Zacchaeus had heard of Jesus. Jesus was passing through Jericho, Luke tells us in chapter 19 of his gospel, but stopped to sit with and attend to an image bearer, Zacchaeus. Being a chief publican (or tax collector) meant Zacchaeus wasn’t welcomed in many places. He was ignored by the community despite being wealthy. Even…
“Where are you God?” is often the cry of a wounded heart. If we learn to be aware of the presence of God on a continual basis, these doubts are less overwhelming when crisis hits. Recognizing the nearness of God means we see his hand of mercy everywhere. Pondering, wondering, and linking our moments to…
I hadn’t realized just how much I longed for the reawakening of spring until it came. With each deep draw of damp-earth scent into my lungs, something in me came alive again, something I didn’t know had gone dormant. Over these last few weeks, I’ve walked around our yard, hungrily searching for new evidence of…
“Why are you crying? Don’t cry. Shake it off. You’ll feel better tomorrow. Smile. Shouldn’t you be over it by now?” These are a few of the messages I heard surrounding my tears growing up. I heard them on the softball field, in the classroom, from family, from friends. As a Highly Sensitive Person who…
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…
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 slammed into me…
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 music for our small group…
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 sinners and eats with them.” – Luke 15:1-2 (CEB) Thanksgiving is a secular holiday, but…
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, and my friend, Liz Curtis Higgs. “Don’t worry so much about…
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 goodness in the land of the…
One of the many beautiful things about our Bible is its persistent inclusion of women. From Eve on, we understand clearly that our God created us, used us, and continues to use us to tell his story. We matter to him—so much so that Jesus took special pains to minister to women throughout his earthly…
Call me Mara, for the Almighty has made life very bitter for me. (Ruth 1:20, NLT) First, a famine sent her small family into exile in a foreign land. Then her husband died. Then her two sons married unbelieving women. Then her two sons died. Naomi knew something about profound loss. And she wasn’t so…
To me it’s the meanest verse in the whole Bible: Genesis 29:17. “Leah’s eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance.” Some scholars have tried to write it off—to interpret Leah’s weak eyes as something different than a beauty deficiency. But to me it seems God uses the conjunction “but” for a…
GET TO KNOW THE STORY: Mary, the mother of Jesus, was at a wedding feast in the village of Cana in Galilee. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited and were there. When the wine was all gone, Mary said to Jesus, “They don’t have any more wine.” Jesus replied, “Mother, my time hasn’t…