Known by Our Love?

I’ve been troubled lately by some posts I’ve seen on social media. I know … this is nothing new. There’s always something we can find on those sites that we don’t like to see or read! But in this case, the entries that trouble me are posted by fellow Christians. We all see things from [...]

Hitting the Sweet Spot

If you play tennis, racquetball, squash, baseball, cricket or golf, you know about the “sweet spot.” It’s the location at which the object being struck (usually a ball) absorbs the maximum amount of the available forward momentum and rebounds away from the racket, bat, or club with a greater velocity than if struck in other [...]

I Have Called You Friends

Do you cringe when you declare “Jesus was fully human”? Many Christians do. We’re afraid that, in saying this, we’re somehow undermining the equally true statement “Jesus is fully God.” But, the truth is, we must recognize the vital role His humanity played in securing our salvation if we want to fully grasp our spiritual [...]

The Joy We Share

In this devotional series on remembering, we’ve discovered how each aspect of our relationship with God teaches us different but equally important truths. Each one enables us to face the future confidently. As His dearly loved children (we discovered in January) we’re under the care of our heavenly Father. He remembers that we are dust [...]

Renewing Our Vows

Vow renewal ceremonies have been around for a while, but only became popular in the 1970s. Now, in the U.S, they make up from 25 to 30% of all wedding ceremonies being booked. Some are elaborate and costly. TV star Rachel Ray and her husband treated their friends and family to a weekend in a [...]

Keeping Love Alive

When Tony and I met, I was still living with my parents, attending university in Wichita, Kansas. He was enrolled at Kansas University in Lawrence – two hundred miles away. We ended up at the same party in Lawrence one weekend and, as sometimes happens, our “chance” meeting developed into something we both wanted to [...]

Love Actually

February is the month we acknowledge and celebrate love. People have written a lot about the wonder of love. Some of the quotations we’ve memorized, we’ve heard them so much: “Love is blind” (Geoffrey Chauncer); “Love conquers all” (Virgil); and “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” (Alfred [...]

Canopies of His Grace

In our western culture of excess, choosing to start small seems strange. We like to launch our work with a big splash, overwhelming everyone with our instant success. Even in our churches, we’ve adopted strategies that mean bigger and bigger buildings, more people on staff, and a congregation so large people have to be divided [...]

At Home

My only sibling just left my house … and I am already lonely for his company. We don’t see each other very often, since we live in different parts of the country. But it’s not just the infrequency of our visits that make them special. In close families like ours (sometimes with close friends as [...]

March Madness

Anyone who follows college basketball looks forward to the annual conference we call March Madness. The best teams from universities across the country compete to see which team will become the nation’s champion.  It’s a dizzying few weeks of high octane basketball. Part of the fun is seeing underdogs take out highly ranked teams and [...]