Christmas Eve is one of the busiest days of the year for me. Oftentimes I have looked at midnight on Christmas morning as the finish line, that I have to keep going until I get through it then I can fall over in exhaustion and rest. But over the last thirteen or so years, when I...
I love my families…the one I was born into, the one I helped create, my church, my community and friends. They are my favorite people. I love to read. Also one of my favorite things. So about 25 years ago, I began keeping a journal entitled “Quotes I Love.” In...
Editor's Note: Today's devotion contains excerpts from And It Was Good, a book by perhaps our favorite author of all time, Madeleine L'Engle, and featuring one of our favorite and most overlooked Bible stories. May it bring comfort and refreshment to you as we near the end of this...
My favorite thing about Christmas has always been the movies, and my favorite Christmas movie, hands down, is A Christmas Story. As anyone who has known me for more than five minutes probably knows, one of the main reasons is that it was written about my childhood hometown. Author Jean...
Editor's Note: Today's devotion features a new (to us) meditation by Jan Richardson, who also brought us our favorite Blessing for the Longest Night. May it bring peace and light to your soul today and through all the places when light feels scarce. I walk with Kary under a full moon...
My favorite thing is my children’s laughter. When they are playing together, being silly, jumping on the bed or making faces at each other in the back seat of the car. They both get those full belly laughs, and the little one is still between a laugh and a coo and it brings me...
Stockings have always been, for the Boutells, something that we filled with gifts for one another. Heather and I started a tradition when our sons were little of going to the store with the boys and picking out fun things to wrap and put in each other’s stocking. We would divide up...
It’s the end of October Another year passes yet all is not over The world is becoming yellow, orange, and red Things continue on, but all is not really dead Our openness to the mysteries of life A prayer for an existence without seasonal strife God has blessed us once again...
When the topic of our annual advent devotional was announced, I immediately got that song from The Sound of Music stuck in my head. So in an effort to drown out the repeating lyrics of mittens and whiskers on kittens, I decided delay thinking about what to write for this...
My favorite Christmas memory centers on candy. For as long as I can remember, my family has made peanut brittle around the holidays and distributed it to friends and loved ones. My earliest memories are of sitting and watching my grandfather, George Pope, slowly heat the sugar concoction...
