Gaining a heart of wisdom
By the time I was 21, I had been thoroughly inoculated against any threat of marriage by the wistful comments of my married friends: “Oh, you can do that now, but just wait till you get married and have kids…” They painted an image of a small, constricted world with no scented candles (dangerous open… Continue reading 3 Mothering Insights I Learned on the Job, but Wish I Had Known from the Start
My grandchildren are learning to sing hymns, and I love it! There's not much cuter than hearing a two-year-old's rendering of timeless theological truth. And whether or not he understands it today, the words are in his brain just as all those crazy advertising jingles from the seventies will forever be stuck in my own… Continue reading Rest: Growing in Our Understanding of the Words We Think We Know
When you flip all the pages to the back of your Bible, when you take a deep breath and begin to excavate the words of John's Revelation, what exactly are you looking for? Are you hoping for an end times road map? A winning slam dunk in your next theological argument? How about blessing? Have… Continue reading 3 Resources to Help You Search for Blessing in the Book of Revelation
Prayer is hard work, perhaps because it's hard to quantify. I can spend fifteen minutes praying or fifteen minutes cleaning the bathroom. The results of one are far more obvious than the other--at least in the moment. But what about the long term "results?" And exactly what do we mean when we talk about "results"… Continue reading Do You Ever Have the Feeling that Prayer Doesn’t Really Work?
On my morning walk, sunrise casts its glow across dewy hayfields. Breathing deeply, pushing hard on uphill stretches, and swinging my arms purposefully to keep my heart rate up, I am beginning to understand this ritual as both spiritual and physical discipline. Since exercise has been medically proven to slow the advance of Parkinson's disease,… Continue reading The Importance of Rest for Your Body and Your Spirit
We sat in silent disbelief, neither of us knowing what to say. When my husband’s job was eliminated without warning, the news landed like a tidal wave: completely unexpected and comprehensively devastating. Then, as the wave receded, applications, interviews, and the thin hope that accompanies waiting seemed to set the agenda for our family’s unknown… Continue reading How to Persevere in Hope When the Outcome is Uncertain
If I had to affix a title to the front of my beat-up journal, I'd call it Two Quarts of Manna. Its scrawled entries echo Moses's instructions to Aaron about preserving some of God's provision as a memorial for the future. My journals contain the evidence of God's faithfulness. Journal-keeping has become a means of… Continue reading Journal Keeping as a Tactic for Self Awareness and God Awareness
At 7, my oldest grandson is already a contemplative, a fellow who asks a lot of questions and registers an opinion on just about everything. Maybe that's a family trait (for better or for worse), but a recent reading of Psalm 131 has given me good reason to rethink the merits of over-thinking and the… Continue reading What If the Key to Rest Is Ordinary, Down to Earth Faith?
In February, I finished my slow read through the Psalms. One hundred fifty psalms should have taken a mere hundred and fifty days, but I'm sure the math wouldn't come out right if one were to check the dates in my journal. My purpose was to pray my way through the psalms, a goal that… Continue reading Embrace the Subversive Practice of Rest. Celebrate Lent in a World of Hurry and Hustle.
Brushing crumbs off the dining room table, I plunk down my portable pile: Bible, journal, devotional book, another Bible, and they all land with a THUD. The pens go skittering across the table, mirroring my scattered thoughts. Then, pushing my mug of tea out of the danger zone, I settle into reading, my favorite of… Continue reading What Are Spiritual Disciplines and Why Are They So Important?
