One Overlooked Way to Improve Your Desire for Creation Care
Naming helps us initiate a connection. God began there with Adam, so we too can learn names as a way of reconnecting with God’s good creation.
From Certainty to Uncertainty
From age seven on, I grew up in a Christian fundamentalist setting. Reflecting on this from my adult perspective, much of the messaging that I absorbed centered around matters of sexuality and reproduction: No sex before marriage. Women who have babies out of wedlock deserve consequences and condemnation. Abortion equals damnation. The rules seemed certain…
Sacred Setting: How Place Shaped Me
When I was growing up, I was convinced God had given me the wrong skin. Surely he had meant to make me more…American, like my friends. Less yellow, more white. Rounder eyes, less slanty. It would take years and a place thousands of miles from home to help me see myself through new eyes. No…
The Myth of a Successful Prayer Life—What Does It Mean to Get Prayer Right?
The spring of 2019 showed up bleak and gray, but we barely noticed. The weight of waiting occupied every minute, with question marks bristling where daffodils had been delayed. An army of friends prayed for our family when we could not, waging war on our behalf, inquiring with kindness about obstacles that made no sense…
Letter From the Editor
Dear Readers, A little more than a year ago, when my youngest son was looking for an apartment to rent in Vermont, I closed my computer and prayed a desperate prayer: “Lord, I’ve done all I know how to do. I need you to show us the place you have for him.” Our son was…
Prayer Meeting
I sit at the round, steel table in the church café. I don’t much like the décor. It’s trying too hard to be modern, to be relevant, like so many sacred places do these days. You notice me, unlike most passers-by. At fifty you begin to fade, you’ll find, become invisible. You are curious, a…
The Mystery of Prayer
I believe in prayer. I say often that “the work of God is done on our knees—then we go find out what happened.” Yet to me prayer remains such a mystery. How in the world could the most high God who created it all invite me to talk with him, to make requests, to ask…
Disappointment and Prayer
What unrelenting, surprising, or confusing situation in your life has caused you to question God? Perhaps your body is betraying you, and you and your doctors have done everything possible. You’ve prayed, cried, confessed, and bargained. Still, you suffer. Is God even listening? you wonder. Maybe you believe God has called you to minister, but…
A Legacy of Prayer
I’m the daughter of a praying mother, a woman who always keeps a prayer list by her bedside. As a child, I often snuck into her room to see what she was praying for me. “Attitude change? Patience?” I would read, bristling, not at the suggestion that I had a bad attitude, but that she…
A Culture of Prayer Can Change the World
I’ve become that person who gently encourages others to overcome their fear of praying out loud.
Importance of Prayer When You’re Hearing No
As Christians, we know we’re to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:16), to pray for the Lord’s people (Ephesians 6:18), and to humble ourselves and pray to God (2 Chronicles 7:14). Of course, while it’s natural for prayers to ebb and flow over time as we go through different seasons of our life, there is…
Letter From the Editor
Dear Reader, Recently I listened to an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, The Next Right Thing, with Emily P. Freeman. Emily interviewed Amanda Held Opelt, the sister of well known speaker Rachel Held Evans. Amanda lost her sister suddenly in May of 2019. On the podcast, Amanda talks about her book A Hole…
Finding My Prayer Voice Through Lament
Each week, they would cram into a tight circle in my small apartment for Bible study. I’d been given the privilege of mentoring them, these young people who carried the weight of more trauma than their young bones should be asked to bear. As we gathered, we’d discuss Scripture, share stories and dreams, process life,…
Tethered to Hope
If I close my eyes and think back to the scene in her bedroom, I can still hear her gasping for breath. I can still see my mom’s eyes close as she falls asleep mid-conversation. I wince when I think about her bedsores, and I can’t help but well up with tears when I picture…