This post taken from the “Journey toward Bethlehem” series, first posted December 2011. I hope you enjoy this peek into what it might have been like to be one of those real people present the night Jesus came. Merry Christmas! “How silently, how silently The wondrous […]
Over the past few years, I’ve shared the “Journey toward Bethlehem” with you reader friends as we’ve explored what might have been in the hearts and minds of those very real people in the quiet, wondrous, incredibly human-and-divine miracle we celebrate at Christmas. The coming into this dark and sin-broken world of Jesus…for us. […]
Advent, Christmas
I was feeling good. My classes had gone well so far, things felt fine between my fiancé and me. After my last study hall for the morning, I clocked out for my break and opened Yahoo to check my email. And saw, “Breaking News: Active Shooter in San Bernardino, CA.” With beating heart, […]
Christmas, do not be afraid, mass shootings
A broken heart is a very tender thing. I was at college. Amid being a new transfer student at my university, and all the other adjustments and homesickness of new people and new classes and being away from home, I had just discovered Facebook evidence that the guy-friend I’d been building castles in the […]
Held by Natalie Grant
Some of my favorite movies are set in wartime. At the beginning of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, German bombers drone ominously over London, sending the Pevensie children and their mother scurrying for their lives into a bomb shelter. The war forces Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy away from […]
Love and War, Narnia, spiritual warfare
I kept trying to ignore the gentle nudge. I sat outside the building where our classes meet, under the big oak tree at the picnic table that seems built for first graders, though our high school students often have lunch there. Purple pen in hand, I was trying to annotate my way through […]
Last Sunday my family went for a catamaran ride. I don’t think I even knew what a catamaran was before last week. But while up on Santa Cruz for a week—thanks to generous cousins making their beach cottage available to us—my dad found that joining a group on a catamaran would […]
It’s been quite the couple of weeks, here in America. We’ve had a historic and divisive Supreme Court decision, my own state of California has passed a controversial law on vaccines, and we’ve been shaken by the sharpest reminder in some time that violent, blatant racism is far from dead. How are you […]
Thank you for joining me for this special Easter journey! Read Parts One, Two, Three, and Four of our “Journey to Jerusalem” here. Happy Easter–He is Risen! “Therefore you too have grief now, but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.” […]
Join us for this special Easter journey! Read Parts One, Two, and Three of our “Journey to Jerusalem” here. A blessed Good Friday to you. “All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all To […]
