Gaining a heart of wisdom
The word "listen" appears in Scripture over fifteen hundred times, and the most frequently voiced complaint in the Bible is that the people don't listen. It may well be the most frequent complaint of present-day mothers, also, and, as a mother of four, I was in love with Adam McHugh's The Listening Life before I… Continue reading The Gift of Listening
Pull your chair a little closer to the table and join us for a study in The Epistle to the Hebrews, a letter to a congregation of struggling Jewish Christians written by an unknown author sometime before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. My class and I will be landing on a few… Continue reading God Has Spoken
Boy #4: What's for breakfast in the morning? Me: Pancakes. Why? Boy #4: I just like knowing what I have to look forward to. Good Night. I was reminded of that conversation and my smile in the darkness of a little boy's bedroom as I read Good Night, Little Love by Laura Neutzling. Her comforting… Continue reading A Safe Place to Say, “Good Night”
Not in the curl of smoke from cozy fire; Not in the fir trees, cloaked in snowy white; Nor chickadees in formal dark attire; Not in the wintry stars' pinpricks of light; Neither in the window candles, spilling Their golden rays across the powdered ground; Nor in the crimson berries' vivid contrast To holly's green… Continue reading Christmas Eve on the Hill
In the every day of my walking-around life, heart and mind collaborate. Putting a note in my patient husband's lunch communicates love, but, in my case, it is likely to be motivated by knowledge: he's having a rough week; he did something terrific that I want to thank him for; the day ahead holds special… Continue reading The Apostles’ Creed for the 21st Century
Words are important. Just ask my grandson. He'll tell you all about "boots," and "socks." "Balls" and "buttons." And he'll point these items out to you in the most unlikely places -- where you would never have noticed them yourself. He is in the process of finding words for all the most important things in… Continue reading Words Matter
What if every little person could grow up knowing that she is lovely because God loves her? What if everything in the sky and under the sky were suddenly revealed as mirrors, reflecting God's huge "I LOVE YOU." What if the Bible could be understood NOT as a book of rules or as a dusty collection… Continue reading Every Story Whispers His Name
My sixteen-year old and I are laboring over chemistry together these days, and his textbook has decreed that we are not to move on to Chapter 5 until he is confident in balancing equations. We're not going anywhere right away, so . . . We have spent this week with a printed worksheet of fifty chemical equations,… Continue reading Hard-wired for Awe
Even in the mid-90’s, no one was still listening to records anymore, but, for me, there is still some Christmas music that must be heard against the crackling of needle on vinyl. Classical guitar, organ and chimes, brass quintets – all instrumental arrangements of ancient carols whose lyrics, inscribed in memory like grooves on the… Continue reading Don’t Be Afraid – Just Believe
Pastor and author Kyle Idleman did an informal survey via social media with just one question. "Finish this sentence: Jesus became real when . . ." The hundreds of responses he received, some general ("I had no one else to turn to.") and some specific ("My husband was killed in a car accident."), could be… Continue reading Filling Empty Things
Living Our Days 