Sometimes you must engage in a dozen or more casual conversations before you earn the right to speak into someone’s life. It is worth it! There is a proper order for leaders as well as lay people to offer a significant hand in bringing healing to the hurting and making disciples. There is so much…
Tag: blogging
1000 Generations!
My maternal grandmother and mother have been the caretakers of an old Bible that belonged to my great grandparents, William and Grace Coston. It’s huge and heavy—almost too big and cumbersome to read from my lap. The tattered leather cover is bound by an old brass clasp, and it’s pages are yellowed and fragile. Both…
DAYSPRING
DAYSPRING, noun: The dawn; the beginning of the day, or first appearance of light. Webster’s 1828 I’m a huge fan of morning! My husband is too. Usually you marry the opposite; but in this case, we are alike—up early and sitting in the dark waiting for the dawn. I might add usually with joy! This is…
The Common and the Holy
I love the almost holy tranquility of this old photo. This morning while preparing my thoughts for a teaching on understanding the purpose and place of Sabbath rest as Gentiles tonight at Queen City Church in Cincinnati, I meditated on the differences between the common and holy things of life. Sabbath is the first thing…
Summer Garden
I can stand for hours in the midst of a summer garden—awash in silence— save a symphony of lilting birdsong, babbling brook, and the rustling of wind through weeping willows, the wild lilac, and dripping wisteria. I can wait there—longer than the darkness and sorrow of night—longer than the brassy banging of a mad world….
You Always Knew
Little, lively Vivie ran passed the colorful and showy hibiscus blossoms—some as as big as plates—and passed the endearing cabbage faces of old perfumed roses, to hold and behold a small, common garden offering. This wasn’t a flower famous for fragrance or beauty or anything, and still it’s slender stalk with purple velvet petals, captured…
Shades of Violet
When I was in the seventh grade, a new girl checked into our homeroom class named Darla Star. She shone like a beacon in a dark sky with her curly raven hair, beaming brown eyes, and confident smile. To this day, I think those magenta suede go-go boots, that she glamorously paraded, gave her a…
Dilemma of Joy
My treasured keepsakes bulge in pockets of time—rather moments—that are tucked hard against the bones of my heart. They remain as fresh and life-giving as the first-offerings of spring rosesbuds, tight with fragrance and bleeding of crimson that smears across my fingers as I pull them out one petal at a time. The edges are…
The next time you want to shake your fist at God…
It is essential in our walk with God to understand him as a consuming fire. Most consider our Creator and his acts toward humankind to center around judgment or discipline. That he is ever-watching from heaven to smash our plans or even our lives. But the consuming fire of the Holy One of Israel and…
Dying for Breath
My husband and I had been leading a tour of the biblical sites of Israel when we first learned that the pandemic had hopped from China to the Mid-East. A few COVID-19 cases had been reported in the ancient city of Jerusalem and surrounding villages. Even then the threat loomed distant—like it was someone else’s…
Bonnie Saul Wilks 