Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: When You Make a Snap Judgment
I judge. In particular, I judge rich people. I suspect that if I didn’t know you, and you pulled up in front of my house driving a Mercedes SUV, I would make some assumptions about you. I often assume...
View ArticleHear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Nature Itself Mourns
When Jesus enters Jerusalem in triumph, he no longer deflects the Pharisees from his true identity. Prior to this moment, he has responded to them with questions of his own or answers so deft that...
View ArticleHear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: When You Don’t Feel Like Stopping
As I walked past, my heels clicking briskly on the sidewalk, I saw her bent low on her hands and knees, peering under her car at the liquid dripping onto the pavement. She wore gray sweatpants, a...
View ArticleHear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Trusting that the Door Will Open
I remember a conversation I had with my officemate Pam right before I quit my job. I’d been mired in indecision, torn over whether or not I should take the leap from the security of a job I’d held for...
View ArticleHear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: When the Rules are Meant to be Broken
Last Sunday after church, I mentioned to my husband that I needed to stop at Target to pick up a bag of chocolate chips. I wanted to make cookies for a new neighbor who had moved in three houses up...
View ArticleHear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: When You Forget that You Don’t Have to...
“Mommy,” he says, stopping me just as I cross the threshold of his dark bedroom, “is it okay sometimes if I go right to sleep without praying first? Because sometimes I just feel too sleepy to pray...
View Article4 Steps to Living a Spacious Life
When Holley Gerth asked us to put our dream down on paper a few weeks ago at the Jumping Tandem Retreat, I didn’t do it. After all, I figured I already have a dream, this writing/publishing dream. I’m...
View ArticleHear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: When the Holy Spirit Doesn’t Come in...
The Holy Spirit first spoke to me in the middle of a church sermon. The irony is that I didn’t believe in God at the time. You might wonder why I was sitting in a church pew on Sunday morning if I...
View ArticleHear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Want to Know God? Go Straight to the Source
I spend a lot of time reading what other Christians have to say about God and religion. Part of that goes with my job: as a Christian writer, I need to read other Christian writers. I need to keep my...
View ArticleWhen You’re Yearning for a Place in the In-Crowd
It began with a rejection. A guest post I’d submitted to an online community I admire was rejected. This is standard, I realize, for the writing profession. Not every article, not every book, not...
View ArticleAuthentic You: Trusting into Openness {day 15}
A while back I wrote a post called 4 Steps to Living a Spacious Life. It was about an epiphany I’d had after I attended the Jumping Tandem Retreat. When I came home from that exhilarating, inspiring,...
View ArticleHear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Get Your Heart and Mind Put Right
Last week was a difficult one for me spiritually. At a conference I came face-to-face with my greatest temptation – to be known, valued and deemed important by the people I admire – and I succumbed to...
View ArticleWhen You’re Looking for an Endorsement
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been emailing Christian authors to ask if they would consider reading an advance copy of Spiritual Misfit to offer a possible endorsement. [endorsements are those...
View ArticleHow to Open Your Eyes and Really See
As a kid my sister thought the priest was God. It was his ornate robes that misled her – his “uniform” gave him such an aura of authority and power, she assumed he was the Big Man himself. I wasn’t...
View ArticleWhen You Can’t See God
No matter how many times I read the story of the road to Emmaus, I always get hung up on one verse: “God kept them from recognizing him.” (Luke 24:16) It wasn’t that the two travelers simply didn’t...
View ArticleGod Chose YOU
Often when I tell my faith story or give my testimony, I use phrases like, “When I returned to God…” or “When I came back to God…” or even, “When God found me.” That’s the way I’ve understood my...
View ArticleFor When You’re Feeling Abandoned
A couple of months ago I posted a Facebook status update about an especially controversial issue. Within minutes, and throughout the rest of that day, I was lambasted with comments and criticism from...
View ArticleHow to Remember As If
A friend of mine is going through a hard time. Suffice to say, without getting into the details, she’s hit rock-bottom, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. And I have let her down. I...
View ArticleLet’s Grow Something Beautiful…Together
When I was young I was always the kid who wanted to compare test scores with my peers. You know, the annoying one who asks, “So…what’d you get on the math test?” I was competitive, and I wanted to...
View ArticleWhy the Most Important Word in the Bible is With {on Christmas Eve and every...
“What do you think is the most important word in the Bible?” That’s the question author Sara Miles posed to the audience who gathered at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lutheran Center last month....
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