the younger one's maturity. "When things get really bad, though, I think about the miracle of the loaves and the fishes."