I was sitting at a table with my sister, a younger friend, and four older ladies at the ladies’ Christmas party at my church, and being much more of a listener than a talker, I enjoyed hearing the older ladies swapping accounts of holiday life. There was talk of Thanksgiving and how their meals had … Continue reading Christmas Longing
There is an idea going around in our culture that pursuing what is right for me as an individual is the greatest good. I ought to make decisions based on what I consider to be best for myself. I can do and be anything I want as long as it makes me happy. But if … Continue reading The Lost Virtue of Humility
Being single is not something I would ever have chosen for myself, but it is what the Lord has given me so far. Looking back over the years, I can see how He has used singleness as one of the most instrumental factors in teaching me and building my relationship with Him. Even though I … Continue reading Gratefully Single
Read: Exodus 32 The inciting moment of Israel's decision to make a golden calf to be their god occurs when they saw that Moses delayed to come down from Mount Sinai. It had been forty long days of staying in one place, and the children of Israel couldn't sit still and wait any longer. They … Continue reading Trashing God for Idols: What Happens When We Can’t Wait for God
It was the last day with my class that I had had for the whole year. We were out on the playground, enjoying the nice weather, when one of the little girls became so intent on getting up the ladder to the slide first that her sweet, innocent face contorted into a hideous expression of … Continue reading The Link between Discouragement and Motive
The first glimpse of Christmas comes thousands of years before the Lord Jesus came as a baby to the virgin Mary and her husband Joseph. Adam and Eve whom God had created in His image had just disobeyed God's one command--Do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of the knowledge of good and … Continue reading The Necessity of Christmas
Some of my first memories of emptiness are from the Christmases of my childhood. It was after the last gifts had been opened and the beautiful wrapping lay crumpled and discarded all across the floor that the hollowness would creep across my heart like a very dark shadow. The weeks of festive anticipation came to … Continue reading My Christmas Journey from Emptiness to Joy
I could pine with the evergreens, I could spread my empty arms like branches, aching for the snow to fall, to cover all my weary world in white. I could sway with grief in the warm winds. I could weep with the clouds in the rain— I love a winter far away. But You are … Continue reading Pining
That Christmas comes at the end, in the final breaths of a wasting year, is best. After the muscle-ache of trekking graveside and back, graveside and back; after the haunting loneliness— of beauty-gazing and solo-missions, of incomprehensible party chatter, of home without its people; after the long war— the blitzkrieg of unrelenting lies, and the … Continue reading In the End
Some time ago, I was reading Psalm 29 and became enamored with the sheer magnitude of God’s power. With His voice alone, He “breaks the cedars,” “flashes forth flames of fire,” “shakes the wilderness,” “makes the deer give birth,” and “strips the forest bare.” And according to the Creation account in Genesis, God simply spoke, … Continue reading Thoughts on the Words of God
Gratefully His 