5 Ways This Has and Is Making Us Grow: Creativity, Perseverance, Spiritual Depth, Positivity, and Adaptability
Yesterday, my husband mentioned to our ministry team all the ways he’s observed what we’ve had to become these past nine weeks. He mentioned these five key traits: creativity, perseverance, spiritual depth, positivity, adaptability. I’ve grown! You’ve grown! We are growing. Tell your children! Over the past nine weeks of this pandemic, I think about […]
Keep Raising Your Hand
I’ve been listening to all the graduation advice, and I love what I heard from a teacher recently: Keep raising your hand. For some reason, the words brought tears to my eyes. I remembered all those times I was too afraid to raise my hand when I needed or wanted something or when I had […]
The First Mother’s Day Post on Live with Flair
I enjoyed reading this post from ten years ago. I think of it every single Mother’s Day. I hope you enjoy it too. Original post on May 9, 2010 called “A Gift for Every Mother You Know.” Today was chilly, windy (hair in my face no matter which way I pushed it around), and gloomy. […]
Time to Plant
The Plumcot will go to its home in the garden in the next week or so! It’s a persistent plant. It began to grow in the refrigerator where I had thrown the seed from a Plumcot pit because of the chilling requirement. I had forgotten about it until its long roots forced my attention as […]
Ten Times Better
This morning I noted something special as I began the book of Daniel. By the way, I love the book of Daniel because he seems like a graduate student in many ways, and I related to him deeply when I studied this book as a student. Daniel was, after all, brought in to learn “the […]
Becoming a Generous Shepherd
This morning, I’m leading a devotion on some parts of the book of Jeremiah that have resonated with me. I love, for example, the great promise of how the Lord cares for His people. He says, “I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will lead you with knowledge and understanding” (Jeremiah 3:15). […]
An Infinite Variety of Ways
This morning I read one of my all-time favorite devotions from Hannah Whitall Smith in God is Enough. She describes a way to think about God’s grace because, as she writes, “so few people have any conception of what the grace of God really is.” She contends that “to say it is free unmerited favor […]
I will gather you. I will bring you home.
I’m reading Zephaniah–a book of the Bible I haven’t read in a while. I read from the same Bible I read as a college girl, so I can see my notes and thoughts on certain passages from as far back as 1994. Back then, this verse mattered deeply to me as a promise to all […]
Staying Open to Joy
I’ve walked past this tree for days and days and hadn’t yet seen it. I was too busy, looking downward, or looking too far ahead on the path. But on this particular day, I slowed down to notice it. One can marvel at something so gnarled and dark underneath and so light and joyful on […]
The Fuel We Need
This morning, our family enjoyed a wonderful church service in our living room. We took communion as a family together with our online virtual church family. What a special time! The pastor preached on such a wonderful passage of scripture. It’s John 14:6, perhaps the most important thing we could think about today. Here Jesus […]