Dare I write of a manger and a virgin giving birth? How do you possibly put pen to paper about such things?
Angels have sung songs about it; shepherds have crowded into a dark and foul shelter to see a newborn in his mother’s arms. The planets shifted in their orbit to send one star closer and brighter than all the rest. Stargazers charted their course and Herod slept fitfully in his bed unaware that a new king had come to town.
Read MoreThe most important thing in our house is a little post-it note stuck to the inside of our front door. When people are coming over, that little post-it note is placed on the outside of the door so that anyone who approaches our home has no need to knock, but simply follow the directions handwritten there to “Come on in!” It is an open welcome, hopefully making all our guests feel like part of the family when they walk through the door.
This is a reminder I need right now; that this house my husband and I have built is not ours alone – it is a home that God has created through us – with the purpose of welcoming others. It is not our house; it is God’s home.
Read MoreThere is a woman in my neighborhood who has homemade signs in her front yard. I don’t know her, but her signs speak volumes to me. Her signs are colorful and hand-lettered. She displays a popular slogan against a political candidate and carefully letters out an acrostic of negative name-calling. When I walk our borrowed dog past her house it makes me sad to see such ugly sentiments permanently on display, marking her space.
This is my own struggle lately. Harsh and judgmental words.
Almost every morning I awake with my own words that I spoke carelessly the day before haunting me.
Read MoreI watched her, gorgeous and tall in her ivory jumpsuit, four-inch heels with ankle-straps, brown hair flowing almost in slow motion. Unbridled joy filled her face as she danced within the circle of teenagers, the music from the wedding DJ lifting the dancers as they clapped and spun in circles, faces and arms lifted high.
Occasionally her husband would face her, pumping arms to the beat, before moving off to dance alongside others.
Read MoreI wake this morning to the sound of gentle rain falling on my roof, and outside my windows. It is a gentle rain.
I wander through the house, cup of coffee in hand, looking out through discs of water clinging to glass, and beyond to the pine-straw dark and rich with moisture, the bamboo bowing down gracefully under its new weight. Rain. I am thankful for its arrival. But after three days, I will be happy for the skies to clear and the sun to shine again.
Read MoreAre you a little overwhelmed with the horrors you are hearing about and reading about these days? I am. It seems every morning there is a new heartbreak, another voice of crazy shouting words of hatred and ugliness into our world. Anger marches down the street to destroy the innocent. Corrupt minds plot deception in their dark rooms. Words rip apart our relationships and diseases attack our fragile bodies. Each morning there is the newest daily dose of bad news.
"What is going on in this world of ours?" I think with dismay.
Read MoreThe invitation.
The chance to respond.
What if it was never given?
What if the question was never asked?
“Do you want to accept Jesus into your heart as your Savior?”
And I said,
palms sweating against the back of the wooden pew in front of me,
knees shaking and legs like jelly,
pushing past my cousins lined up beside me,
“yes”.
Read MoreI am more than what I do. I struggle with this thought here at 2:35 in the morning. I hold Come Matter Here in my hands, my cup of maple ginger tea beside me. I try to concentrate and let Hannah Brencher’s words sink in;
“At some point, you decide to get over your fear. You say it’s time to not be afraid of whatever decisions you have to make or direction you need to take.
I look around the room as I work on managing the fear that has me awake at this ungodly hour.
Read MoreMy head is in the sink, her hands in my hair, water streaming the chemicals down the drain, as I overhear her explain the meaning of her name; ‘Morning dew on orchid petals’. She is finishing a conversation with the woman who just stood up from where I now sit.
“I was the youngest of three daughters and my father named all of us. He wanted to give me the most beautiful name of all because, he said, I was the most beautiful… his favorite. Her accent holds to her Korean origins.
Read MoreWe like to keep God small and manageable. We may visit Him on Sundays from eleven until noon. We may look up into the night sky and exclaim His wonders. We may talk to Him when a friend has had a heart attack or our children are late arriving home. But we like to keep him contained. Not too big. Not too out of control.
We forget that the shepherd David was also outlaw and warrior before becoming king over a divided nation. He saw God larger than life. And he wrote love songs to Him.
Read MoreThe sun was already high in the sky as we took off for our neighborhood walk. My niece, my daughter, her baby in the stroller, and me. The neighborhood is hilly, the streets are winding with no sidewalks, so we walk in the street, at a leisurely pace in our leggings and athletic shoes. Pretending to get exercise. Mainly to talk women-talk and share our lives.
It is on the crest of a dangerous hill, where cars cannot see us because of the steep approach and the sharp descent that we pause near the driveway of a 1960’s once-modern house. Deep down its wooded slope, the shell of the house is undergoing extensive rebuilding after a kitchen fire. Construction rubble, charred framing, a trash dumpster. My daughter reaches down and picks up a small handful of wilting flowers.
Read MoreDo you have family you would contemplate selling off to traveling merchants? Family that you wouldn’t mind too much if they found themselves far, far away in a foreign land with little chance of ever showing up again at Thanksgiving dinner?
Most everyone has heard the story of Joseph.
If you read the story for yourself, you will realize that the children’s version of Joseph as a young man glosses right over his obnoxious personality.
Read MoreThis is the way we grow, I think, as I watch his sturdy little calves push him across the blanket and propel him around the room. It is the room where I watched my son take his first steps, delighting his dad and me, that evening after day-care and work.
Now my grandson explores the peach quilt with bunnies in a basket and three white kittens in a teacup that was his mother’s.
Read Moreshe guards the kitchen window
legs splayed out
black
and crooked
and long
her underbelly to me
through the glass and screen.
it’s an uneasy peace I have
with this writing spider
who has decided to call
my home
her home.
Read More‘Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take’
Did you learn this bedtime prayer as a child? I think I must have. By the time my kids came along I was long gone from church and all its practices and I thought this was the most morbid prayer you could ever teach a child!
Read MoreThis morning as I stare into the greens of the leaves,
edges white and glowing
the sourwood limb draping down
in black shadow outline
and the sun pierces through with its hot light;
I am in worship of my God,
My Creator.
I have the awkward privilege of caring about Michael. It is a strange friendship that always needs explaining. I have become his voice to bankers and detectives, lawyers and prison wardens. It is not something I care to do in my spare time. And I can’t see how it will possibly have a happy ending. But here we go.
It started with a story. It always does, doesn’t it? You know the story; the one of the school shooter, who slipped in the front door of an elementary school with an AK-47 and a backpack full of ammunition and by the grace of God was talked into laying that gun down as helicopters circled overhead and swat teams reloaded their rifles. School shooters never live to tell their tale. Michael did. So someone needed to talk to him. That would be me.
Read MoreMy momma said she didn’t know why I liked my watermelon with salt on it. I thought it was our family thing… “Lord, no. I don’t know where you got that.”
I dig around in my memory and realize whenever watermelon was involved, it came through the backyard balanced on the shoulder of Woodrow Bolding and was promptly placed in the pool to chill (that tells you a little bit about the temperature of that water). Later it was sliced length-wise into wedges and if you wanted, there were knives to cut your slice into little cubes of red juicy goodness and the tin salt shaker.
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