Good morning... I walked up our stairs to the hometown bedroom of our college freshman, and this shocking image is what I saw. Appalling and endearing? Mess and excess? Raunchy and reckless? Most of you might be more mortified than I as you look at this crazy chaos, but my momma-eyes zero in on wonderful remnants of our [...]
Good morning... Fortunately, God does not come to us in just one life-altering moment, whispering from within, "You are fully known. You are fully loved. You don't need to pretend to be anyone." Instead God comes to us again and again, in refreshing new ways, day after day. The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is [...]
Good morning... "I thoroughly enjoyed last week's post about the power of perspective," one subscriber wrote. "It resonated with me and my family history. My parents were born in the United States but my grandparents were born in Japan. My grandparents immigrated to the United States when they were teenagers looking for a better life. My parents lived in [...]
Good morning... "The following is from C. S. Lewis," wrote a very special friend. "It was written in 1948 after the dawn of the atomic age." ****** Mr. Lewis wrote: In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: [...]
Good morning... "There is a dead weight of accumulation," Anne Morrow Lindbergh admits in Gift From The Sea, "a coating of false values, habits and burdens which blight life. It is this smothering coat that needs constantly to be stripped off, in life as well as in relationships" (58). Dead weight. Accumulation. Coating of falseness - values, habits, [...]
Good morning... "We're adjusting to a new reality," musicians in this video admit, "and we'll have to find solutions in order to support each other. Creative forces help us, let's think outside the box and use innovation to keep our connection and make it work together. Because if we do it together, we will succeed." This energizing endeavor [...]
Good morning... "Hi, Sue," she responds. "You ask what creative gifts give us strength during this season of sequestering." Artist, photographer, and dear, dear friend Corinne Adams shares with me her intriguing art while we are held apart: "I have discovered my own Walden’s pond in the woods next door. The “pond,” an abandoned swimming pool filled with [...]
Good morning... "Oh Sue, do not beat yourself up," she wrote after yesterday's relatable post, My Stupid Decision. "Paul Tripp writes we are never 'grace graduates' and how blessed we are for that never ending hope." We are never "grace graduates." The phrase captures my curiosity. We never graduate from God's School of Grace. Life continually offers us advanced [...]
Good morning... I made a poor choice and paid the price. On the spectrum of stupid decisions, mine was pretty tame, but gratefully it gave me a small taste of embarrassing shame. My mistake set my mind wondering. How do people get out of bed the morning after a devastating affair is exposed, a preventable accident brings permanent [...]
Good morning... "God sent Jesus to make free persons of us," points out spiritual mentor Henri Nouwen. "He has chosen compassion as the way to freedom. That is a great deal more radical than you might at first imagine. It means that God wanted to liberate us, not by removing suffering from us, but by sharing it with [...]
