Is your landscape starting to look foreign? With head-spinning changes, escalating evil all around, pervasive hardship, and seemingly impossible suffering? I’ve had that kind of week as I write this. Many of us have. Psalms 137 and 138 have been the Lord’s gift to me this week. God’s people, exiled Read more…
Are you walking through a time of “unanswered prayer?” Does it seem like a lifetime of waiting for something? Are you experiencing discouragement and loss? I wrote this last week, not knowing that I would be suddenly walking in “the valley of the shadow of death” a few days later. Read more…
What if this suffering means my faith isn’t strong enough? What if God doesn’t actually love me? The enemy loves to dagger these questions into our thoughts. Just as in the Genesis 3 garden, the tempter wants us to forget the gospel, doubt God’s love for us because pain is Read more…
Are these days making you feel breathless? Like you’re wearily running a marathon? Perhaps you’re sick and literally struggling to take a breath. Perhaps you’re finding yourself holding your breath from constant pain, anxiety, or stress. We are indeed living through a race of endurance right now. But we are Read more…
Are you walking in a new-hard season as the New Year approaches? Is this Christmas song lyric your own context right now? In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter, long Read more…
Snow burst into the gloomy, dark, cloudy day after Thanksgiving. My husband and I agreed, “The first thing we must do today is to fill our home with Christmas lights, in a way we’ve never done before.” We gathered every dusty old light we could find, he replaced bulbs and Read more…
What does the tender image of a baby born in Bethlehem have to do with my suffering? How does the gospel relate to my suffering? I’ve spent years seeking God with these thoughts, especially when suffering continues through Christmas Day. So often I’ve cried, “O come, Lord Jesus” as I Read more…
As God’s people waited for Messiah after Malachi’s prophecies, they heard no new words from God…for about 400 years. They thought God’s blessing would come after they’d restored the temple, but it didn’t come for many generations. Had He abandoned them into darkness? Were their prayers falling on deaf ears? Read more…
Is this a Thanksgiving through tears for you? One of deep loss and pain? Our tears are in the tender care of the One who also wept in His loss. Beloved in Christ, our thanks-giving tears are offerings of trust to the One who understands. In the United States, this Read more…
Every time I visit with our little grandchildren, I consider the “childlike faith” that Jesus describes. It’s a dependence for our very lives, fully trusting in someone else. Little ones don’t consider what’s coming. They simply play, learn, and grow…in the moment. They offer much wonder, curiosity, and love as Read more…
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