Good morning... Two weeks ago, our Fab 5 friend group circled up with Jennifer DeShelter over lunch. Jennifer is the mother of beloved Audrey, who passed away fifteen months ago after a fifteen year battle with pediatric cancer. Then last week, Audrey's dad, Ben, posted this moving message on Facebook. ****** This week would have marked the beginning [...]
Good morning... The timing was perfect. We met on August 31st, softly celebrating the end before a new beginning. We began by reading a short Scripture. After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an [...]
Good morning... I have always been puzzled by Proverbs 9:10a: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Things we fear we often avoid, we cower beneath, we put up our guard against. To avoid, to cower, to guard against the Lord does not seem wise to me. For the very first time this Proverb made [...]
Good morning... This week, two friends are heading into surgery. They will step through the anxious uncertainty to arrive on the other side ready to heal into wholeness. Right away, God's healing power will be actively at work. Hang on to that thread. This week, two of my dear friends will be going through divorce mediation. The dream [...]
Good morning... This, the first day of August, marks a change of season for many families in our community. This month, summer quietly comes to an end and the school year too soon begins. What a perfect time to look closely at who we are becoming. Becoming who we really are, we consider these three questions today. How [...]
Good morning... A longtime family friend sent me this conversational poem. "I thought you would enjoy it," she said. ****** “Hello God” by John Roedel Me: Hello God. God: Hello… Me: I’m falling apart. Can you put me back together? God: I’d rather not. Me: Why? God: Because you’re not a puzzle. Me: What about all the pieces [...]
Good morning... Sharing how she felt about her recent break up after six years of dating, our daughter began reading aloud a quote she had just posted. "Give it everything you've got, then let go. Show up fully. Take the risk. Have the hard conversation..." her voice trailed off into tears. "You read it," she said. So I [...]
Good morning... Loss. Surgery. Rehab. Divorce. Caretaking. Health challenges. Alzheimers. Addiction. Heartbreak. Many of us are facing many hard things. "I am claiming these words these next days," one friend wrote to our Sunday afternoon class. "If you are betwixt, if you are between, if you are in the midst and the middle and the muck, if you [...]
Good morning... This quote from Sarah Young's Jesus Always mirrors the quote from Richard Foster's book Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home. "The truth of the matter is, we all come to prayer with a tangled mass of motives— altruistic and selfish, merciful and hateful, loving and bitter. Frankly, this side of eternity we will never unravel the [...]
Good morning... "Sue," she wrote this week, "your devotional about wide open spaces made me think of sharing with you the works of John O’Donahue. I learned of him through a good friend who was a Methodist pastor and a missionary to Ghana. I shared with him that the school I was teaching at was a Classical Christian [...]
