Part of the delight of spending time with my oldest grandson is that he takes nothing for granted. Nothing. “Bam, why bubble pop?” “Because you stood on it.” “Why?” Well, good question. Why indeed, and our conversations have routinely run on in this vein of relentless curiosity. Now that he’s old enough to have moved…
God’s timing is perfect and that is certainly true for Sheila Wise Rowe’s book on Healing Racial Trauma. In the midst of a pandemic year, which may well be the worst imaginable year to launch a book, God has allowed our present circumstances to usher in a deep need for the message of Rowe’s book….
Coming into marriage, my husband and I had very different experiences with hospitality. I grew up in a socially “quiet” family. My parents’ friends never stopped by unannounced (or practically ever) and I can only recall one memory of our family hosting a party. We only saw our relatives every few years because they lived…
Katherine James, award-winning novelist, missionary, faithful follower of God, endured a nightmare no parent ever asked for. And she and her family came out of it with more hope than ever before. In A Prayer for Orion: A Son’s Addiction and a Mother’s Love, James poignantly, honestly, heart-wrenchingly, and faithfully recounts the story of her…
My friend and I met in a trendy crepe restaurant to talk about our lives—the struggles and the successes. She sat across from me sipping her cappuccino and said with a note of sadness, “Church events end up being reminders that I’m alone. I leave feeling more lonely than before.” My friend, divorced and a…
When you have a painful problem, what do you do? Some of us ignore it, and stuff it down deep in our gut. Some of us lash out at others, projecting our ills onto them. Some of us become workaholics, thinking if we just work harder and faster, then we can somehow overcome that irksome…
“I want to keep it handy in case I need it,” she said, matter-of-factly. She wasn’t talking about a flashlight. Not a package of tissues. Not a cell phone—they hadn’t been invented in 1978. She was talking about Isaiah 55. “I liked it,” she went on. “So I memorized it.” “Come, all you who are…
I have a complicated relationship with parenting books. As a new mother, I read all the books, analyzed all the angles, second-guessed all the decisions, and the only thing that saved my sanity is that Google had not yet been invented. That tightrope walk persisted for years until I learned to view the books with…
In the month of December, the Christmas story often stands alone, lifted with huge parentheses out of the New Testament—maybe delivered in Linus’s hushed boy soprano, and then tucked away with the durable resin Nativity set and the twinkly white lights until next year. It’s a great story, so it’s easy to see why authors of…