Our oldest grandson recently spent the weekend with us, a monthly event that my husband and I enjoy to the hilt. It is largely an unchanging routine: We load up the snack drawer and cookie jar, and before we know it, we are tossing the football, building Legos, driving matchboxes, designing train tracks for Thomas the Tank Engine, reading good books, singing, and playing Go Fish and I Spy. In the cooler months, we roast marshmallows over the fire pit and sip coffee-milk on the front porch. Regardless of weather, there is always ice cream.

It is a big time.

Come Sunday, we go to church.

Continue reading “Lead Your Children Into The Sanctuary” →

It often feels serendipitous—the way people have appeared in the nick of time, illuminating my path.

Those lantern lights are gifts from the kind and providential hands of God, whose timing is exquisite, knowing exactly what his children require to become more like the Son. The Lord knows who are his, and orchestrates seasons of suffering to whittle away the sin clinging stubbornly to our frames, sins working to diminish what we ought to become. How gracious of him to send people to help.

Some of God’s lanterns I have known face to face: beloved family and beloved friends, while others died before my time, saints of old, discovered through Scripture and biography, men and women whose devotion to Christ still illuminates God’s path, posthumously.

Other lanterns have been lesser-known people, waking, walking, and working in quiet fidelity, largely unseen by most.

Today, I remember one.

Continue reading “A Lantern in the Night” →

Do you find yourself following your heart’s desires or God’s desires?

Are you awakened, brought alive by worldly things or heavenly things?  

As John Calvin so famously said, our hearts are idol-making factories, and isn’t that the truth?

Every idol is rooted in self adoration, broadly revealing itself in a mantra running rampant.

The slogan?

Continue reading “Don’t Follow Your Heart” →

Last Mother’s Day, I made a bold request: Could we pretty please take our disheveled box of camcorder tapes and have them digitized?

And then I did the math.

Forget that idea. Too expensive.

My husband, however, did not forget the idea. He shipped the box.

He said yes.

Continue reading “Remember and Forget” →

In fifth grade, I left behind my public elementary school life and transitioned to a tiny Classical School in New England, where autumns burn gloriously, and scholarly minds are most prized.

After the first few weeks at this school, I accepted two cold facts: the headmaster regarded our studies as the be-all and end-all, and the brightest students were her charms.

Continue reading “An Education” →

We have a family of deer–eight, as of this morning–a slender-legged, soft-eyed herd that gently wanders to nibble ground cover in our back woods. After a time they amble from backyard to front, down the slope of our broad yard, toward the road. They are quietly graceful, calm as three speckled little ones prance beside and behind, happy to follow the leader: a handsome buck with a growing rack.

In my early morning glimpses of such summer beauty, I have yet to see a deer left behind.

Continue reading “Gently Walk Her Home” →

What a joy it is to be a woman who serves the church.

How we serve matters.

Join me over at Desiring God…

Helpers, Mothers, Teachers ~ How Women Bless the Local Church

---

The other Wednesday evening, following Bible study, we lingered.

There was conversation buzzing in one corner of the sanctuary, a cluster praying in another; two with Bibles open in deep discussion while others tipped their heads back in contagious laughter.

This scene unfolded, unscripted, for nearly an hour.

My heart sang.

For this we prayed.

Continue reading “Any Given Sunday” →