Someone gave me a composition notebook for my fourteenth birthday and told me to write blessings in it, to number them. I think the goal was 10,000, but I lost count after awhile, and the “thanksgivings” turned into little observations of the world around me: The house is quiet this morning. Elsie learned to roll … Continue reading The Things I’ve Seen
He poked his head into the church foyer and asked if we gave out free Bibles, and we looked at each other. Then we said, “Of course,” and in our hurry, almost handed him someone’s nice leatherbound they’d left on the coat rack. We invited him in out of the dark, and I gave him … Continue reading The Wanderer
The swing set oak is forty years old — taller than our maples, cedars, even its pin oak siblings. Mr. Adams planted it when our neighborhood was still his field and my mom was a kid who ran through it. Planting a tree is always an act of faith, but it’s also a selfless thing … Continue reading By Faith, Plant Sequoias
If I could find the stamina, I’d like to pick up Metaxas’s big biography and sit down with Dietrich Bonhoeffer for the rest of the summer, reading his words, his wisdom, his sermons, his German heritage, his spy work against Hitler, his imprisonment, his love story, his death. History is one of the things I … Continue reading Two Legs on God’s Earth
This article was written for AnchoredPassion.com. I grew up between two brothers and down the street from three more boys, so I learned right away you’d never score a touchdown if you didn’t know how to juke. I was fast, but so were they, and without a quick stop, pump, and twist, I’d never make … Continue reading Play (Or Plod) To Win
“Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while,” said Jesus to his disciples, “for many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat” (Mark 6:31). Wyndham Mountain Vista isn’t a desolate place. We pulled in too late to book our favorite condo overlooking the fog that huddles … Continue reading “Come Away and Rest Awhile”
I wrap a blanket around my cold shoulders every morning and sit to read a book that feels just as warm-- Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers. Dane Ortlund writes: “What elicits tenderness from Jesus is not the severity of the sin but whether the sinner comes to him.”[i] If … Continue reading Good but Unsafe
There’s a lot I could do, write, remember, cry over, and give thanks for at the end of 2020. I keep shadowboxing the scary idea of summing it all up— wrestling the last twelve months into a corner and chalking them up as “good,” “terrible,” or “sanctifying” (all the above). But summaries tend to accentuate … Continue reading A Year in Books
Read: 1 Corinthians 13:4 & Galatians 4:4-5 I read Wendell Berry novels to learn that life is long and work is slow. Hannah Coulter is Nathan and Hannah’s long, slow story of love. But what is a “love story,” really? Is it when people "fall" and didn't see it coming? Is it what Hallmark says … Continue reading Love as the Work of Years
December 13 Read: Luke 2:8-11 & John 16:20-22 I was still deciding what I could give up for Lent last winter when God chose for me— for all of us. He took my sister’s unborn baby after just ten days inside her. Leanna miscarried on Ash Wednesday, but we’ve gone without that little one for … Continue reading The Shadows Before Sunrise
