An Unprecedented, Unexpected Time Today is my fifth day at home and counting. My social interactions have been limited to my husband, my cat, and friends and family online. But even these interactions have been limited because I find myself overwhelmed by the amount of information sent my way. The constant news and constant updates […]

A Change of Heart I discovered the intriguing world of inductive Bible study about six years ago. Following the technique I learned from my pastor, I began soaking up the word of God like a sponge. Excitement sparked like lightning inside my brain as I began connecting dots across Scripture. I started to really know […]

Time in the Word I remember when our boys were young and one of them was a horrible sleeper for a season, meaning we were up with him several times a night. One morning, flustered and angry over the exhaustion I felt, and excusing myself from any form of discipline or accountability, I looked over […]

Seeing the Value of Women in God’s Word When you aren’t sure what to do in life, do you ever open the Bible searching for a specific story or moral lesson you can apply? Many of us read the Bible this way, especially when we face challenging or unknown circumstances. But the Bible is not […]

A Time to Refrain When I was growing up, my parents were big fans of road trips. We’d all pile into the station wagon, the van, or the red Ford Fiesta. I come from a large and tactile family; we could rarely keep our hands to ourselves. When things got out of hand, playfully or […]

Chasing Your Dreams You only have one life to live, so chase your dreams. This quote, and others like it, permeate the messaging in our culture today. While Scripture agrees that our lives are short (James 4:14), nowhere does it tell us to chase the dreams and goals we have for ourselves. Rather than make […]

A Solid Foundation When my husband and I were house shopping, we fell in love with two houses simultaneously. Each met our checklist for the price, location, and pictures we viewed on the realty website. We quickly called the agent and booked showings.  The first house was solid. It was evident the builder had a […]

Forming and Understanding Beliefs I believed whatever professing Christians taught me growing up in church and youth group. They claimed to be believers, they had studied Scripture, and a few of them had degrees from Bible schools. Why shouldn’t I trust them? I knew to beware of false teachers, but I assumed they would be […]

Checking Boxes and Quiet Times They handed me a spiral-bound notebook and a Bible reading plan and told me to read my Bible for 30 minutes every day. Each day’s reading included two questions to answer. So, like a good little rule-follower, I did what they said. From seventh grade through my senior year of […]

Truth and Reality One of my goals this year is to read every Pulitzer Prize fiction award winner of the last decade. A great story has become a reprieve from my normal nonfiction reading. It allows me to get lost in a world that is not my own. Often, I find the characters compellingly familiar […]