Good morning... I love the contemporary worship service at Northside Church. I am welcomed each week by singers and musicians gifted in ways I am not. Music can disintegrate the thin veil between earth and heaven. Yesterday morning, my imperfect voice joined in praise with the live band, merging my heart and with the heart of our God. Enjoy [...]
Good morning... Performing a routine check on our home's heating units before winter, the technician found cracked heat exchangers in two of our systems. He took pictures of the cracks. He said, "Unless you replace these two parts, dangerous carbon monoxide may be released in the air when you turn on your heaters." After calling my husband to discuss [...]
Good morning... 900. That's right. A whoppin' 900 points were scored on the single SAT test I took in 1980. Nowadays, a handful of brainiacs score the perfect 1600, many kids score just below perfection, and every high school student I know gets a tutor and takes the test two, three, four or more times to boost their chances [...]
Good morning... "Transitions are messy. Transitions are chaotic. Transitions are where our hard-won order breaks down into disorder," admits Margaret Silf in The Other Side of Chaos: Breaking Through When Life is Breaking Down (p. 43). The Bible tells us that all of creation was born from chaotic disorder. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the [...]
Good morning... Meeting through my blog, we regularly write encouragement back and forth, but our eyes had never met until this week. After sharing stories over a meal, he gave me handwritten copies of some of his favorite quotes. I said, "You may see these words returning to your heart some early hour." Sure enough, here is wisdom he [...]
Good morning... "Shame hates it when we reach out and tell our story. It hates having words wrapped around it - it can't survive being shared. Shame loves secrecy. The most dangerous thing to do after a shaming experience is hide or bury our story. When we bury our story, the shame metastasizes" (p. 9. in Brene Browne's The [...]
Good morning... God sometimes teaches truth in funky ways. In yesterday's blog message, I sent a captivating picture, a picture received by some subscribers and not by others. Then last night before heading to bed, I put the title "An unseen picture," as a place holder in my computer program and it accidentally sent while I was asleep. Now [...]
Good morning... A powerful picture was sent to me by a woman whose heart has been shattered more than once, a soulful friend with whom I have shared many a meaningful conversation. In the picture, I am captivated by a stately lion with tender, almost tearful eyes, a lion overlooking the words, "How we walk with the broken speaks [...]
Good morning... I just stumbled upon a fascinating Bible story, expressed vividly in the Message translation. On the day you were born your umbilical cord was not cut, you weren’t bathed and cleaned up, you weren’t rubbed with salt, you weren’t wrapped in a baby blanket. No one cared a fig for you. No one did one thing to [...]
Good morning… Letting down our guard and sharing our genuine self is a lot easier said than done. In truth, our guard is an important part of us, serving us well until it doesn't anymore. We are handmade uniquely in our Creator's image (Genesis 1:27) and filled with the living breath of God (Genesis 2:7). Freshly formed from our [...]
