Gaining a heart of wisdom
I huffed a sigh and stood up in response to the timer on my wrist. Time to take another dose of medication. It happens five times every day, and always (it seems) when I'm occupied with something. "Take the meds," I grouched under my breath. "That's ALL I do now."But God heard me, and his… Continue reading When You Need Help to Identify the REAL Enemy
The moments when I have failed to act with grace are the moments when the Gospel is the very best news to me. When I find myself needing forgiveness, a do-over, or a fresh start to the day, I come face to face with the reality that I am not equipped to construct a moral… Continue reading You Need Plenty Of Grace To Live A Holy Life
I keep waiting for time to slow down. With uncharacteristic optimism, I tell myself, "After the garden is done producing, after this speaking engagement is behind me, after this next thing, I'll stop and take a look around, take a breath, take a break. What I'm forgetting, of course, is that while I'm "waiting," my… Continue reading Pay Attention to the Choices and Habits of Your Life
Whether it’s a movie, a novel, a picture book, or a tale spun around the dining room table, people are drawn to stories. In I Corinthians 10, the Apostle Paul looks back on one of the most well-known stories of his people, their wilderness wandering. He uses the important images there to illustrate sobering truths for… Continue reading The Challenge and the Inspiration of a Good Story
My conference series on The Lord's Prayer is one of my favorites, and I especially love hearing from the women who, after three forty-five-minute sessions of content, tell me they had been skeptical that we could spend that long talking about five verses in Matthew 6. Session two is the hardest—for me as the teacher… Continue reading A Journey to Healing Through the Power of Genuine Forgiveness
At some point, Christians began using the word deconstruction to describe what might once have been called a crisis of faith or even, in some circles, backsliding. The dismantling of a person's understanding of God and what it means to believe is a complex process, and the deconstructing Christian may end up leaving the faith altogether. No… Continue reading To Deconstruct? Or to Reconstruct with Hope in a Big God?
Managing a chronic disease has surprising similarities to having a part-time job. There are things to be remembered and extra duties to perform. It's part of one's identity, but not in the same way a career would be. Too, there's a new vocabulary to be mastered, and, along with this, a very specific need for… Continue reading Can We Really Bridge the Distance that Lies Between Us?
This morning, I watched three crows swaggering like pirates in our backyard. Rain had watered the grass to a brilliant emerald, and summer leaves hung their weight low on the oaks. The same window in another season offers a different beauty, and my only responsibility is to look out the window, take myself by the… Continue reading You Must See With Both The Eyes And The Imagination
By design, the human brain gropes for connections. We link cause and effect, motive and action, origin and result. Sometimes, though, the connection seems to be missing. Some events cause us to look around, to search for meaning, and to realize that we are seeing very little evidence of rational thought or even of God's… Continue reading Are You Perplexed by What’s Happening in Your World?
Recently, someone pointed out to me how frequently C.S. Lewis dipped into his childhood experiences, impressions, and memories in all his writing. I loved his spiritual autobiography (Surprised by Joy) because it gives the whole story in one place, but I realized it's true—one reason Lewis's writing is so plangent and impactful is that we… Continue reading How to Know When It’s Time to Go Home
