Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel, The Goldfinch, all 776 pages of it, was beach reading this past week.  In addition to being one of those books that drips with brilliance on just about every page and is hard to put down, it brims with the kind of writing that, if you’re a bit of a…

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897), also known as “the Little Flower of Jesus,” was a French Carmelite nun who had wisdom beyond her years.  I stumbled across her reflections on living in the present in a little devotional I’ve been using lately, A Guide to Prayer for All God’s People: If I did not simply…

One of the reasons I keep showing up at this intersection between life and God is you, your comments, your questions, and even in some cases, your downright infuriating remarks (which also keep me writing). The other day Jan thanked me for my post on John Piper’s call for a “masculine Christianity.”  That post sparked…

The older I get the more I’m convinced wandering is essential to rest.  A soul that has come to rest has known what it means to wander.  And, God forbid that our souls should ever only rest and never wander in this life!  This would make us less than human. Our souls can wander in…

A few days ago my grandmother died. It’s poignantly fitting that “Grandmom Peggy” made her exit from this life just before Mother’s Day. She was after all a mother to six children. I only quite recently discovered how much Grandmom Peggy genuinely loved kids. During occasional visits to the Rio Grande home that she designed,…

The other day at a local library book sale I stumbled upon a $1 copy of The Onion Ad Nauseum: Complete News Archives. Needless to say, I bought it—and I’m now convinced that next to the Bible The Onion should be required reading for all Christians. Okay, I’m kidding. But seriously, it’s a great way to…

This is a poem I wrote this morning. May your day be full of hope: Daybreak When the sound is birds, and the harvest of night is gathering into morning’s first blooms, the silent prayer of the universe for every living, beating thing stretches itself out across the plain of my heart in hope. Maybe…

Faith turned over to the side that doesn’t capture the light: the underbelly of trust in God—or is it distrust?—so often not shown.  At first glance, Barbara Brown Taylor’s latest book, Learning To Walk in the Dark, seems an exercise in gently poking at faith, like the study of some awkward specimen turned over under…

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