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Finish Strong Day-By-Day
The start of your life journey doesn’t define you, and it will forever remain behind you. Our “finish” has yet to be written. Finishing strong begins with one good, God-centric next step. Start here: What do you want your “finish” to look like?
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Good Friday- Following Jesus into the Light
At the small, country church of my childhood, 3 crosses would be placed by the roadside shortly before the week of Easter. The crosses would be bare or draped in purple for a time and then early in the morning on Good Friday a black cloth would be placed around the middle cross. Black, to symbolize the light of Jesus being extinguished and the heaviness of the world’s sin. It’s not just a figurative darkness, it was a reality for those in the presence of Jesus at the time of his death, for as Luke records: “It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three,…
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Better to Have Loved & Lost?
Think about a time when you wholeheartedly loved someone and felt adored by them. As you think about that person––spouse, parent, boyfriend or girlfriend, sibling, child––how would you describe that love? What emotions or feelings come to mind? I think of: expectation, joy, excitement, purpose, belonging, peace, contentment, hope. As human beings, we cannot live healthy, abundant, prolonged lives without love. We are created to love. We long for love. We will do crazy things to show our love. But at some point in our lives, we will all lose love. What then? · A husband sits silently, mourning the end of 50 years with his beloved bride. · A…
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Hunting for Goodness
Goodness. It’s this elusive thing we crave. We know what it looks like but can’t fully describe it. We know when we hunger for it but can’t seem to clutch onto it and make it stay. We want to bottle it up, store it tight and save it for a desperate day. But we can’t. Goodness slips into our days and surprises us in the most unexpected ways. Like familiar arms slipping round our waste as we do the dishes. Or sometimes—occasionally—like a flurry of activity at the back door when our kid sneaks home from college for an unexpected weekend. But sometimes we just can’t seem to see it.…
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Shadowed Valleys and Splendid Tables
The dark night closes in around us, like a foggy mist clinging to the soul. Night give ways to another night, and it seems daybreak misses its cue. We step forward but stumble, reach out but cannot find something steady to which we can cling. In such moments all we want is a person, a presence, a guide. David, expressing the longing of his heart and ours, penned a promise for dark seasons. Often read at funerals or resigned to bookmarks, Psalm 23 gives hope to every journeying soul. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with…
