• Engage

    How to Maintain Hope Amidst Closed Doors

    When you’re navigating a season of closed doors, it’s hard to have hope. Every door of opportunity that closes feels like yet another letdown. If you’re really honest, every closed door feels like a letdown from the Lord. The year 2016 was such a season for us. My husband and I were pursuing the possibility of having children, both biological and adoptive. Given our marrying later in life, we had our ages working against us. But we tried to have a biological child anyway. What happened, as a result, was a difficult season of infertility and loss. The door of having a biological child had closed. Concurrently, we pursued domestic…

  • God is bigger than your fears-you can trust him
    Engage

    God is BIGGER than your fears

    You know that feeling. The pit in your stomach, pounding of your heart, and rush of your thoughts as you go from just the possibility of a job loss to being homeless on the streets all in a matter of seconds. Gripped by fear, although an imagined one. As I heard Jill Briscoe once say, “Women are a fear-driven, performance-oriented species.” Just catching the news during a day reminds me just how much fear is an ever-present emotion with me and with most women—real fears as well as imagined ones. Is it realistic to think we can live without fear? No! God knows this about us. When we are afraid,…

  • Engage

    The One Who Hears and Sees

    It’s not often that I feel seen—understood, valued, heard—as a medical mama. But two conversations occurred recently that gave me pause. The first was with my son’s pediatrician. While I reviewed the updates to the long list of supplements and over-the-counter medicines that help keep my son’s body functioning in a normal way—rattling off names and dosages from memory— the pediatrician paused our conversation and said, “It’s a good thing you’re his mom. This is a lot.” She acknowledged my burden and my giftings in it. I felt understood. I felt valued. I felt heard. I felt seen. The second was with a nursing care manager with our health insurance…

  • Engage

    Why Don’t We See More Women in the Biblical Text?

    Recently, someone asked me why we don’t find more women in the Bible. Last time, I pointed to translation concerns that hide the presence of women. Today, I want us to consider that sometimes we miss the women who are actually named and featured. Here’s a sampling from some of the earliest stories:  * * * Go back in time with me to the thirteenth century BC in Egypt. The king has issued an order to kill all boys born into bondage, because members of the slave class—your own people, descendants of Israel—have proliferated, and the ruling class fears an uprising. Born under the ban, you lie in a pitch-lined…

  • Impact

    The God of the Impossible!

    Genesis 17:15-17; 18:9-15; 21:1-7 Time: 2067–2066 b.c. Place: Canaan   Lesson Aim: To learn that God can do what we consider impossible.   Introduction   Promises have fallen on hard times. Once, a person’s word was as certain a guarantee as you could get. Then spoken words became suspect, and the written contract was born. Now we’ve spurned even that symbol of trust. Today it seems there is no contract that can’t be broken in the name of more money, better business, or newer priorities. As it is commonly said, nothing’s ever an absolute guarantee—that is, except God’s Word. When the Lord made His promise to Abraham that Sarah would…

  • Engage

    Mary Magdalene = #NotAProstitute

    What do you get when you mix myth, legend, incorrect interpretation, and a dose of Hollywood all together? The misrepresented life story of Mary Magdalene—shaken, not stirred. For centuries Mary Magdalene’s reputation as a reformed prostitute has lived on, despite her official Roman Catholic exoneration from bad-girl status in the 1960s. Just do a simple online search for Mary Magdalene and you’ll quickly feel overwhelmed by the plethora of books and movies that portray her not only as the penitent prostitute, but also as Jesus’s secret lover, an apostle greater than John or Peter, and the poster child of gnostic literature. Yet of the thirteen times the New Testament mentions…

  • Engage

    Why Peter Would NOT Want a Wife Today to Call Her Husband “Lord”

    In Peter’s instruction to wives with disobedient husbands, Sarah, one of the godly woman of old who hoped in God, is singled out as modeling virtue. Her “adornment,” as was true of that of the other holy women, manifested itself in submission to her husband. And according to Peter, in her submission Sarah goes so far as to call Abraham “lord.”   But strangely, the only time the Old Testament describes Sarah calling Abraham “lord” is in the context of an off-hand comment she makes in response to the revelation that she will become pregnant by him when they are quite old (Gen. 18:12). She scoffs and asks if she…