#PrayerExperiment

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2 min

Finding Hope

Hope: n. desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment I can have hope for a good future because I trust God. I do not put my hope in men or women, all of whom are fallible. All make mistakes. All say dumb things. All inflict hurt one way or another. Instead, I can maintain hope in God, because he is worthy of my trust. Trust: n. assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something I trust God because his character is good. I’

2 min

From Anger to Forgiveness

Ever had someone cuss you out in a nonstop blue streak of the worst possible names? I have. I tell you, teachers put up with a lot. When I gave a kid (who was also rude and sassy) a low grade because zilch effort had gone into an assignment, his mother made an appointment with me. I had a hunch what might lie ahead, so I asked both my administrator and a teaching peer to sit in on the conversation. It was more like a confrontation. Every awful word in the book was screamed at

3 min

The Doughnut Draw to Faith

I grew up in a church-going family, but Sunday meant one thing for me: doughnuts. Sunday was a big production. My sister and I got dropped off early, about 8:30 a.m., for girls choir practice, then we sang for the 9 a.m. service up front in the choir pews, which faced each other in front of the altar. The service was a liturgical one, which would have made me nod off except that much of it I spent on my knees on a hard wooden kneeler. I think that was the design of that thing

3 min

Elusive Humility

I was having such a great time with friends at a book convention. Each day was spent strolling the miles of aisles looking at new book releases, meeting other authors and publishing house folks, and looking at other bookstore products. Evenings were spent gadding about to fun restaurants. After dinner one night we decided to splurge calorie-wise and go to a chocolate restaurant. Yes, there were endless chocolate desserts and drinks. I decided on a double whammy: chocolate che

2 min

Simple Faith

My dad was brilliant and kind. He once said, “There should just be one law: Be nice.” Doesn’t that make sense? If we made all our decisions based on the consideration for how they affected the people around us, what a better world this would be. When put to the test by legalists, Jesus said the greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God “with all your heart and with all your soul and without all your mind.” Then he added that the second greatest commandment was to lov

2 min

Crumbs and Conversation: Where Healing Starts

Jesus included everyone in the conversation. He spoke with a Samaritan woman–who wasn’t part of the Jewish faith in-crowd, being half-Jew and half-Gentile. He spoke with a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years–also considered unclean by the religious leaders of the time. He spoke with a Canaanite woman–who would have been part of a group of people who served other gods. Reading the passage about the Canaanite woman today in Matthew 15, I had to pause and reflect: Do I

2 min

That Kind of God

Scripture says that God will reign over the earth. When I think about figurehead kings and queens around the world, I wonder how others view that scripture. My God is not a figurehead. He does not just hold a title with no more authority than today’s royalty that cuts ribbons and waves to a crowd affectively. My God is not the sum total of someone’s fashionable cross piece of jewelry. He created the stones and jewels and wood in that necklace. My God is not something that is

2 min

Coping with Compassion Fatigue

As a board member of The Sierra Schools Foundation, I recently helped coordinate efforts to bring social-emotional training to our small school district’s teachers. One term struck me: compassion fatigue. As teachers have doubled up duties to teach both in an in-person setting and in a distance learning model, they have also encountered countless cases of students and parents and peers who are in emotional distress, while these same teachers also try to manage their own famil

3 min

How can we Know God's Will: Conclusion

How can we figure out God’s calling on our lives? Earlier this week I wrote about the three times God laid a call on my life. Quickly they were these: 1. Writing (1986) 2. Teaching (1989) 3. Prayerwalking (1998) I experienced something different for each of those calls: – Actual words I understood inaudibly as I had taken time to quiet my thoughts and to listen for God’s direction to me. – A dramatic dream (nightmare, really) – A scene that played out in front of me while I w

5 min

How do I Know God has a Calling for Me? Part 2

Yesterday I shared the first of three calls I know God put on my life. The first was this: “I want you to write for me” in 1986. Three years later God gave me a second calling . . . through the odd circumstance of a dream . . . or rather, a nightmare. Lest you think I’m weird, I just want to throw out there that Jesus’s earthly father, Joseph, was also directed to make dramatic changes in his and Mary’s lives because of dreams . . . THREE times, if I remember correctly. The f

2 min

Finding Hope in a Sea of Blackness

We drove to church yesterday, with a black wall to our right half of the way to Reno. Wildfires licked up just about every spot of green from our place in the Sierra Valley last week almost all the way to the Nevada border. There were miracles of places and human and animal lives saved. Someone even posted a photo of a baby calf sitting in an unburned patch surrounded by burnt pasture. But so much black. While I know in my heart that grasses and even wildflowers will push the

2 min

Weathering the Season

I don’t know another time when I’ve felt I’ve lived just about every line of this famous piece of poetry written by King Solomon from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (ESV): For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to

3 min

Finding the Truth About Myself

I’ve been near-sighted since the sixth grade. That was not a good year. My school had a fire, so I had to walk even farther to another school that was next to the railroad tracks. My desk faced the window, and I would count railroad cars to keep myself awake. (It is not true that naps in school stop after kindergarten.) In fourth grade I remember being put in a special class to learn “new math,” which was actually algebra. In fifth grade poetry began to make sense. But sixth

3 min

When You can't get Anything Done

Addicted to doing? Addicted to checking things off your list? I’m raising my hand. I own all that. Because I’m goal-oriented and achievement-driven, it’s been tough to cross things off my calendar, such as medical appointments, because I want them DONE. I do not want to think about them anymore. Now they’re floating out there in the great Somewhere/Sometime of life. Ahhhhh! How are you doing in this uncertainty? Cruising? Cursing? I decided that for a season I need a new kind

2 min

The Secret to Praying Without Ceasing

Years ago when I started prayerwalking, God showed me that wherever I am, there’s a need for prayer . . . so I began opening up my eyes and praying for what I saw. Businesses. Local government offices. Schools. Families. And more. I also became passionate about understanding more about prayer, and as I read through the Bible, I would mark any reference to pray that I noticed. I particularly focused on Jesus’s prayer life and the teachings on prayer in the New Testament. But t

2 min

How to Take Care

“Take care,” she said at the end of our phone call. It was an everyday sort of remark, one you usually don’t think about . . . but that day I did. No one knew but I’d felt a lump and was feeling a bit of concern. I was also experiencing chronic digestive problems, joint aches, and shortness of breath. Take care. Truth was, I hadn’t been–instead living life willy-nilly and doing and eating what I felt like rather than being diligent about my health. So, I scheduled my overdue

2 min

Need Help Escaping a Pity Party?

What’s your favorite kind of party? Mine must be a Pity Party, because that’s the one I most often find myself attending. What’s so wonderful about a Pity Party is that it can go on and on and on. Right? My last one–about two weeks long–just ended this morning . . . but oh, what a mess that one created. I had to pick myself up from the Floor of Complaint. I had to clean up the Poor Me messes. I had to scrub up the Grumpies. Maybe you’ve had such a party yourself? Two things h

2 min

3 Helps if you're Overwhelmed

How do we push through the mountain of tasks that seem impossible? We can learn a lot from Hebrews 12. 1. Look to Jesus. First, we can let the life of Jesus inspire us. He had a call on his life–to share the good news of salvation for us all and to make that walk to the cross for our sakes. Knowing our call helps us decide what gets a YES in our life and to what we can say NO. His life also gives us perspective: probably nothing we are experiencing compares to his suffering.

2 min

Developing a Praying Lifestyle

“Pray without ceasing.” Oh, this verse used to just make me mad. I mean, what was Paul thinking? Pray all day? How could I possibly do that? But the thought haunted me and led me to a book, The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. Brother Lawrence was a monk who lived in the seventeenth century in France–a man who performed menial kitchen tasks and learned how to stay in communion continually with the God he loved. But that book did not help either. I mean, he

3 min

Need a Breakthrough?

Do you believe in breakthrough? I do. Years ago I was laid off from my teaching job a half hour from our home in the Sierra Valley–due to budget cutbacks. I loved my work teaching fourth and fifth grade students, and it was heart breaking having to say goodbye to my teacher friends. I remember one of the last staff meetings when my principal began talking about plans for the next year–assignments and building changes. All of a sudden I understood that I would have nothing to