• Christian Living

    Reflections on an #Unproductive #Garden: Facing #disappointment in our everyday lives

    Now, Lord willing, I will have a thriving pumpkin plant soon (they always surprise me), but I hate waiting. I want immediate satisfaction, no snags (or slugs), immediate success. I don’t know about you, but I feel the same extreme impatience in many areas of my life. I want immediate results in my relationship with my husband, my prayers for my children, my mentoring relationships, and my educational and professional goals. I know, I know, we live in a fallen world ruled by God’s purposes, not mine. But when I pray, I want an answer, when I make an effort in a relationship, I want results, when I make a…

  • Christian Living

    Lord, Fix My Eyes

    Yep. That’s definitely what’s happened to me. I am definitely weary. Tired of quarreling and fighting, promises of quick fixes that only seem to perpetuate society’s already ill state. On top of my frustration with the state of, well, everything, I seem to have spiritual amnesia. I somehow believe that I am living in the first time in history without direction, characterized by godlessness, unrest and, yes, insanity. In my frustration, I am conveniently forgetting, blind really, not only God’s sovereignty and love, but the uncertainty of the Abraham’s barrenness, Joseph’s sale and slavery, Daniel’s den and furnace, the Israelites’ captivity again and again; not to mention Christ’s crucifixion during…