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Praying about the flow of time: Wind and water

Lynne Baab • Thursday July 10 2025

The summer I turned 13, my brother, Mark, and I took sailing lessons. We had just moved onto Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, located on a small arm of Chesapeake Bay. First, they introduced us to a lovely sailboat with two sails and a spinnaker, similar the ones in the illustration for this post. Then they put us on a Sailfish, which is basically a surfboard with a sail. As we learned to sail, we capsized a lot. That arm of Chesapeake Bay had lots of jellyfish. Ouch!

The summer I turned 17, friends of my parents asked Mark and me...

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Praying about the flow of time: Praying for our ordinary lives

Lynne Baab • Tuesday July 8 2025

We recently had house guests from New Zealand, including a darling four-year-old girl. At one meal, she told us about a fall that required a trip to urgent care. “My chin split open!” she said cheerfully. “There was blood everywhere!”

Her facial expression and tone of voice contrasted with her words, so I said, “That sounds scary. Were you scared?”

She replied in the same tone of voice, “Mummy was with me.”

Sadly, we have far too many moments of fear in our everyday lives. I’m sure you can remember moments when your awareness of God’s presence with you gave you some measure of...

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Praying about the flow of time: Praying about AND — again

Lynne Baab • Thursday July 3 2025

Last week, I wrote that one of my goals is to help people think critically and pray wisely about the human brain’s love of dichotomies and hierarchies. We often mention two things and link them with BUT, indicating that one of them has priority over the other. Linking them with AND places them side by side with equal emphasis.

After I wrote that post, my friend Rich Morey, a therapist and psychologist, replied:

“AND seems to play an outsized role in my life. I am often struck by how seemingly opposites often present in unison: grief and gratitude, sadness and joy, the sweet and the bitter. ...

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Praying about the flow of time: Praying about AND

Lynne Baab • Wednesday June 25 2025

The human brain loves dichotomies: this NOT that. One of my goals in my writing is to affirm that the truth often lies in this AND that. Grace AND truth. Righteousness AND peace (Psalm 85:10). Grief AND gratitude. Our brains really want to nurture dichotomies, so we need the help of the Holy Spirit to hold two opposite things in tension. Of course, we access that help through prayer.

An amusing and thought-provoking illustration of this AND that comes from the endings to the four Gospels. We might look to Jesus's last words to his disciples to get an idea of how...

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