Gaining a heart of wisdom
We did it! In August, my Sunday morning kids finished our study of ten of God's incommunicable attributes -- the characteristics we marvel at but cannot share. (How many can you name? I will list the ten that we studied in the comment section below.) All that majesty has not been wasted on me as… Continue reading Musings – August 2016
A long-ago friend I'll call "Beth" suffered from depression, growing more and more discouraged as she slogged through her days under the weight of it. I asked her one day, "Why don't you try reading a book about depression?" "I've tried," she replied, "but they only make me feel worse!" If only she could have… Continue reading The Way to Hope
“You don’t need to fast,” she said. “Your prayers are enough.” But I did need to fast, because her situation sounded really bleak, and God was talking to my heart about it. Bev was traveling alone in Uganda when she injured her knee hurrying across a busy street. Swollen to nearly twice its size,… Continue reading Let It Burn!
For quite some time now I've had the urge to poll a room full of people with this question: What words come to your mind when you think of God? First impressions are what I'm looking for, and I have a feeling that very few responses would include the word "happy." In The Happiness Dare, Jennifer Dukes… Continue reading The Holy Pursuit of Happiness
"I'm glad you're the one reading this," said the patient husband. He was referring to the tongue-twisting list of names in I Chronicles 5 with all their adjacent vowels and unexpected consonant blends. I could see his point, but, to be honest, I was enjoying the effort of decoding the names and then saying them,… Continue reading Why Read the Lists?
When I pause for a minute to ask my self what I really want in life, my unedited first response is . . . well, embarrassing. I want to be happy, and my shallow definition of a "happy" life looks something like this: a vehicle that never breaks down, children who behave well and experience… Continue reading A Theology of Happiness
Deep into the days of summer, I'm sharing a post that I wrote last year for my church's website. With an early spring snow, this year's garden is behind schedule, but what a treasure it was to discover hearty, red-veined beet leaves during a just-before-dusk weeding session last night . . . Once the dew… Continue reading Abundance and Harvest – Still in the Garden
The wow-factor of my kids' birthday parties? The visibility of certain muscle groups in my arms, legs, and torso? The ease and finesse with which I can entertain a party of twelve, self-publish a book, or create deck furniture from wooden palettes? Are any of these a worthy means of measuring my excellence? Not according… Continue reading Excellence — Who, Me?
July has been a month of gatherings, and nothing is more precious to me than the gift of my patient husband and our family. To celebrate Independence Day we all trekked to our favorite State Park on Lake St. George for a daylong picnic and swim, and then off to the fireworks. We've relished a… Continue reading Musings — July 2016
It must have seemed as if his life was over. At the age of fifteen, swept up in the aftermath of his country's demise, in a series of cruel blows, he was enslaved, deported eight hundred miles -- never to see his homeland again, stripped of his identity, and given a strange and foreign name.… Continue reading Move Heaven. Change Nations.
