About a year ago, a notable shift took place in our church congregation. Week by week, people from the neighborhood work release center (an incarceration facility where inmates are only allowed to leave for work and church) began filtering over, to our great delight. A few became a handful, and before long, they filled several…
Most mornings exercising in my neighborhood includes exchanging greetings with the same handful of people. We all walk the same circle at our own pace. I relish any morning walk, but a snowy winter followed by a rainy spring made this year’s summer mornings even more inviting. Yet something was missing this summer. Last year…
I was caring for some of my young grandchildren when a squabble broke out between siblings. I don’t recall what I suggested to resolve the dispute, but my granddaughter was adamant in her reply: “Grandma, that’s not part of our culture.” Her culture? She was seven years old! Her parents weren’t home for me to…
We are all broken. We know this if we’re even remotely honest about our thoughts and inmost desires of our hearts. We know this by looking at our world. We also know it from the Bible, beginning in the third chapter of the first book and continuing throughout both testaments. While our information-age culture may…
A 3×5 card hangs on my fridge with a three-line to-do list. The first two items are filled in with “Love God” and “Love Others.” The designer left the third line blank, and my daughter recently wrote in “Love Dogs.” My husband and I joke that, at only seven, she’s discovered the key to a…
Grace is an oft-misunderstood topic in the church. I think we’re all growing in our understanding of grace, but many of us grew up in church contexts believing we needed to earn our grace. I was blessed to grow up with a fairly healthy understanding of God’s grace, the gift he freely gave me regardless…