December 2023

During naptime the other day, I heard a loud, crashing THUMP come from my 3.5-year-old's room. She's at the age where naptimes when she actually naps are few and far between, but she still takes time each afternoon to spend an hour or two in her room for quiet time. This day's "quiet time" had been anything but quiet. There was singing, playing her toy xylophone, shaking and banging on her tambourine, knocking on her window to wave at the people passing by on the sidewalk below, and general merriment. Sitting downstairs, I tried to focus on my work while (unsuccessfully) balancing tuning out the noise and keeping an ear out for her safety. When I heard the loud THUMP I decided it was time to investigate. I walked upstairs, opened her door, and saw the 75+ books in her room scattered all over the floor. There wasn't even a place to step...

There are a lot of things kids may know about Christmas and the Christmas story, but if you had to choose just 3 things, what would you choose? I'm excited to share this week's blog post from Dave Ray from Doorpost Songs that emphasizes three things every child needs to know about Christmas: Christmas isn’t a monolithic monument, standing alone on a pinnacle. It is a junction on the journey of God’s love for His people. A road runs into it. A road runs out of it. And each of us must walk this road in its fullness to understand God’s extraordinary love for ordinary people. In light of Christmas as more than just a season, here are three things we want every child to know about Christmas: Christmas Means God Keeps His Promises - The story of Christmas doesn’t begin with the words, “In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a...

As we begin this season of Advent, I'm excited to share this guest post from Christie Penner Worden at Raise Up Faith:  Hope has a name. I’ve seen this phrase a lot lately. Not nearly as often as I have seen evidence of hopelessness in this season, I’m afraid. But in our clamoring for what’s next, for change, even for what’s required to get through the day, hope can seem dim, faint, even fading. Hope has a name, and as followers of Jesus, we know it to be His. But in a recent deep dive into the book of Hebrews, I found that Hope is not only rightly named, it is so clearly defined that to miss it would be, well, hopeless. “Because God wanted to show his unchangeable purpose even more clearly to the heirs of the promise, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to...