When I was a little girl and my dog was hit by a car and had to go to the veterinarian, I turned on my favorite Your Story Hour tape about Clara Barton. My mom questioned my choice, but it was somehow comforting to me about listening to the story of a Civil War nurse…
“That is a good book it seems to me, which is opened with expectation and closed with profit.” (Louisa May Alcott) Did you ever sit on a phone book as a kid? Maybe you were too short to reach the table at grandma’s house and the latest, hefty edition of The Yellow Pages was commissioned as a…
A friend and mentor once told me that when you’re trying to get going again with Bible reading, you can always start by just reading the Proverb that coincides with the day of the month. That is precisely how I wound up reading Proverbs 30 one dreary morning before work. My breath caught in my throat,…
I gave up on parenting books years before I became a mother. While many of my friends were devouring them in stacks, I found myself wandering a maze of conflicting opinions and parenting style wars that ranged from mild eye-rolling to outright heated controversy between people in my circles. And the older I got, the…
I used to devour books by the dozens. I’d read theology, fiction, memoirs—whatever I could get my hands on. Except one thing. I didn’t ever read devotionals. (Well, except that one time I picked up a Guideposts and read the whole years’ worth in one sitting.) The problem was they only took like 2.3 seconds to read…
When we are reading love stories, we need to focus on what God has done—not on what the people did—because our very best “rightness” is still worth nothing in the Kingdom of God. It doesn’t guarantee us a single thing. Love stories are about how God moved, even when people didn’t have any idea that…
When it comes to love stories, there isn’t a perfect way. Every single one of us will walk into every single relationship as a sinner or a sinner saved by grace. That’s it. There is no other option. (Natasha Metzler in “How to Read Love Stories“)
When you hear a love story it is the description of something that happened, not a prescription of how to make that very same thing happen in your own life. (Natasha Metzler in “How to Read Love Stories“)
God can’t and won’t be boxed in by our ideals. Whether you date or court or just up and marry your best friend one day, God can be working through it. Let all be done for His glory. (Natasha Metzler in “How to Read Love Stories“)
One of these years, I am going to try wrapping up a few books to open and read each day of Advent. This year, I felt like I was planning ahead by getting out of the box of Christmas books before Thanksgiving was past. Sometime, I’ll make a careful, chronological list of the books I want to read…
When it comes to stories, I like to start at the very beginning. I like to know how things began, so that when I get to the end I can look back and relive the entire journey. And I can’t think of a more beautiful story to get to read from beginning to end than…
All of us are aware of the dangers of an unbalanced diet. Too many cookies and ice cream and our jeans get too snug. Too many carrots and we might look a little orange around the edges. Not that I know about the “orange around the edges” personally, but I did see a lady whose…
The End.
The End.