Shout for joy, you heavens; rejoice, you earth; burst into song, you mountains! For the Lord comforts His people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones. — Isaiah 49:13 I hear it on Sunday, thinking our preacher’s looking straight at me, me trying to look away: When God moves us out of our comfort zone — into places that are way…
Risky Living {Ann Voskamp}
Risky Living But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness. — 2 Corinthians 12:9 When my dad called this morning, he said his farming friend, Alan Bertrand, was “just trying to figure out whether to spend the years he’s got left restoring another one…
Amaryllis Grace: Joy is Worth the Wait
Editor’s Note: Welcome to Sit & Listen Saturdays at Devotionals Daily! Enjoy reading as well as listening to this message today from One Thousand Gifts Devotional by Ann Voskamp, read by Ann Voskamp. Surely, just as I have intended so it has happened, and just as I have planned so it will stand. — Isaiah 14:24 Why…
Humble Grace: Humility Comes Before Happiness
God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth. — Matthew 5:5 NLT I’m standing in a mudroom, sorting children’s dribbled shirts, grass-stained jeans. I live in laundry. How to be Little-One in now’s wonderland, in Kingdom of Heaven coming? How to live in a state of awe when life is…
Ugly Grace
For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things. – Colossians 1:19-20 The wrinkled man in the wheelchair with the legs wrapped, the girl with her face punctured deep with the teeth marks of a dog, the mess of this world, and I see. In German, it’s…
Hard Grace
Everything is eucharisteo. Because eucharisteo is how Jesus, at the Last Supper, showed us to transfigure all things — take the pain that is given, give thanks for it, and transform it into a joy that fulfills all emptiness. I have glimpsed it: This, the hard eucharisteo. The hard discipline to lean into the ugly…
Grief and God… and Manna Grace
He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. – Deuteronomy 8:3 I shouldn’t, but I do. I look up.…