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Receptivity and offering: Dependence

Lynne Baab • Wednesday April 13 2022

A morning prayer: “Faithful God, I have awakened to your new day. Let me rejoice and be glad in it. I turn to you at its threshold because I depend completely on your strength. I have not made myself, cannot keep myself, could never save myself. And so, loving God, I give myself to you for this day – my creator, keeper and savior.” —Cornelius Plantinga, Morning and Evening Prayers

Dr. Plantinga was one of my favorite seminary professors. He came to Seattle from Calvin Seminary, where he was a theology professor at the time, to teach an intensive for Fuller Seminary’s Seattle extension....

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Quotations I love: Listen to the sermon preached to you by the flowers

Lynne Baab • Wednesday April 7 2021

“Let all creation help you to praise God. Give yourself the rest you need. When you are walking alone, listen to the sermon preached to you by the flowers, the trees, the shrubs, the sky, the sun and the whole world. Notice how they preach to you a sermon full of love, of praise of God, and how they invite you to proclaim the greatness of the one who has given them being.” —Saint Paul of the Cross (1694-1775), founder of the Passionist Order and preacher

At 20, one year after I became a committed Christian, I spent a lot of...

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Quotations I love: Eugene Peterson on anything goes in prayer

Lynne Baab • Friday February 12 2021

A few weeks ago, after a blog post on prayer, a friend wrote to me: “I do intend to pray, and these days I cry out to the Lord many times during the course of each day, but I’m having a tough time being intentional about prayer, including making time for prayer and what I pray for.” She wrote about her desire to learn “habit stacking,” always a great idea. Habit stacking might involve praying for sick friends every time you hear an ambulance or praying a psalm right after you brush your teeth each night.

The most common thing I hear...

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Quotations I love: the consolation of imaginary things

Lynne Baab • Wednesday February 3 2021

“The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation.” —Roger Scruton (English philosopher, 1944-2020, author of Art and Imagination, 1974).

My friend is telling me how much she loves West Wing. She tells me: “Often at bedtime, I get out one of my West Wing DVDs and watch an episode or two, just because I want to spend time with those people.”

A few weeks later, I am reading A Memoir of Jane Austen, written in 1870 by her nephew, J. E. Austen-Leigh. He writes about some of the favorite characters in the Jane Austen novels, “who have been admitted as familiar guests to the...

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