Thoughtful Thursdays

"Hosanna!" It's an interjection that we shout as praise in the Christian church. "Hosanna in the highest! Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!" Hosanna. I've sung songs with that proclamation since I was a child (I still...

We serve a God who makes something out of nothing. He did it in creation, taking the blank canvas of space and turning it into an ever-expanding network of galaxies, planets, suns, wormholes, black holes, supernovas, matter, energy, light, and life. In that moment...

Don’t you love those occasions when you’re reading multiple things at the same time and they all coalesce? That’s what happened to me this week, as I was reading the Gospel of Mark and meditating on the Lord’s prayer. Let’s start with Mark 13:30. Jesus is telling His...

I've been a C.S. Lewis fan for decades. I, like most kids, started out reading The Chronicles of Narnia, and when I reread the books to my own kids a couple years ago, I realized how much of my faith life was formed by those books--especially by The Last Battle. In...

Have you ever paused to think about all the things God does while we sleep? The Bible is full of examples of dreams and visions that come to people while they're in their beds. From Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph to the prophets like Isaiah and Joel; and then of course,...

Yesterday was the official start of Lent. Depending on your faith tradition, perhaps you marked it with ashes and fasting...perhaps you took some special time for prayer...perhaps you decided to give something up for the next 40 days, or add something into your faith...

 And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”~ Isaiah 6:8 We all know that verse, right? There are songs about it. It's a key verse for missionaries around the world. It encapsulates the...

In our family devotional time, I've been noticing a trend in many of the psalms and canticles . . . there is a lot of talk about enemies. It's in the songs . . . it's in the prophecies . . . it's in the praises. The writers of both Old and New Testaments talk a lot...

What am I devoted to? This is a question that had been weighing more and more on my mind as 2021, my "intentional" year, drew to a close. I've trained myself to really evaluate how I'm spending my time and energy, and I'm so pleased with how "Intentional" did indeed...

Eleanor Roosevelt once said: "Great minds discuss ideas;average minds discuss events;small minds discuss people." I think if we're being honest, we all do all of those things...so let's take the idea of "minds" out of it and assume that we're all capable of discussing...

We are officially in the Advent season. I love that this is the traditional beginning of the Church's year--the time we mark, waiting expectantly for Jesus. Living as we do so long after Him, we obviously know that He came...but we continue to pause and reflect and...

"Why do I follow you? Because you are who you are, Lord, and because I rejoice in having been called by you. Let the swiftness of my feet in following you be my unceasing thanksgiving." ~ Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word When I read those words a few weeks ago, they...

Those who are wise shall shineLike the brightness of the firmament,And those who turn many to righteousnessLike the stars forever and ever.~ Daniel 12:3 Having not grown up in churches that strictly follow the Liturgy, I didn't realize until recently that the...

One year ago, I shared about "The Day That Changed Everything...and Nothing" -- the day my son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. That day that, had we lived in the eras I so love to write about it, he would have died. I know I've mentioned this new life a few other...

This begins in a rather silly place, but bear with me. When we went on vacation to the beach in September and I was slathering on the sunscreen and noting the amount of tan I was getting each day through walking and spending the morning at the water, I realized...

When a family is made up of a novelist wife and her publisher/filmmaker husband, there are a lot of conversations in the house about story--what makes them powerful, what makes them fail. What makes them lasting, what makes them forgettable. A few weeks ago as David...

We are a storytelling people. It only takes a look at modern society to see the truth of it. Our advertisements, our movies, our books, our games...we love them and are persuaded by them not because they tell us facts or make promises. We are persuaded and enchanted...

A little throwback post today...Talking about the mismatched Original Post Published June 2, 2016. When I got married, I filled out a registry. A wish list. It had on it all the things one would expect–dishes and cookware, sheets and towels. All of them, sets....

I want to talk today about where risks and faith meet. And how we walk the line between "foolish for Christ" and just foolish. I'm not saying I have all the answers on where that line is...but I am saying we all need to ask the questions, and I think I've seen a good...

Last year I had great fun with my "38 Things" post, and on my anniversary in June I had a blast with "20 things" about marriage. So of course, I have to keep up the tradition and give you "39 Things" from this past year. =) My birthday is on Saturday, but I figure...

"And immediately [after feeding the 5,000] He compelled His disciples to get into the boat and to go before Him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while He dismissed the crowd. And having said farewell to them, He departed to the mountain to pray. And evening having...

A couple years ago, a newsletter email came into my inbox from Tricia Goyer. It was on New Year's Day, I believe, and was introducing a new Facebook group she'd created, called Write That Book! (Great group, by the way). But part of her intro was a musing that has...

We've all heard some version of this wisdom, whether it's an anecdote, an object lesson, or a punchline: if you want to feel better about your problems, just look at someone else's. You're going to be far happier with your own than theirs. The irony, of course, being...

Way back in the day, when I wrote Jewel of Persia, I had to study not only the book of Esther and Old Testament history, but Persian history as well. It was interesting to learn that Xerxes was called "the king of kings" because of the vastness of his empire, and the...

When you read through the epistles, there's a common theme to many of them: Paul is admonishing them for following after false versions of Christianity. Listening to teachers or prophets who said Christ wasn't fully man or fully God . . . getting tangled back up in...

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son..."~ John 3:16 It's the most memorized verse of the Bible. One we know so well and see so often that we probably don't really pause to think about it anymore. But the other week in church, it was one of...

Today's my 20th wedding anniversary, so I thought I'd steal a page from my new birthday tradition and enumerate Twenty Things...things I've learned through marriage, things I've loved, things that I take joy in remembering, things that have helped make me who I am....

The Purpose of Passion A Million Little Fires There's something in this world that you're passionate about, something that really stirs you to action. A cause you want to advocate for, that you're willing to suffer for. Maybe it's racial reconciliation. Or the rights...

In II Chronicles 20, we get the story of Jehoshephat, one of the godly, faithful kings of Judah. He was a good king. He loved the Lord and sought Him in all things. But enemies were coming against them, a vast army made up of three kingdoms united for the purpose of...

The other week while I was in Ocracoke, my morning devotional began with this passage from Acts 1:4-9 (NKJV): 4 And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, “which,” He said, “you...

“I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called.”~ Ephesians 4:1 (NKJV)   Walk worthy of the calling. This is a phrase that's been lingering in my heart and mind for the last year, ever since I really...

Last week my husband was reading The Picture of Dorian Gray -- a book that neither of us had read before, though we assumed we knew what it was about. Turns out our preconceptions were a bit off, LOL. As he was reading, he would update me on what was going on in the...

Fear. As Christians, we know we’re not supposed to live in it. We have all the awesome verses to trot out in proof. And I even hear it as the reason behind not wanting to be cautious–we don’t want to live in fear, after all. I admit it: I’ve said the same things...

Interruptions. We all know them. And we all hate them (unless of course we're being interrupted in a task we don't want to do, LOL). They are distractions. They are things that keep us from doing what we want to be doing, or what we should be doing. They are those...

In the book world, there's a lot of talk about whether it's worthwhile to give things away for free. People are of multiple mindsets on this. Some think it's a great way to draw in new readers. Others think it devalues our work. What I know is this: when I get...

Over the weekend, I had a dream that my kids were little again. That Rowyn was maybe 18 months, and he was crying from another room. I heard him so went to find him, and he looked up at me as he did in reality a million times, saw me, stretched up his arms, and just...

"Our faith isn't all the things we say we believe; it's what we do next."~ Bob Goff, Live in Grace, Walk in Love   That. 😉 I feel like I could just leave you with that quote--shortest blog post ever, LOL. Because really, it says it so well, doesn't it? It...

Love the sinner, hate the sin. You've heard this saying. I know you have. I've been hearing it all my life, and in its truest sense, it's right. We are certainly called to hate sin. And we are certainly called the love everyone, neighbors and enemies alike. That...

Tomorrow is the inauguration here in the US. And the word tense doesn't begin to describe the state of America right now. I don't know your political stance or who you voted for. I don't need to know. But if you're reading my blog, chances are pretty good that you're...

I've always believed that stories change the world. This is no surprise--it is, in fact, one of the reasons I love writing novels, editing novels, publishing novels, and designing covers for novels. I believe in the power of fiction to touch hearts and tug on souls....