Draw Near: Lenten Devotional by Lynne Baab, illustrated by Dave BaabTwo Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian LifeA Renewed SpiritualityNurturing Hope: Christian Pastoral Care in the Twenty-First CenturyThe Power of ListeningJoy Together: Spiritual Practices for Your CongregationSabbath Keeping FastingPrayers of the Old TestamentPrayers of the New TestamentSabbathFriendingA Garden of Living Water: Stories of Self-Discovery and Spiritual GrowthDeath in Dunedin: A NovelDead Sea: A NovelDeadly Murmurs: A NovelPersonality Type in CongregationsBeating Burnout in CongregationsReaching Out in a Networked WorldEmbracing MidlifeAdvent Devotional

Grief and gratitude in Ezra, Nehemiah, and Gerard Manley Hopkins

Lynne Baab • Friday November 12 2021

Grief and gratitude in Ezra, Nehemiah, and Gerard Manley Hopkins

A few days after my always-helpful husband, Dave, proofread my recent book on grief and gratitude, he told me that he was seeing grief and gratitude everywhere. He was studying Ezra and Nehemiah, and they are full of both, he said. As the Jewish people returned from exile in Babylon, there were so many challenges and so much to grieve: Jerusalem’s city walls and temple lay in ruins, the rebuilding took much longer than expected, and the people kept falling into idolatry. Yet the first celebration of the Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles presented such lovely opportunities to express thanks...

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Holy Spirit disruptions: Pride and ego

Lynne Baab • Wednesday June 16 2021

Holy Spirit disruptions: Pride and ego

Being a writer/teacher/preacher has created a form of pride or ego in me that the Holy Spirit has been disrupting pretty intensely during the pandemic. You might think the biggest form of pride or ego for writers/teachers/preachers would be the conviction that we are right. That has certainly been an issue for me for much of my life, something that my family members have mentioned dozens or even hundreds of times.  It feels like I’ve learned a lot about that. Maybe I will have more to learn at another time, but that hasn’t been the pandemic pride/ego issue.

The form of pride...

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Quotations I love: No matter what happens . . .

Lynne Baab • Wednesday March 24 2021

Quotations I love: No matter what happens . . .

“No matter what happens to me, that happened to me.”           —Brian Doyle [1]

A man is diagnosed with advanced cancer. The oncologist holds out some hope, so the man undergoes chemotherapy. As the man experiences the brutal side effects of the chemo, his grown son steps into the role of caregiver. The man finds himself deeply moved by the gentleness and kindness of his son. As the man thinks about his likely death, he juxtaposes those thoughts with the love his son has shown him, and he tries to hold onto that love in the face of his fear...

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Quotations I love: P. D. James on pain and love

Lynne Baab • Tuesday February 23 2021

Quotations I love: P. D. James on pain and love

“The world is a beautiful and terrible place. Deeds of horror are committed every minute and in the end those we love die. If the screams of all earth’s living creatures were one scream of pain, surely it would shake the stars. But we have love. It may seem a frail defence against the horrors of the world, but we must hold fast and believe in it, for it is all that we have.”           —P. D. James (1920-2014)

These are the last four sentences of P. D. James’s last book, The Private Patient, published in 2008. The setting...

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