Prayer for the World–Young Children in the U.S.

Lord, we are blessed to live in a country where the mortality rate for children from birth to five is relatively low. I cannot thank you for that without also feeling  heaviness and lament that the opposite is true in many other countries.
Even without death being a looming possibility for most American children, I still want to ask Your protection [...]

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It is useful,…

…people generally agree, for a wife to wake up before her husband.
And so begins the book, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, the new novel in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series, written by Alexander McCall Smith.
I have a fascination with first lines of books. I even have a game, called Liebrary, based around [...]

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Good Lord, you know my weakness

I struggle with burnout.  My energy is almost never equal to the task. I exist in a chronic state of having to generate energy in order to expend energy.  I know the things that recharge my energy, but the drain has been so severe for so long, that even doing the things that recharge me is like putting one [...]

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Exercising "for" Food…

…rather than ”because of” food.
I enjoy reading the website, Afrigadget. This morning I received an update on the pressure irrigation pump above, made by KickStart.
The pump “uses the stepping motion you see in a work-out gym to move water hundreds of feet to irrigate land.” How amazing is that?!  I read articles like this with a [...]

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Language Study and Worship

I was not very young when I began to really learn my first “second” language. For all of the advantages of learning a language in a country where it is spoken, one of the frustrations was going to church in that language. I hated only being able to understand the word “God” Sunday after Sunday. Because [...]

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Introverted, without books?

Spectatrix, in a post titled The Need to Read, describes reading in a way that resonated with me.
“There is something so comforting to me about diving into a good book; it gives me a distraction from my sometimes wearying thoughts without draining my energy as spending time with others has a tendency to do.
“While reading is always a [...]

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Prayer for the World–U.S. and the Living Word of God

Your words are what sustain me. They bring me joy and are my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, O LORD God Almighty! (Jeremiah 15:16, NLT)

This photo represents the information overload we experience in the United States. Just what is available in my relatively small (by American standards) library is enough to keep me [...]

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A Grief Observed

That’s a book written by C.S. Lewis (You can read an excerpt here). But today it struck me as an incredibly beautiful phrase.
Funny how beauty pops up in the most interesting places and ways. Words communicating beauty are one of my favorite types of beauty.
You don’t have to go to a museum to see them. [...]

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The Wounded Worshiper

I am currently searching for the lyrics of a song by Michael Card. In the process, I came across an interview titled  The Wounded Worshiper.
In my post, My Mentors in Lament, I mentioned Michael Card’s, The Hidden Face of God, which is one of my favorite CDs.  As I read the interview, I was touched by [...]

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Friends driving friends crazy

My experience is that the Word of God is there in a human spiritual director for those who have the patience and humility to wait. God speaks his perfect word to us through human vessels. If we can learn to be humble and patient under spiritual direction through imperfect elders, then we can gain the [...]

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