Lewis, Clark, and the Corps of Discovery explored their way towards the Pacific with an overarching belief: to find a river flowing westward was the ticket to success. Imagine their shock when they saw the Rocky Mountains. Instead of navigating waterways, they’d…
Sometimes it’s hard to write about something we know well. We all have pieces of our lives that are so familiar to us, we don’t even know what we know. And then we assume our readers know what we don’t …
To go spiritually deep, and not wide, invites us to come to terms with a cluster of vulnerabilities we all share—three instincts that touch our deepest human longings: control, affection, and security. This orientation is so pervasive in the human …
A perfect new luna, sitting alone in the dark, will make you hold your breath. God made fancier moths but none more ethereal. Lunas are like sea glass or frost on the first two weeks of a garden. They are like Rivendell and powdered sugar. Their wing tails cross at the ends like lace-trimmed sock ankles on…
When rain falls on a hill, the water drains off. How does it drain off? In rivulets. Initially, they are just small rivulets, but each time rain falls, the rivulets cut deeper and deeper. They can become deep chasms.
Now let’s compare these rivulets with thought patterns in our minds. The longer we think along any given line…
“Hannah rose” (1 Samuel 1:9, ESV). What does it mean to get up off the couch when you are still hopeless? What does it mean to wait without being passive?
The Hebrew word … quwm … means “to rise up” or “to stand up.” It can also mean…
Jesus does not say, “Come to me, all you who have learned how to concentrate in prayer, whose minds no longer wander, and I will give you rest.” No, Jesus opens his arms to his needy children and says, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28, NASB). The criteria for coming to Jesus is…
Perhaps one of the greatest reasons we don’t ask God for what we want or need is because we’re afraid that he won’t do it. We fear that he’ll say no, that he won’t answer the way we asked, or that he won’t even answer at all. Unanswered prayer is perhaps one of the most…
On most mornings I turn to the Scriptures as much out of a good, lifelong habit as anything else. On some mornings I approach God’s Word with a more keen sense of purpose. And sometimes I come with a real desire to meet God. But on many occasions—often outside my daily routine of Bible intake—I turn to the Word of God out of…
I just got home to Kodiak last night from visiting all my children. (We left when there were just 1,000 COVID-19 cases in the U.S. The world changed in a single week.) The airports and planes were empty. It was eerie. I felt like a character in the Left Behind series. What? Everyone…