Free taste of The Gift of Christmas devotional
Christmas is less than a week away. Many of you have purchased The Gift of Christmas Present, my Advent devotional. (Thank you for doing so!) This week, I'll be sharing a few excerpts from the [...]
Feeling overwhelmed? God is with you. Don’t be afraid.
God is with you Imagine yourself as a teenager, from a poor, obscure village. An angel appears and tells you: You are highly favored. God is with you. Do not be afraid. (Read the full [...]
The surprising secret to experiencing abundance
We all long for it: the abundant life. I don't know about you, but I stand against a scarcity mentality steeped in fear. I want to believe that I have more than enough, even when [...]
Embracing inconvenience and finding GodSpace
#wewelcomerefugees I’d seen the hashtag. #wewelcomerefugees I knew my friend Jane did some work with refugees. I’d written about them (in books and blog posts and also for Christianity Today), even had a refugee family [...]
Your nativity scene might be wrong–but that’s good news
When my daughter was very small, she was obsessed with our neighbor's outdoor nativity scene. Maybe it was the child-sized figures of Mary and the shepherds, or the stories about Jesus she'd heard at church. [...]
Fragile foster kids find a home
Where do the kids who no one wants go? How do foster kids who are "difficult to place" because of their medical challenges find a home? Sometimes, the story of a family captures your imagination [...]
Head of the household?
“Why did God make man the head of the household?” That question stared up at me from the study one of the men in our small group had written. We were discussing a chapter from [...]
The mothering God gives
Mother's Day can be rough. If you're childless but not by choice, if you recently lost your mom, if you have ever lost a child, Mother's Day can simply hurt. If you're in a mothering [...]
A monastic approach to motherhood
I’m excited to welcome Micha Boyett, author of Found: A Story of Questions, Grace and Everyday Prayer, to the blog today and tomorrow for a little interview. First, my short review of Found: Being a [...]
Trading “I could never…” for “I just did!”
What keeps you from living the life you want to live? Last winter in Chicago, we experienced a deep freeze where the temperature never went above freezing for more than a month, and walking outside [...]