Friendship, Listening, and Empathy: A Prayer GuideDraw Near: A Lenten Devotional Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian LifeSabbath Keeping: Finding Freedom in the Rhythms of Rest Fasting: Spiritual Freedom Beyond our AppetitesA Renewed SpiritualityNurturing Hope: Christian Pastoral Care in the Twenty-First CenturyThe Power of ListeningJoy Together: Spiritual Practices for Your CongregationPrayers of the New TestamentPrayers of the Old TestamentPersonality Type in CongregationsSabbathA Garden of Living Water: Stories of Self-Discovery and Spiritual GrowthDead Sea: A NovelDeadly Murmurs: A NovelDeath in Dunedin: A NovelBeating Burnout in CongregationsReaching Out in a Networked WorldEmbracing MidlifeFriendingAdvent Devotional

Hospitality and prayer

Lynne Baab • Tuesday May 30 2023

Hospitality and prayer

I wonder what comes to mind when you hear the word “hospitality.” Hosting people in your home for meals or overnight? Perhaps larger-scale hospitality events like meals at church for church members or the wider community? In your mind, does hospitality usually or always involve food?

I recently taught a class on spiritual practices for a Christian university. My students were all in their thirties or forties. In the online discussion about hospitality, two of my students wrote about how they are perfectly comfortable hosting their kids' friends. However, when the parents or other adults show up, these two students said they...

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Simplicity and prayer

Lynne Baab • Tuesday May 23 2023

Simplicity and prayer

God of beauty and peace, help me to uncomplicate and untangle my life so I can focus on what really matters.

In that prayer for simplicity, I am using Adele Ahlberg Calhoun’s words from her wonderful Spiritual Disciplines Handbook. She writes that our desire in embracing the spiritual practice of simplicity is “to uncomplicate and untangle my life so I can focus on what really matters.” [1] I love that the words “uncomplicate and untangle” can refer to many things: our physical possessions that can feel overwhelmingly cluttered, our schedule that can feel endlessly complicated, and our relationships that can feel hopelessly...

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First post in a new series: Spiritual practices and prayer

Lynne Baab • Tuesday May 16 2023

First post in a new series: Spiritual practices and prayer

Toni, in her forties, fasts frequently. Sometimes she stops eating all food and consumes only water and tea, sometimes she gives up a specific food or category of food, and sometimes she fasts from various forms of media. Her fasts usually last between a day and a week, although sometimes she fasts longer. When she feels led to start a fast, she usually has several prayer requests in mind that she’s hoping to pray for in the time freed up by the fast. She has found that over the course of her fasts, her prayers shift not only to new topics...

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Draw near: Praying to listen to our bodies

Lynne Baab • Tuesday May 9 2023

Draw near: Praying to listen to our bodies

Two disciples are walking home after Jesus’s crucifixion. They meet a stranger on the road, and he talks to them about the pattern of God’s work in history. When they invite him into their home to have dinner with them, he breaks the bread, they recognize that he is Jesus, and he vanishes. Reflecting back on the conversation on the road, they say, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:13-35).

Jenna Smith, the director of a Christian youth center in Montreal, has an...

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Featured books

Featured articles

Meeting God in Grief and Gratitude

Lynne Baab • Wednesday January 22 2025

By Lynne M. Baab, author of Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian Life

Nurturing a contemplative stance for navigating challenging times

Lynne Baab • Friday August 11 2023

By Lynne M. Baab

Yes, Jesus Told Us to Pray in Secret. But He Also Prayed with His Friends.

Lynne Baab • Saturday October 9 2021

By Lynne M. Baab. Originally published in Christianity Today, July 8, 2021