The internet is an overwhelming place right now. Yesterday Will and I discussed it as I dropped sweet corn seeds into a newly-tilled patch of earth in our front yard. "It's like walking into a room where 30 people are all screaming at you," Will said. The current coronavirus pandemic has made many people nearly …
Continue reading Participating with God during the COVID-19 pandemic
Is shame the only thing that grows into criticism? Is criticism always based in shame? Some of you asked these questions after I wrote about criticism's mother. No. As I stated in my last post, criticism can be healthy. Even in unhealthy criticism, other causes can be present such as pride and hardness of heart. …
Some say that God's voice always results on us falling on our faces with the force of His glory; that if we doubt it is His voice, we haven't heard Him. And they have a point--the awesome presence of God is capable of melting us in an instance. I have felt that force. But I …
Sometimes my head hurts with the clamor of the world around me. Social media is full of arguing--people are angry and opinionated and sure that everyone else is wrong. Families divide over differences, refusing to see how each generation has unique gifts to offer. Churches debate the Bible and get ugly over what should be …
I woke up around 12:30 this morning with a familiar pain in my knees. With no mother to look after them, I got up and crept out to the kitchen to find the Tylenol. Downing a couple pills with a cup of water, I realized I wouldn't be able to go to sleep until the …
In Joel Osteen's popular book Your Best Life Now, he details how to go about securing the best life possible for yourself, mostly through positive thinking and believing that God will give you everything you want. I thought about this "best life" while struggling through wondering if our family was truly living the life that God …
Sometimes when I have heard a certain part of a Bible verse emphasized my whole life, I fail to notice the rest of the verse until it pops out and surprises me. I felt that jolt this week while reading 1 Corinthians 14. I had stumbled across an online article that deeply disturbed me. The …
Laughter regularly splashes over my life, such as when my three-year-old mischievously puts his clean clothes in the fridge, and when my six-year-old exclaims, "Mama look in the mirror! Your eyebrows are bushy." I find joy in new friendships and new opportunities. I am forever grateful for a good family and a cozy nest to …
When Will and I got married, we bought a dear little three-acre patch of overgrown property in the country. A crumbling-down house stood in one corner of the lot, and most of the rest of the area was covered with trees--a luxury for Kansas. We cleared out a space in the trees and moved in …
When I first read this paragraph from God's Country: Faith, Hope, and the Future of the Rural Church by Brad Roth, my mind leaped to a scenario exactly like Roth described: a community losing its missional bearings and directing its energy into constructing a recreational building. In the church, we so often favor the concrete …
