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Why Wait? – Waiting and “Waiting on God”
WAITING – can be as mundane as waiting for the line to move, for the traffic to untangle, for the light to turn green; or as tension filled as waiting for a phone call, for the pregnancy report, for the diagnosis, for wellness, for a job; or as poignant and anticipatory as waiting for someone to come home, for the war to be over, for God to make the next step clear. Even in this moment the idea of waiting calls up all kinds of memories and images. Who of us has not waited? It is part of the human experience and some of us weather waiting better than…
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STORMS and the PRESENCE of CHRIST
Spring storms in the Hill Country of Texas often come without a lot of notice. The deluge of water with high winds and the potential accompanying tornadoes can produce an amazing amount of damage quickly. These storms can dump so much water in a particular area that almost immediate flooding occurs creating life threatening situations. These storms are not unlike the suddenness of personal storms. Those that are unexpected and certainly were not anticipated; those storms that “dump” so much “water” on you that you are not sure of survival as you gasp and try to catch your breath. Such have been the unexpected personal storms my husband and I…
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Gaza, Ukraine, ISIS, Afghanistan, Libya, Honduras…Five Ways To Dispel Dread
Like me, you hear the stories of a jet blown out of the sky, bodies falling and bloating in the Ukranian sun. No one allowed to gather them and send them home to their grieving families. In Europe. And you sense that some line has been crossed. Christians flee Mosul, Iraq, their community’s home for thousands of years, with only the clothes on their backs (see Gwen's post below). Another line crossed. Maybe also like me, the churn in the world amplifies the churn of bad news in your own family and friends–careers disrupted, separation–news that has you "writing the book" with heartbreaking storylines. Do we let the dread…
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Scrambled Souls and SILENCE – An Accessible Addiction
Eleven years ago this fall I was invited to go on a “silent retreat”, the kind where you literally do not speak during the time period for silence. This particular one was for 36 hours. Some of my friends were incredulous. “How can a group of women be silent for that long, for any amount of time?” One of my relatives emailed me and asked, “Just what does one do on a silent retreat, like – what’s the purpose?” One colleague even ventured to look at me as if to say, “YOU, silent?” Until this first silent retreat I had not experienced the phenomenon of stopping to enter into silence…
