Gaining a heart of wisdom
Generations ago, here in Maine, I imagine one way mothers prepared their daughters for life was by teaching them how to make a good chowder. They would have needed to learn how to regulate the heat on a wood-fueled cookstove, and if they wanted to eat in February, they would have needed to learn how… Continue reading The Best Preparation for a Meaningful Christmas
We'll never fully recreate the scene:A young girl,An angelic voice,and an impossible-sounding announcement: "It's time for me to break the silence.I have already set my plan in motion.Here's your part." Divine intervention has a way of...Intervening.Definition: "to come in or between by way of hindrance or modification."1 It's safe to assume that giving birth to… Continue reading How to Make the Most of Those Christmas Interruptions
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
I did something I've never done before at a recent women's conference. In a session on prayer, I asked the women to write their most pressing prayer request on a Post-it Note so they could see it and acknowledge the reality of that desire by pinning it to paper. Then, I offered to join them… Continue reading Keep Praying with Hope for Your Prodigal Child
Over the years, I've had an uneasy relationship with exercise and fitness. Uncoordinated and awkward in high school, I was a varsity-level creator of legitimate reasons to be excused from gym class. In college, to fulfill the mandatory two physical education credits, I took First Aid and Intro to Golf, both guaranteed to keep me… Continue reading Are You Exercising For All The Right Reasons?
Fresh out of college, I worked for a children’s ministry. I planned and orchestrated kids' events, taught a lot of Bible lessons and memory verses, but my first great love was teacher training. I loved taking the teachers into the cultural ideas that were shaping the worldviews of the kids they were teaching. I loved… Continue reading Does Your Prayer Life Point to the Beauty of Christ?
In the little church we call home, my husband and I are team-teaching the adult class, and our goal is an overview of the entire Bible. We're talking outlines, key verses, and major characters, but most of all, we want to consider how each of the sixty-six books fits into the narrative arc of God's… Continue reading Can We Justify Deep Learning In These Troubled Times?
Doubt has a stubborn power over the human heart, and while it's an uncomfortable place to sit, it's a normal part of the human condition. Far better to bring it to the surface than to try to push it down. Like a beach ball in a swimming pool, it will surface anyway. There's a false… Continue reading Dealing with Doubt within a Life of Faith
When distance separates us from a friend's disaster, when there doesn't seem to be a workable solution to an ongoing problem, we promise to pray. That's what friends and families and church communities do for each other. But sometimes we just don't know what to ask God for. Do we pray for relief or repentance?Do… Continue reading How to Pray for Someone When You Don’t Know What to Pray
In his iconic poem "How to Be a Poet," Wendell Berry sums up all of creation in one lovely sentence: There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places." He cuts directly to the chase of our persistently false categories and my own personal tendency to desecrate the sacred by forgetting… Continue reading The Importance of Prayer in a Sacred Life
Living Our Days 