Thoughtful Thursdays

At the time of writing this (the weekend before it posts), I'm sitting with my laptop at the kitchen table while my husband's comfy in our leather armchair, reading The Nature of a Lady before I have to turn it in on June 1. I'm...

In last weekend's sermon, my dad preached from Luke 14, and as he went through the Scriptures, something interesting jumped out at me.First is something that has struck me many times before, in many different passages. Jesus, often about some other task, comes across...

Let me share a few stories with you. You've probably heard them before. They're stories about some of the Great Men of Faith in our recent history. First, one of my favorites about George Muller. One morning at his orphanage, he was informed by a panicked house mother...

Last week, my husband asked one of those questions of his that really get me thinking--the sort that sounds straightforward but isn't. He said, "What's the purpose of praise?" Now, I already knew that things like the psalms and even our modern praise and worship songs...

It's Holy Week. My favorite week of the year. Most of my friends and family are Christmas diehards, but us? My husband and I have always preferred Resurrection Day and the week leading up to it. The week when the focus isn't on gifts but on sacrifice. This year,...

Holy Week will soon be upon us ~ my favorite week of the year. Better, in my opinion, than Christmas, where it's so easy to focus on the physical traditions instead of the miracle. Because this week is all about the miracle. The miracle that rewrote history, restored...

I'll never forget the first time I watched Monsters, Inc. with the kids. We'd rented it so were watching it at home. Both of them were pretty small. They laughed in all the right places--and the grabbed hold of my arms and scrambled into my lap at the expected ones...

Are you ready? I have a load of goodies for you today! My next (Virtual) Tea Party is live for orders. There is a SALE on The Lost Heiress. And...our podcasts are LIVE!!!  With everything that is going on in the world today, I wanted to be able to share as much...

We've recently decided to read some of the writings of the early church fathers--things that aren't included in our Bible because they weren't written by an apostle, but which are still very early. We began with I Clement, written somewhere around 90 AD, from the...

We love fruit in our family. Fresh fruit, canned fruit, dried fruit, jammed fruit, fruit from our own garden, or fruit from the other side of the world. We love citrus fruit, stone fruit, berries... Fruit can be a taste of the familiar or the tang of the exotic. We...

I've been thinking a lot about character lately. The kinds I write, yes...but also our characters. And how, really, the two are pretty much the same, hence the shared name. 😉 Learn More I remember back in the day when I was a 12/13-yr-old, writing the first draft of...

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men....

'Tis the season for snow here in America (or at least the more northern parts of it), and so I thought it would be a great time to share a devotional that one of my characters wrote. 😉 These are the words of LuAnn Sherrill from the Secrets of Wayfarers Inn #20,...

PROMISE. That was my word for 2019. As I blogged about it way back in the first week of January, I said I'd keep an eye out for how God's promise would play out in my life this year. Confession: I really didn't. In fact, I didn't even remember that it was my word of...

A couple weeks ago, my church watched Mom's Night Out--a rather hilarious Christian movie that we all thoroughly enjoyed. In one scene, the heroine's little girl is drawing on the walls with markers--Mommy ends up putting frames around some of them rather than...

Sometimes we are broken. Cracked. Chipped. Completely undone. Sometimes, no matter how much is poured into us, it feels like it all comes leaking back out. Sometimes life just keeps throwing rocks at us, making those chips and cracks grow. Maybe there's been a...

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;     his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning;     great is your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:22-23 (ESV) One of the most amazing things about our...

How do we approach conversation? Is it just a means of exchanging information? Letting our opinions be made known? Are we trying to help others? Broaden our understanding? Do we go at it with no purpose--or with a self-serving one? If you're anything like me, the...

I'm not the world's best housekeeper. This is no secret--I mean, I put it right in my official bio. 😉 Yes, "pretending my house will clean itself" is part of my charming naivete. Ahem. Or at the very least, keeping everything put in its proper place isn't my priority....

“Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, For wisdom and might are His. 21 And He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise And knowledge to those who have understanding. 22 He reveals deep and...

We all know the story of Moses bringing water from the rock. We know it not only because it was another in a long line of miracles, but because it's the one that he did wrong--the one that made God say Moses wouldn't be allowed to enter the promised land. In case it's...

I'm in the midst of reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis . . . something I can't believe I've never read before. And something I've already been nodding along with so much it's a wonder my head hasn't come loose. 😉 Given that the release of The Number of Love has...

Over the weekend, a summer storm raged. The wind blew, the rain lashed down, lightning pierced the sky. Monday morning, I went for my usual morning jog, and I saw something that made me pause. Two birds' nests, blown out of the trees and deposited on different parts...

Pride. It's something I've struggled with a lot over the years. Something I'm continually learning to keep in check. Something I've needed to learn to master so that it's not master of me. Something I've therefore given a lot of thought to and explored in my writing...

Do you ever stop to wonder how different our lives might look if, instead of searching for the most expedient way, we looked for the most meaningful? The word shortcut has existed in English since the 1500s...and I'm sure the idea of it has been around long before...

Last week I talked a bit about how God often speaks to me through what I call "themes"--ideas that keep coming at me over and over, from different directions. The one I focused on last week was "Being Complete." But another topic has been popping up all around me too....

God speaks to us in a lot of ways. For me, He often speaks in what I call themes. Ideas that keep popping up over and over, in a variety of places, coming from all sorts of people. When I notice these recurring themes, I know it's time to pay attention--and to dig a...

I have always believed in the Truth--the kind with a capital T. I reject the idea that it's relative, that there is no Right and Wrong, just "right for me" and "right for you." I believe that this ultimate Truth is part of God. He's the one who determines it, who...

I'm never sure how to explain how thoughts coalesce in my brain. Usually, it's topics that keep coming at me from different angles. In this case, those angles are various discussions we've had lately at church, with fellow authors about topics in books, and also about...

The sunrise down my driveway We live in the mountains. Specifically, the Appalachians in West Virginia. Our home is nestled up against the side of one of these mountains, in a little bit of a valley. It's wooded--the sort of area where it's more remarkable to see open...

This past week, my church's Wednesday night Bible study just began Philippians. Well, we didn't really get much into the book itself; we read the intro from someone's Bible, which said that the book was all about JOY, which is only to be found in Christ, as opposed to...

After two weekends in a row away from home (which is when I'd usually have prepped blog posts), I'm still playing catch-up on the blog. So today, rather than just sharing my thoughts, I want to share some other people's. =) First is my husband, David. As I'm sure...

Well, I'm back from my writing retreat. My manuscript is complete. A weight has been lifted from my shoulders. And as it eased off, I couldn't help but contemplate about this strange thing that is a creative's mind. The doubts that always plague us. This was the sixth...

What does it mean when we call the Bible the infallible Word of God? This is something my husband and I have been talking about from different angles lately. Something that will probably get some vehement reactions, LOL. But something I really think bears thinking...

Given that today is Mardi Gras and tomorrow begins Lent with Ash Wednesday, I decided to bump my usual Thursday post up a few days to talk about something relevant to the season. Fasting. I find the modern take on fasting very curious. There are those who do it...

Have you ever noticed how often children appear in the Gospels? Have you ever wondered why? Time and again, Jesus not only encourages children to come to Him, He holds them up as the examples of true faith. In Matthew 21, after He's just cleared the temple, the...

When I looked down and realized that my normal Thoughtful post this week would be on Valentine's Day...well, it didn't take a genius to realize what my topic ought to be. 😉 But deciding what particular slant I wanted to take on a very general topic proved much more of...

The events of the last couple weeks, as NY passed the bill legalizing late-term abortion, have resulted in some high emotions. I don't watch much news, but even I have seen reactions everywhere. I was horrified when I heard the VA governor, in talking about how "late"...

When God created the earth, what did He say? That it was good. What do we yearn for at the end of our lives? That He'll say, "Well done, good and faithful servant." Not only in the Bible, but in pretty much every piece of literature, ancient and modern, we can find...

This past week in our church Bible study, we were on the well-known parable of the workers in the vineyard. You know the one--where the landowner hired people at the start of the day for an agreed-upon amount. Then throughout the day, he goes back to the marketplace...

We serve a gracious God, don't we? Not only has He given us His Son, His Word, but He continues to speak and minister to us today. As a creative, I can tell you in all honesty that there are many days when I just have to squeeze my eyes shut and say, "Give me the...

Merry Christmas! Everything on the blog this week has been Christmas-themed, as I'm sure you've noticed. 😉 And as a final post before the holidays, I thought I'd just tell you about our little adventure... See, in my family, we get a live tree. If possible, a blue...

Many times through the years, I've joked about being a "delicate flower." Generally, this is what I say when there's heavy lifting to be done that I don't want to do, LOL, or when my husband is teasing me and I'm trying to convince him (sort of) to stop. I say it...

I believe in Good. I believe in Evil. I believe in absolute truth. I believe that sometimes we land firmly on one side or another of this virtually-eternal war...but only sometimes. I believe that more often than not, we are still in the position of Adam and Eve,...

As I'm sure is no secret to you, we live in what's being called an "Outrage Society." People seem to love to get their dander up. To point fingers. To be offended. To declare each other unreasonable, stupid, and declare for all of social media to see that if you think...