The post about Keeping Children Busy is in the works! I received some fantastic input and I'm excited to share it with you! It will take you a winter evening just to read it all. 🙂 I started the work of compiling everything, but...I have been sick all week. So it might be a few …
On Baptism
On Sunday I heard a refreshing sermon on baptism. Sometimes those basic Christian subjects feel like they get worn out with the telling, but this was not one of those days! The issue of baptism has niggled at me for a long time. When I was at Bible School, I could not understand how baptism could only …
Where there are oxen
While Will was home for his lunch break, I read to him out of T4T (a book written by Steve Smith with Ying Kai). The book uses a verse from Proverbs to show that a lot of mess is normal for vibrant churches. Here's the verse: Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come …
Keeping Children Busy On Winter Evenings
One of my friends asked me, how do you occupy four little children on these long, dark winter evenings? I hardly know myself. I have a few tricks, but not as many as I wish. We live in town, which limits what our kids can do after dark. (Actually, keeping them busy is not a problem. Keeping them …
Blogging 2015
WordPress sent me an email recently notifying me of my top five posts in 2015, rating them by how often they were read, which is dubious, in my opinion. How many views a post gets doesn't really determine if the material was true or worthwhile, does it? But it was interesting to see what resonated …
Eve to Her Daughter
My daughter, I wonder why it seems you are always reaching out for anything you shouldn't touch...yielding to the allurements of scuttling scorpions, slithering serpents, your father's hunting tools glowing in fire- light. And fire. Some incoherent desire prompts your grasping fearful fingers. Lately, when I see your innocent baby hands reaching toward a glowing ember, …
Christmas 2015
Merry Christmas from the Schmucker family! We are so grateful for God's gift of Jesus at Christmas, and the gifts He's given us of family and friends and love all around! All photos taken on a windy day in November 2015 by Egging Photography.
Perspectives
I'm cleaning out a very jumbled dresser in the nursery, and I say to my four-year-old girl, "Desiree, why do you make such a mess in your drawer?" "I like it messy," says Desiree. "Because then I can't find the clothes that I don't like!" I giggle and keep sorting out too-small or too-stained clothes, …
God is Light
Do you ever feel yourself getting sucked into the darkness in our world today, and wondering if God is good? One of my dear friends is just now pulling out of a deep depression, in which he felt mired down in the hopeless groaning of creation. (Rom. 8:22) I feel sympathy for him, because periodically I …
The Fruit of the Spirit
Not long ago, I listened to a sermon series on the fruit of the Spirit, taken from Galatians 5. Midway through the series, I suddenly thought. Now wait a minute. Are we getting this mixed up? Reading the passage over added to my growing suspicion that the teaching we often hear on the fruit of …
arabah rejoice 