Several years ago, I joined two other women from church for a weekly Bible study. I was no stranger to study as I’d been digging into the Word for years and growing by God’s grace through daily reading and prayer. I’d never really done this with others, though, and I wasn’t sure how it would […]
In January, my Bible study group began reading the book of Joshua. We finished this week. That’s nearly five full months in one book of the Bible. Week after week, we read a portion of the text and answered the same questions about each passage. We discussed faithfulness, obedience, idolatry, worship, war, apostasy, promises, covenants, […]
I well remember the exhaustion of brand-new motherhood. When my first son was born, I didn’t pick up my Bible for months. I was so sure that I’d arrive at the magical land of discipline later when my baby wasn’t so needy. I didn’t realize that keeping the habits of Bible reading and prayer when […]
When I was in my early 20’s I did not have any regular habits of Bible-reading or prayer. None. That hadn’t always been the case, but somewhere around the time I graduated from college, I allowed busyness and other pursuits to rule my time. I had every excuse: I was working a lot, I was newly […]
It doesn’t seem to matter if you know the end is near. You can still be surprised by death. You can feel its weight on your chest when you open your eyes in the morning almost three weeks later and wonder how in the world it happened. Has the sun really risen and set seventeen […]
My friend died on Monday. The end came after two long years of chemotherapy, low platelets, a stem cell transplant, multiple hospitalizations, and something called Graft Versus Host Disease that had whittled her body down to the barest vestige of life. The end was a long goodbye, weeks of preparing for what we hoped would […]
A few Sundays ago, I sat in the church pew, holding the individualized, pre-packaged communion elements we’ve all grown accustomed to over the past year, and listened as one of my pastors fenced the table. Our pastors each do this a little differently, but there’s always a caution and an invitation to the believing as […]
A few days ago, I threw a book in the trash. I love to read fiction—I always have. I’m not much of a TV watcher, but I spend most evenings winding down with a novel after my kids go to bed. As a non-fiction writer, I find that reading fiction helps me improve my own […]
I’m reading a book about a man I’ve never met. But, deep down, I feel like I know him, you know? I keep reading his story and parsing it for meaning. There’s definitely something there. He led a nation after their first real leader died. And this nation he led? Nomadic. No country of their […]
I get stuck sometimes when I talk about Jesus to people who don’t know Him. Well, let me back that up a little and be frank. I get stuck sometimes when I think about talking about Jesus to people who don’t know Him. When I’m standing on the sidewalk in front of my house and […]
