JOYCE CORONEL

“Do you want the American Flag stamps or the Forever stamps?” the lady behind the counter asked. “The Forever stamps are, well, forever. Some people have a hard time understanding that,” she added, wrinkling her brow.

There’s a grotto in Nazareth that marks the spot where the Angel Gabriel told Mary she would be the mother of Jesus. Think of it: Here she is, a young teenager engaged to be married, and she’s just found out she’s entrusted with carrying the Son of God in her womb!

One woman's prayer for the miracle to adopt two children slowly became real — starting the next day when a girl climbed into her husband's lap.

A few weeks ago, on a blazing-hot afternoon, I ventured to a local arts and crafts store. It was a Saturday and the store was crowded with shoppers.

Watching the videos of the hordes of people protesting in Venezuela, braving water cannons and rubber bullets, risking death or imprisonment for speaking out against a repressive government, the rallying cry comes back to me again and again: Freedom isn’t free.

Standing there before the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, we waited to pass through a small, very low entryway known as “the Humble Door.”

It had been a long, hot afternoon with visits to nearly a dozen parishes. By the time I pulled up in front of St. Stephen Byzantine Cathedral in North Phoenix, I was thirsty, tired and a bit discouraged.

There were maybe a dozen or so of us in the Bible study group, seated on comfortable chairs, a candle flickering on the table in the center of the room as we discussed a chapter of Acts.

Hope is a concept we can speak about blithely until everything falls apart. It’s when troubles abound that we find out how much we need the unshakeable hope that’s rooted in Christ and His triumph over sin and death.

Years ago I met a man from the former Soviet Union who had grown up in a family of atheists. He was living with his girlfriend when I first got to know him, but a few weeks later, he had moved out.