Good morning... I am not the only one wrestling with this year's unique experience of heading "back to school." Children and teacher, parents and grandparents, caregivers and concerned folk everywhere are all wondering, "How do we do this school year well?" Earlier in the week, our church sent out a specialized prayer. Wherever we wake this Sunday morning, we come [...]
Good morning... Worries well-up naturally from our aching gut through our heavy heart to permeate our mixed-up mind. At their essence, worries are simply an invitation into prayer. Let me show you what I mean. For example, instead of incessantly worrying "How am I ever going to homeschool my kids online again this fall semester?" we pray, "God, [...]
Good morning... As I put my feet in my shoes yesterday, I thoroughly enjoyed a socially distanced walk and talk with a dear, dear friend. She introduced me to an acronym I had never met before, an acronym recently shaping her evening prayer time. G.L.A.D. stands for Grateful. Learning. Accomplish. Delight. She ponders the following questions with God [...]
Good morning... "Everything that could go wrong yesterday did," she emailed me, "and this morning didn't start off any better. I felt totally abandoned by God, even though I know He tells us, 'I will never leave or forsake you.'" She was right, God has promises repeatedly, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." The Lord himself [...]
Good morning... "On one level, shut-ins allow ordinary people to approximate the experience of 'cloistering,'" our blog post said the morning I unexpectedly woke with achy symptoms (see our post A Cold Or COVID?). "But on another level, shut-ins focus the attention of the community on tarrying. Although prayers can be as diverse as those who utter them, [...]
Good morning... "Tarrying, in the African American Church, is a big deal," she emailed me after yesterday's post, Come Rest, which unpacked the meaning of the word tarry. "This word just happens to be in my reading for today. Very interesting description of what tarrying means within this group." She emailed me a snapshot of a single page [...]
Good morning... A longtime friend sent me a moving music video, and I asked if I might share it with our online community. Her permission came with this reply: "Please share! It reminds me of the group of moms who would walk the Lovett School grounds and fervently pray for every inch of that place - every person, [...]
Good morning... The quilt of our common ground is knit together with colorfully diverse patches. One subscriber's initial email, my response, and her return email below were exchanged after this week's post, The Fierce Urgency Of Now, a post which shed light on the death of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta on Friday night. She wrote... As the protestors [...]
Good morning... I feel drawn to share with you the uplifting words from yesterday's daily devotional sent from the Henri Nouwen Society. ****** Solitude is the Way to Hope by Henri Nouwen Intuitively, we know that it is important to spend time in solitude. We even start looking forward to this strange period of uselessness. This desire for [...]
Good morning... It feels like we are living in limbo. That's an interesting word. Limbo is a state of oblivion, an intermediate, transitional, or midway state or place, a place or state of confinement. Nothingness. Nowhere. Left field. Out there. As kids, we used to play the game of limbo, shimmying beneath a bar without touching the ground, a bar that [...]
