Anyone else feel like there’s a tendency to whitewash Christmas and the Advent season? The typical sentiments – merry and bright, the happiest time of the year, etc – often come across as marshmallow fluff, sickly saccharine and lacking any kind of nourishment or depth. Even the churchy nativity scenes are sanitized; of course there’s…
Category: Life
Light Dawns
The idea of “signs” generally makes me uncomfortable. Not street signs, or any other kind of wayfinding, those of course are quite welcome! The concept of some kind of occurrence being interpreted as a sign for what action I am to take or how I am to proceed seems a little suspect at best. Do…
Believe and Live
One of the Scriptures that intrigues me every time I come across is John 21:25. At the end of his book, written so that the readers might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by such belief have life through His name, John, a member of Jesus’ “inner” circle as it…
Stones of Remembrance
“You shall take two onyx stones, and engrave on them the names of the sons of Israel, six of their names on the one stone, and the names of the remaining six on the other stone, in the order of their birth. As a jeweler engraves signets, so shall you engrave the two stones with…
Pruning
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” (John 15:1-2) A few days ago, I happened to be driving down the road while a township…
Firstfruits
Proverbs 3:9: “Honor the Lord with thy possessions, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase.” This verse has been stuck in my head for a few days, since I last read it in my daily reading pattern. “Firstfruits” isn’t something that comes up frequently in 21st century America; it’s one of those words that’s…
Spiritual Forgetfulness
I’ve been thinking recently – for most of the summer, I think – about how forgetful we can be. Not only in the day-to-day things (go ahead and ask me on any given day what I ate for dinner the day before; I most likely won’t be able to tell you), but perhaps most especially…
Faint and Weary
A new-to-us activity this summer has been kayaking. It’s been a good way for us to get up and out of the house together, physically active and enjoying the same activity at the same time. Through unexpected circumstances, we ended up with kayaks for all 4 of us, and even the kids paddle themselves around…
Seasons
The seasons have been on my mind recently. On the surface, one could attribute this to our physical location; out here on The Ridge, as I’ve taken to calling our house (fitting in more than one way, since our street is also called Ridge), surrounded by countryside and trees and greenery, perhaps we notice the…
The Peace of Wild Things
The Peace of Wild Things-Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in meand I wake in the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.I come into…