Gaining a heart of wisdom
For those of us in the United States, this is a day of thanksgiving. However, gratitude is not circumscribed by geographic boundaries. Nor do we need a calendar’s permission to leave room for gratitude, so . . . LORD, we thank you!We confess that our hearts are often full of ourselves, for we mistake self-importance… Continue reading A Prayer for You on Thanksgiving Day
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love its simplicity and its uncluttered focus: Gather and give thanks! That's it! No cards or gifts, and no expectation of a big program at church. For the believer, Thanksgiving is a wake-up call to a God-conscious mindset, so I view these days leading up to the holiday as… Continue reading Celebrating a Simple and Uncluttered Holiday
I've been keeping a sentence journal since last spring, part spiritual discipline and part occupational therapy. I'm losing my handwriting thanks to Parkinson's disease, and scrawling a coherent sentence in legible script every morning is one way of pushing back. During November, I'll be expanding the practice by listing three things I'm thankful for. Keeping… Continue reading Thanks For The Good Gifts I Never Thought Of Asking For
Food preparation and clean-up run like a perpetual conveyor belt through my kitchen and through my life, so for me, the bigger challenge of hospitality is always logistics. I feel overwhelmed as I gather chairs from the far corners of the house. I forget to dust the top of the piano or spend too much time perseverating… Continue reading Hospitality: The Power of Authentic Connection
The word on the street1 is that, of the twelve tracks on Taylor Swift's newest album, only four will emerge unfiltered on the other side of Spotify's parental controls designed to block explicit content. Having raised my four sons in the prehistoric era of dial-up internet in a remote outpost far from the nearest smoke… Continue reading The Sure Wisdom Found in Unfiltered Gratitude
I had never led a question-and-answer session during any of my past women's events, but I was looking forward to the experience. I wanted to hear the questions that had bubbled to the surface after a weekend of immersing ourselves in the Bible's teaching on hope. I wasn't prepared for the challenging contexts the women… Continue reading What Happens When You Fight For Genuine Joy In Impossible Circumstances?
Every fall, when I plant the garlic, I am overcome with awe. Somehow, those small, pale bulbs not only survive a Maine winter in the ground with nothing but a blanket of earth and dry leaves. They actually flourish and start sending up green shoots in early spring, long before I would dare to plant… Continue reading Make the Choice to Stay in a Thankful Mindset
Are you looking for a good book to read this Christmas? Maybe you like to sink into a cozy story? Or do you favor something substantial to carry you through Advent? I've been doing my homework and have come up with a collection of five titles that should get you started on planning your TBR… Continue reading 5 Rewarding Reads for Your Christmas TBR List
You opened your new eyesin the garden that God Himself had planted.Born a woman, you bypassed childhoodand came into yourself with a rush of speech,a flood of images,and a seamless, three-way companionship: you, Adam, and Elohim. Was Eden’s bird song the first sound in your perfect ears?Or was it the world’s first love ballad, crooned… Continue reading One Forgotten Truth from Our Sister Eve
Whenever I open the pages of my Bible, I read about real people and their encounters with a compassionate God who welcomes the shifty and the shy, the bombastic and the bumbler, the liar, and the lecher. Grace paves over some pretty rocky personal landscapes in both the Old and the New Testaments. Even so,… Continue reading Are You Preparing Your Son To Be God’s Strong Warrior?
Living Our Days 