Waiting for Joy

Waiting for Joy

Dear God, I’d like joy, complete joy please. —Me I can’t remember when our editor sent out the Redbud Post topics list for this year…but it must have been near this time last year. I remember skimming the topics and skipping over this month’s: Joy.  This wasn’t...
8 Steps to Rekindle Joy

8 Steps to Rekindle Joy

My alarm blares every morning as I reach to slap the snooze button one more time and tell Alexa to just stop already. (Yes, I set multiple alarms.) I drag myself out of bed after an embarrassing number of snooze slaps and groan as Alexa recites the weather and my...
Letter From the Editor

Letter From the Editor

Dear Reader, It’s ironic that I would say that I’m not very good at being contemplative, seeing as I’m a writer and the senior editor for a meditation app. (Insert eye-roll emoji here.) I don’t mind silence. Where the rest of my family likes to have music in their...
What Is a Contemplative Life?

What Is a Contemplative Life?

The idea of pondering, meditating, and contemplating runs counter-culturally to the five- and ten-minute devotionals making their way around social media and arriving in inboxes daily. There’s nothing inherently wrong with those types of readings or videos, especially...
Solitude and the Contemplative Life

Solitude and the Contemplative Life

In the life of a Christian, we often hear sermons on the spiritual disciplines of the rhythms we need to practice—prayer, worship, Scripture, mission, and community. But the process of contemplation is unique. It requires us to lay down our desperate need for a life...
Prayer Beyond Words

Prayer Beyond Words

I have a good earthly father; one I still call “Daddy” though I am past 40. I grew up thinking of God as my good heavenly father. I’ve never doubted, even when suffering came, that God knew what was best for me.  And yet, I struggled to see myself as his loved child...
Interesting, Strange Details

Interesting, Strange Details

The hurried whispers of leaves rustling in the wind.  The beam of gentle morning sunlight cascading in through the window, shining a spotlight on the dance of otherwise invisible dust particles in the air. The white daisies blooming in the crack of the cement...
The Heart’s Humble Quieting

The Heart’s Humble Quieting

Lord, my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty. I don’t concern myself with matters too great or awesome for me. But I have stilled and quieted myself…   -Psalm 131:1-2 NIV When God wants our attention, he’ll be sure to get it. He wanted mine the other day. I...
Letter From the Editor

Letter From the Editor

There’s a movement among Gen Zers that puts forth the idea that one should only work if one wants to. They insist that the arts would thrive if more artistic people (who work because they have to in order to live) were supported instead by those who actually want to...
Work, Ministry, and Bricolage

Work, Ministry, and Bricolage

After working 25 years in pastoral ministry, I felt a new wind of the Spirit blowing in my life: Not to look for a new ministry assignment in another local church, but to invest more deeply in my writing and speaking beyond the local congregation. For years I’d...
Less Perfect Work

Less Perfect Work

My 4-year-old daughter and I sat together at the kitchen table coloring small washable animal figurines with markers. She had assigned me the cat and requested I decorate it with a rainbow sweater. Whenever she or I finished coloring an animal, she ran up to the...
The Taste of Jujubes is the Sound of Jubilee

The Taste of Jujubes is the Sound of Jubilee

I can’t help but think That the word ju-bi-lee Sounds a lot like ju-ju-be Remember sitting at a tea house in Seoul? We looked for jujube seeds Daechu at the bottom Of my cup like wrinkled treasure  You were uncomfortable legs bent sideways while we sipped through the...

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