Callie Mitchell 6 Minute Read The siren sounded and I wasn’t ready. For several days I had this nagging thought that I needed to prepare a bag for a quick trip down to the bomb shelter, if it came to that. Israel was engaging in Operation Pillar of Defense, and we were living through it. With the battle in…
Chantel 2 Minute Read It’s the Fourth of July. Independence Day. A day we celebrate freedom here in the United States. But while I think of all the things I love about being free, while I let my heart soar with the fireworks and the music of my homeland, I can’t help but remember them. I don’t remember exactly the…
Callie Mitchell 6 Minute Read A nameless, faceless servant ventures on a most serious expedition: he is commissioned to find a wife for his master’s son. The servant spots a young maiden and makes a simple request for water. Above and beyond the call of duty, she not only waters him, but also his camels. Her response grants the reward…
Callie Mitchell 5 Minute Read My son made an instant friend at the park one day. His skin was a bit darker than ours, and he spoke a language that we did not know. As they played, I noticed his mother sitting on stone wall, her head covered in a scarf. I walked over to her and sat down. …
Jenni Marie 4 Minute Read The spotlight. She was standing in the spotlight. A crowded room of young adults turned immediately claustrophobic as the shaft of light illuminated only her wide-eyed panic. Twenty-five pairs of eyes reflected outside that ring of light, and there wasn’t so much as a twinkling kindness among them. Everyone stared in contempt at her makeup…or…
Jenni Marie 3 Minute Read You’ve seen her. At church. At the family dinner table. At book club. At the gym. She’s the one who’s moved from the next town over, the sister-in-law your brother married, the college student who feels misplaced, the foreigner who is still learning cultural idioms. She’s the new girl. Life as the new girl is…
Christy Fitzwater 4 Minute Read When my first child was born someone gave me a baby gift that stayed in the drawer for a long time.
Because I didn’t know how it was meant to be used.
It was two hour-glass-shaped pieces of flannel sewn together, with filling in the middle like a quilt, but it wasn’t large enough to be a blanket. When I showed my husband the gift he shrugged his shoulders. I stuck the thing in a drawer.
Guest Author 3 Minute Read by Teri Lynne Underwood It seems every few years Christendom goes abuzz with spiritual gift inventories and tests we can take to determine where we fit into the Body. I’m not opposed to knowing your spiritual gifts. In fact, I think it can be incredibly helpful to understand where your giftedness lies and how you can…
Chantel 5 Minute Read Sometimes I forget. I sit on my couch, and read about the thousands and thousands of women and children who are enslaved. Once in a while, it strikes close to home. Human trafficking doesn’t just happen “over there”. It happens here. Right here in our backyards all the time. I feel so helpless. So desperate….
Caroline Rose Sanders 7 Minute Read There are many questions we must ask ourselves when making a purchase: Can I afford this? Do I really need/want it? Is it of good quality? There is one question, however, that many of us forget to ask ourselves: Would this purchase be a fair-trade? “Fair Trade” is probably a term you’ve heard a few…
Rachelle Rea Cobb 3 Minute Read It happened sometime between daring being a dream and daring coming true…
I went to Costa Rica last summer. It was my first mission trip, my first international mission trip, my first flight, and my first international flight.
Natasha Metzler 5 Minute Read My move to the little house with the apple tree and lilac bushes was marked in my mind for a reason far deeper than a change of residence. It was the summer the doctor looked at me sadly and said that children would never be mine. It was the summer my mother-heart broke and bled and…
The End.
The End.