Psalm 25:6 She was bent over in pain that day, the result of years of unmet expectations and disappointments with life. It’s not that she had not tried. She had. Others, however, always made it to the finish line first, got the best deals, played the winning hands, found the better bargains. Some days she felt like she could win. She started the morning with anticipation, entered into the day with confidence, but before the evening came she sensed, once again, that defeat rested on her shoulders the way a bird rests on its perch, claws clutched confidently around the […]
Women need each other. We have a special kinship, a unique understanding, a tender concern for what each other goes through in this life. The nurturing quality that God so beautifully placed inside of us seems enhanced when another is hurting. We want to be there for each other. When we are with a dear friend, our problems don’t seem quite so tough, our pain quite so intense. Cherish the friend with whom you can cry, laugh and be yourself. Thank the friend you can call any time of the day or night. Bless the one who never tells you what […]
How do we know the right time to go to someone and ask them to forgive us? I don’t want to go to an angry and dissatisfied person and ask forgiveness if God has not prompted me with his perfect timing. Only He knows when that person’s heart is ready to accept my apology. Only God knows if that person’s discontent has softened enough to hear my request for forgiveness. Prayer paves the way for forgiveness to happen. When we allow the Holy Spirit to have His way in our lives and when we are in communion with Him […]
The Jews have a word for rest: SABBATH. God commands us in Ex. 20:8 – 11: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shall you labor and do all your work, But the seventh day is a sabbath day of the LORD your God; in it you shall not work…. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.” For the Jews, sabbath was and is a pulling away […]
A Call to Prayer – Reflecting on Daniel 1 – 6 When Daniel was a young man, the southern kingdom of Judah was taken captive by Babylon in the first year of King Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. Daniel and his friends were taken from Jerusalem and brought to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar had cleverly chosen the brightest and the best of the nations he had conquered, so that those nations would have no leaders to start a revolt against him. The king tried to change the identities of Daniel and his friends by giving them new Babylonian names based on false gods and by […]
