Of course, you remember the classic meme where a woman reviews her life by means of a series of footprints on the beach. She wonders why God disappeared at the most difficult moments of her life, but it turns out He carried her then. He was there all the time. Recently a dear friend spoke…
My writing ministry file, labeled 20:24:28, holds almost 400 digital pages right now. The other day, as I finished my blog series on story motifs, I scrolled back to the beginning of the document and discovered some interesting points that I should review more often. In a lot more areas of life, it’s a good…
My mother-in-law (AKA Mrs. Cleanhouse) has always had an obsession with washing windows. Smudges and fingerprints I never would have noticed, she attacked with more than a vengeance—a passion. No wonder her solarium grew lush and verdant. The secret lay in keeping those huge windows clean. Last week I talked of stained clothes, today it’s…
In response to last week’s foray into nostalgia, I trundled out my scrapbooking projects again. The whole kit and caboodle—paper and pictures, scissors and punches, stickers and ribbons. And up to my neck in faded photos and bittersweet reminiscences, I got to scrappin’ with God too. How come, dear Lord, my life isn’t a bit…
Amazing. Heartbreaking. It was the funniest thing, really. At a ladies’ tea, one woman introduced herself by sharing about her spiritual gift. Then, the next fifteen women ALSO announced that they possessed that exact same gift of teaching. You would have thought we were at a Yankee Swap gift exchange. Should I laugh-out-loud or call…
Though I can’t confirm the science behind it, I do believe in a phenomenon termed the Butterfly Effect: The idea that small choices and changes can add up to destiny. Chaos Theory posits that “something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wings can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world.” The tiniest…
Let’s learn to serve. And please, let’s also learn to say, “Thank you for your service.” Many people in my church used to have the notion that ministry is a high-falutin’ position occupied primarily by preachers and missionaries. Forget that, I said. The Biblical concept of ministry is service, sometimes in a spiritual arena, but…
In the sobering face of the recent demonstrations of civil unrest in the country where we’ve lived for 35+ years—a weekend of street fighting and near-war—I’m changing my original introduction to this post to ask, What are we fighting about? What’s a good fight? If not all battles are bad, what makes one good? “I…
What’s your number-one priority—your one big thing? What’s the great goal of your life, and more specific yet, which of today’s priorities aim toward that purpose? A while ago, I gave up the juggling performance. I don’t order my life according to a priority list anymore. There is only one priority, and everything else in…
Yes, I know we evangelicals believe that every born-again believer is a saint, in the positional sense. Through the grace of Jesus Christ, we’ve already been set apart for a holy calling. We’ve arrived. But practically? Rather than any fast-track path, most of us—myself included—still plod along the slow road to sainthood. Back in our…
Amid last week’s furor in Chile over the total eclipse of the sun, I was reminded of those times when we provoke a total eclipse of the gifts God has blessed us with. Some days we’re tempted to hide our lights and obscure the talents we’ve received by grace. In our area near the Elqui…
The daughters of God are destined to a high and holy calling. Discovering who we will be in our Father’s plans for the Kingdom often eludes us. But it shouldn’t and needn’t. I John 3:2 declares, “Now we are the children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be,” but…
