by Carolyn Miller Parr | Nov 1, 2020 | Spiritual Growth
Getting ready to go to work one morning at the court where I was a judge, I was finishing my makeup. When I closed my right eye to put eyeliner on it, my face disappeared from the mirror. I opened my right eye and my face came back. It took a few seconds for the...
by Kim Findlay | Nov 1, 2020 | Spiritual Growth
Sucker-punched. I sat in bed, staring at the cell phone still in my hand, my mind adjusting to what my husband had said. The words I spoke out loud continued to spin in my mind as I tried to make sense of it all. What just happened? I couldn’t believe it. Reality...
by Nicole T. Walters | Nov 1, 2020 | Spiritual Growth
I focused on the end of my fingertip, where it met circuitous lines on the crackled pink paper. I tried not to look ahead and how much of the journey remained but centered my attention on where I was on the path in that moment. The pastor played gentle background...
by Michelle Henrichs | Nov 1, 2020 | Spiritual Growth
A Thanksgiving communion liturgy and communion itself are wonderful examples of how God acts unexpectedly. All the tax collectors and sinners were gathering around Jesus to listen to him. The Pharisees and legal experts were grumbling, saying, “This man welcomes...
by Lucinda Secrest McDowell | Oct 1, 2020 | Spiritual Growth
Chemotherapy had not diminished her humor. Nor her wisdom. As she sat on the stage and regaled us with encouragement to write our stories with passion and purpose, I listened in the back of the auditorium utterly grateful for this human—cancer survivor, God’s servant,...
by Sarah Rennicke-Freymuth | Oct 1, 2020 | Spiritual Growth
God’s goodness. In the depths of our being, do we believe that he really has good in store for our lives? What about those times when life feels anything but? When situations seem to show otherwise, how can we glean the good? This has been my quest: discovering God’s...