life. faithful.

There was no better place. The city of Bethlehem was crowded, every makeshift inn filled. I'm sure Joseph was beside himself with worry--his young wife in labor, both of them scared, far from Mary's mother who would have been the one to walk her daughter through the birth of her first child. Mary had likely been having contractions for many hours of their journey. Then, as the icing on the cake, the only place available for his young bride was a stable. Can you imagine what it would have been like, trying to make a place in the barn for the birth of a baby? I wonder if Mary and Joseph thought they had gotten something wrong. They hadn't misunderstood Gabriel, had they? Surely a barn was to wrong place for the Son of God to be born. I wonder if they thought they had failed Him that night. Those thoughts couldn't have stayed around for too long, though. They would have soon been replaced with the issue at hand--Joseph kneeling beside his young wife, watching her go throug...

My husband and I were talking to our kids the other day about how important it is for them to learn to stand for their beliefs and live the life God has called them to now, while it is easy. We were talking about how one day in the future, they will most likely be forced to either cave to the world or stand for God, and in that moment the decision will mean a whole lot more than just social standing. Right now, Christians in the United States have been given a reprieve. The election of Trump was honestly not something I expected. I've written for quite a few years now about the decline of our nation, and I know I'm not the first--or only--one to point out the downward spiral of morality that we've been seeing for decades. As a nation founded by men who claimed the protection of God, I truly believe we chose to be held to the standards of the covenants we entered. God keeps His side of His promises--the good and the bad. That means that broken covenants have consequences. Wh...

  Our nation--and our world--is in a very dark place right now. Everywhere you turn, you see chaos, confusion, fear, despair, loss, and hopelessness. People are lost. People are broken. People are living with shame and regret, desperate to hide the parts of themselves they are afraid for other people to see. In their desperation to hide, they are running toward the darkness... " Still some people preferred the darkness over the light because their actions were dark. Some of humankind hated the light. They scampered hurriedly back into the darkness where vices thrive and wickedness flourishes." (John 3:19b & 20) When people are ashamed of their actions, they hide them in the dark. They don't want them exposed to the world--it would be embarrassing, humiliating for people to see all the things better left hidden. They cling to the darkness because they are afraid of what will happen if light shines on the things they are ashamed of. People fear things they don't kn...

 We are not a nation built by bureaucrats. We are not a nation built by politicians. We are not a nation built by the godless. We are not a nation built by the government. We are not a nation built by the uncaring. We are not a nation built by the weak. We are not a nation built by the selfish. We are not a nation built by takers. We are a nation built by those who chose to set out on voyages that carried them across an unknown ocean, to settle a land they had never seen. We are a nation built by those who left everything they had ever known with the hopes of creating a better life. We are a nation built by those who signed the Declaration of Independence with the words, "with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." We are a nation built by those who loaded up their families to take on the dangerous journey "out west" because they were looking for opportunity. We are a n...

 Dear God, I know You were there at the founding of our nation. The founding fathers weren't perfect by any means, but they did their best to consult You at every step. They wanted to please You, to create a nation that would serve as Your light to the world. For generations, that was the case. Our nation sat as a beacon on the hill, a light in the dark, salt to preserve and help heal a broken world. We have been seen by the rest of the world as a Christian nation, and for the majority of the life of our nation, that's what we've tried to be. As a nation, we claimed Your promises for ourselves--we claimed the covenant. Like the founding fathers, we weren't perfect. We made wrong choices. We promoted attitudes and actions that went against Your plan, even when we knew better. We started moving further from Your plan, pushing You aside. We demanded that people should abandon their faith when they entered the public square--insisting that freedom of religion meant freedom ...

 Pastor Allen Jackson recently said, "I think when you accept your Christian identity card for the Kingdom, you forfeit your neutrality with evil." In my writing here, I haven't been very vocal when it comes to politics. A quick count based on the "politics" tag shows 37 of 409 posts, so 9% through the years. Of those, I've been pretty diplomatic in my writing--encouraging you to do the research and exercise your right and responsibility to vote, no matter who you vote for. I've basically remained neutral...but I don't think that is something we can do any longer. If you listen to the loudest voices in our society right now, we as Christians should keep our beliefs out of our politics. We are told to keep quiet, and if we do on occasion try to speak up for biblical truths we are told that our words are hateful and bigoted. As a result, most of us have listened. We've pretty much agreed to sit down and shut up. It's past time for us to stand u...

As schools are starting back, you're on my heart a lot right now. Whether you are walking into a public school or private school, you're headed back to the front lines of a battle you haven't been prepared for. You're prepared to teach--I don't mean that's the battle. You know your material, you have your curriculum, and you've been trained in all the methods of classroom management. For that matter, teachers are required to get more hours of professional development each year than many of the health professionals I know. You know your subject matter. You've spent hours figuring out 3 different ways to understand something so that you can walk into a classroom and teach it...usually 5 different ways. You are more than prepared for the education side of your job. But that's not why you're on my heart. That's not your main battle. The battlefield you walk onto every morning is the one on which the battle for the souls of our children are being ...

 I've been listening to Allen Jackson again, and he said something that stuck in my mind: "One of the reasons we find ourselves in this mess we're in is we've stopped imagining the promises of God were necessary and we started accepting the promises of a government." In another sermon, he pointed out that the only way for darkness to increase is for the light to diminish. We are living in an incredibly dark time right now, and it just continues to get darker. And as much as we would like to blame all those who are against God, this mess isn't their fault. It is ours--the people who claim to be followers of Christ, who have decided that it's okay for us to hide our light under a bushel. I'm not ignoring all the political upheaval happening right now. In fact, I'm probably paying more attention to it than I really should be--the chaos and lies have me distracted more than I would like to admit. I fully believe that we are in for more than most of us ...

There's a verse in 1 Peter that I hadn't really noticed before. It's funny how that keeps happening to me...books and chapters I've read many times, on pages with underlining or notes, but all of a sudden I read a verse that I've somehow missed. This time it was while we were studying at church Sunday morning: "For the time for judgment has come, and it is beginning with the household of God. If it is starting with us, what will happen to those who have rejected God’s good news?" (1 Peter 4:17) I've been listening to Pastor Allen Jackson a lot lately. I highly recommend that you do the same, but I'll warn you first--he's probably going to step on your toes. One thing he has been pointing out a lot lately? We as professed Christians can't blame the decay in our nation on "them". Our nation is in free-fall because we--those who claim to be followers of Jesus--have failed. We have let a nation founded on biblical truth and biblical...

Growing up, I took French all the way through school and on into college. In elementary school it was because it was available--the high school French teacher would visit the elementary classes once a week and do mini lessons, mostly greetings and counting. In high school and college, though, I continued taking French for one very specific reason: it was a language spoken across Africa in many different countries, and I thought one day I would find myself in that mission field, living in a village way off the map, teaching about Jesus. I loved missions. I drank up any story I could find about people who had spent time in missions. I loved when missionaries would visit our church. I loved hearing their stories about when they first realized God was calling them to the mission field, to a life following Him across the world. I just knew that one day I would stand before a church and share the story of how I was called and how I followed God on an amazing adventure to the middle of nowher...

 Just a few days ago, the pope sat down for an interview with 60 Minutes. While I disagree with quite a bit of what he said (we could talk about his definition of "conservative" or his views on immigration into the United States here, but that would make for a long post), there was one question and response that really got to me: Q: "When you look at the world what gives you hope?"  The pope was given the perfect opportunity with this question. It's one he should have jumped on, an opportunity spoken of in scripture: " Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have." (1 Peter 3:15) Norah O'Donnell tossed him a question that he should have hit out of the park! His answer? A: "Everything. You see tragedies, but you also see so many beautiful things. You see heroic mothers, heroic men, men who have hopes and dreams, women who look to the future. That gives me a lot of hope. People...

    It's hard to believe, but my oldest daughter just finished high school. I'm incredibly proud of her accomplishments, but I'm more proud of the young woman she is becoming. I've written a short book for her, but if you have a senior in your life, you might consider this as a gift: