Bible

“Somebody please hit me!” These are the words I thought while witnessing my four-year-old daughter sling The Jesus Story Book Bible across the room. Ballet lessons… Really? I’m thinking more like a quarterback on the football field at this point. The heavy book was destined to hit one of the three sitting ducks on the couch, and sure enough, it soon found its target: directly in the face of my six-year-old son. Ouch! Insert screaming, yelling, fury, and a near riot… Exhausted from a long day, I would normally continue to plow through the Bible story. But on this particular night, my husband—being the gentle “shepherd” that he is—tucked our convulsing son into his arms and made sure that his head was not

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” – Marcus Garvey “When life is good and we have no problems, we can almost let ourselves believe we have no need for God. But in my experience, sometimes the richest blessings come through pain and hard things.” – Anne Graham Lotz There’s a high ideal in humanity that we should find purpose in our pain. It’s instinctual to ask why bad things happen to good people and difficult to understand why an all-loving God doesn’t come in and save us and others from horrible life circumstances. Maybe you’re struggling with a fresh wound, a broken heart, or a loss that you can’t make

A momma deer and her delicate fawn pay us a visit. We watch them stroll across our back lawn, munching clover on their way to the safety of the forest. Our voices stay hushed because words travel easily through the open windows and morning air. If she hears us, she’ll run. There is no misunderstanding; quiet spaces are safe places. Instinctively she knows it—instinctively, I do too. There is something holy in our respect of this quiet, of our yielding to this peaceful moment of two beautiful creatures grazing on our lawn. It’s an acknowledgment that life thrives in stillness, that God’s presence is felt when we are quiet, allowing balance to take over where turmoil dwelt. Our stillness holds space, like

Have you ever been curious about starting a journal? And if you have, have you wondered exactly what a journal is and what purpose it can serve in your busy life? A journal has been described as a record of one’s thoughts, beliefs, desires, experiences, and observations, and what they mean to that individual. In and of itself, writing those things down can be both therapeutic and enlightening. If that isn’t quite the encouragement you need, what if I told you that journaling could also be a way to experience God? I know that got your attention. If you are a Christian, you have a built-in longing for that, whether you know it or not. Sometimes, when we don’t recognize that longing,

On the day that America celebrates freedom, I was handcuffed with the diagnosis of Alopecia Areata (a stress-induced autoimmune disorder that causes hair loss). You’d think that finding two bald spots the size of baseballs on my scalp would be troubling enough, but it was actually the list of “mights” streaming from the doctor’s mouth that created my ocean of fear: “You might only have these two spots and nothing more. You might develop more spots. You might lose all of your hair… and your eyebrows, eyelashes, and all of your body hair. This might be for a season of life; it might be forever—or it might come and go throughout your life. Really the only predictable thing about Alopecia is that