life. faithful.

  Here in my little corner of the woods, the election yesterday left us facing a lot of uncertainty. It leaves us with a ton of questions about the future, both immediate and long term, and it affects a lot of the people I care about. There are a whole lot of people facing choices they never intended to make. When you're in the middle of uncertainty, the questions seem to hang over your head like storm clouds. Your thoughts race, but they are just circling the same things over and over. It's hard to focus on anything else, despite the fact that the rest of the world with all its problems just keeps right along spinning. But God is still good, and God is still in control. No matter what life throws at you, that doesn't change. So I'm sharing my prayer, hoping that if it is your prayer, too, you may find it helpful. *** God, My mind is racing right now, but my thoughts aren't making any progress. I know you are in control. I can look back through the years and see wit...

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...

 Thomas...oh, Thomas. His life as a follower of Yeshua is so often overshadowed by the title, "Doubting Thomas," due to his insistence on needing to see for himself the proof that his Messiah had risen from the dead. Yet here he is, shown in a very different light. Jesus was telling His friends that they were about to head back to Judea, the place where the people had already tried to kill Him at least twice. Thomas tried to be the voice of reason--"Hey, um... the last time You were there, they tried to stone You to death, remember?" Yet despite the reminder, Jesus was choosing to go back. We remember him for his doubt, but here we have a very clear picture of a different side of Thomas: "Let’s go so we can die with Him." (John 11:16) Too often in the United States, we forget that followers of Christ are not promised a life of ease. In fact, the Jewish Messiah we follow--the One who was despised and rejected by the very people He came to save--promised the...

Lies surround us. That in itself isn't a surprising thing--Satan has used lies since the Garden. Not so long ago, I wrote, " Lies don't have to be silenced. The truth is much stronger than the lies, and even if truth is whispered while lies are shouted from the rooftops the truth will always win out in the end." I'm not surprised by the lies that are being spewed out by so-called journalists who seem to have just become talking heads who read what is handed to them instead of researching and studying and delving into matters deemed newsworthy. I'm not surprised that lies are being fed to our children through the media they consume--movies, books, television shows, and social platforms that feed them a constant diet of "self-affirmation" and "live your truth." What I am surprised by is how many of us are just standing idly by, letting the lies take over. I've been guilty of it myself, way too many times than I want to admit. I've...

I was listening to a message given by Nabeel Qureshi, a man who was raised a devout Muslim and later came to know Jesus not as a distant, promised Messiah in Islam but as the personal, crucified, and resurrected Messiah of Christianity. He was talking about the heart-wrenching moment when he told his parents he had converted to Christianity and watched it break their hearts. He spoke of how he fell to his knees after they left, crying out to God, asking why he hadn't just been allowed to die when he first believed because it would have saved him and his parents so much pain. He said that he then heard a Voice say, "Because this is not about you." Those words struck me. Not because I have a testimony like Nabeel's... but because I don't. It's something I've struggled with for a long time, and something a lot of us who were brought up in the church have struggled with. We hear dramatic testimonies--people who were in dark, dangerous places who experience Go...

 As I was driving down the dirt road this morning on my way to work, the clouds caught my attention. It was definitely one of those times I wish I had a camera with me, but that's probably the only thing I really miss after getting rid of my cell phone two years ago. Since I couldn't get a picture, here's something similar: Image from free stock It was early morning, the sky up high light blue and full of puffy white clouds. Under that, though, was a layer blowing in--still not really storm clouds, they were gray and wispy, swirling and dancing. They were moving quickly but it looked like a lot faster since the clouds above them weren't moving. What really made me stop, though, wasn't the clouds. Instead it was the flock of birds. Not my picture--from free stock   I'm not sure how many there were, but they were riding the drafts with the storm clouds moving in. They rose and fell with the air, barely flapping their wings. I'm sure they knew the storm was com...

 I know I should trust You. I know Your promises are true. I know You are ultimately in control of everything happening in this world. Sometimes, though, it's just so hard. Even though I know it never works out when I do, there's still a part of me that wants to try to control all the things. I look at the world around me and see it spinning out of control in a way I never would have imagined seeing just a few years ago. My nature is to try to reach out and stabilize everything I can, to attempt to keep "me and mine" from being thrown off-kilter. I start thinking that if I can just do enough, plan enough, and prepare enough, I'll be able to hold things in place for the people I love. It's not like I don't know better. I've watched some of my best laid plans go up in smoke. I've tried desperately to cling to things and had them slip through my fingers. I've begged and pleaded for You to just do things the way I expect only to sit back in disbel...

 There is no doubt that the world is going crazy. People seem to have collectively lost their ever-lovin' minds and are running toward a future that is full of broken hearts, shattered dreams, and days of darkness that we can't even imagine. Those who see the direction the world is headed are called bigots and conspiracy nuts and enemies of the state. And honestly? We should take that as a blessing. Jesus was despised by the world. Isaiah wrote,   " Out of emptiness he came, like a tender shoot from rock-hard ground. He didn’t look like anything or anyone of consequence—      he had no physical beauty to attract our attention. So he was despised and forsaken by men,      this man of suffering, grief’s patient friend. As if he was a person to avoid, we looked the other way;      he was despised, forsaken, and we took no notice of him." ~Isaiah 53:2-3 If we are truly His followers the world should despise us, too. Ma...

I've been a bit quiet here lately. I think that's partly because I don't much enjoy being a voice of doom and gloom, and partly because to be quite honest, in the current political climate I'm afraid of the possible consequences of being outspoken. "Political" probably isn't the right word, though. The issues we are facing right now aren't political, but spiritual. And it's for that reason and that reason alone that I have to put aside my fears and pray that God will give me the words I need, just like Jesus promised His disciples when He sent them out into the world. We read from Jude at church on Sunday, and I've been pulled back to it over and over again since then. So much of what Jude wrote then is so fitting for today. He wrote to all those called by God the Father, starting by saying that he wanted to write to them about the amazing salvation they all shared. He doesn't say it, but I think that means he was wanting to focus on the be...

 We've been pretty familiar with storms in our household lately. I don't mean the thunder and lightning, wind and rain types of storms (though here in the Arkansas Ozarks, those are pretty common, too). I mean the types of storms that come from doing this whole "life" thing with a group of little people who are in that hard place of turning into big people while learning the hard lessons of what it means to be family, to grow up, and to just be human. Lately we've had some mornings that have made me want to crawl back in bed and pull the covers up over my head. They haven't been big storms, as far as storms go. They aren't the kind of storms that have us hanging on for dear life, thinking we're about to go under. They are just the ones that seem to last so much longer than you ever thought possible, storms that drag on for so long that you start thinking you're going to give out, that even though the pressure isn't that intense you just can...

 Dear God, We're told in Romans, " We are weak and do not know how to pray, so the Spirit steps in and articulates prayers for us with groaning too profound for words." (8:26) Right now, that's where I am. I think it's where so many of us here in the United States are, because right now our country is anything but "United." The division and hatred is wounding so many hearts and causing so many rifts. The most horrific part of it all, though, is not the fact that our country is divided--that's something that has been coming for a long time. The worst part is how those of us who call ourselves Your children are divided. God, You are holy and just and perfect in Your love. You know we are weak--after all, You created the dust from which You created us. You know our lives here are nothing more than a breath, and You know how much we mess up. Despite it all, You love us. Somehow, for some awesome reason I can't wrap my mind around, You love us. You...

I've been trying to figure out what to write, but I'm at a loss for words. That's not a normal thing for me...words are my strength (the written word, at least). Right now, though, my thoughts and feelings and words are all jumbled up in my brain. It's like a big knot--a lot like when I've got a ball of yarn that's gotten all mixed up and tangled. I start pulling on one thing and start to think that I'm making progress, but then the knot just starts getting tighter. So I move to a new piece and start pulling on it...only to find that it is connected to the knot in another way. Right now, I wish I could tie all my thoughts together. I wish I could come up with a nice, neat way to explain all the chaos that's in the world right now. But to be honest, I just don't understand. I don't understand why people seem to think that violence makes things better. I don't understand how burning down businesses honors a life senselessly taken. I don't u...

We are living in strange times. I never imagined that the world would be in such a state of lockdown, and I honestly don't understand what we're seeing. Things don't make sense, and it's easy to get lost in a state of fear and confusion. We don't know what tomorrow is going to bring, let alone how life is going to look in a month's time. There are so many unknowns that most of the time I don't even know where to start listing them. Fear is a crazy thing. It's one of those feelings that starts a spiral--a little bit leads to more and more, and before you know it your mind is consumed with it. You start to lose sight of all the blessings and promises and get pulled down so far into the dark that you start thinking the light is gone for good. Despite the unknowns in the world around us right now, all of this is known to God. He knows exactly how things are going to turn out, and He hasn't forgotten us or left us to fend for ourselves. After a...