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Praying about the flow of time: Guests and hosts on the road to Emmaus

Lynne Baab • Tuesday May 6 2025

On the day of Jesus’s resurrection, a disciple named Cleopas and another person — perhaps a friend, a sibling, or Cleopas’s wife — left Jerusalem before news of the resurrection reached them. Both of them had been eager followers of Jesus, and they walked home to Emmaus disconsolate and discouraged because Jesus had died. A stranger on the road joined their discussion, asking them why they were sad. They told him about Jesus, their hopes about his kingdom, and the dashing of those hopes at his crucifixion. The stranger, extremely well-versed in Jewish history and the Hebrew scriptures, told them his...

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Praying about the flow of time: An Emmaus lesson about listening to our bodies

Lynne Baab • Tuesday April 29 2025

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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Praying about the flow of time: Earth Day

Lynne Baab • Tuesday April 22 2025

Earth Day is this week, April 20. I want to encourage prayers in honor of Earth Day, specifically prayers for those who influence others to care for the earth. To do that, I’ll describe two people at my church.

My good friend Janette Plunkett works as Energy and Sustainability Manager at Seattle Pacific University on policies that reduce campus energy use. She recently wrote to me in an email, “In our largest building we've reduced energy usage by 37% and more than $140,000 in avoided costs. That's also the equivalent of greenhouse gas emissions from 275 airline trips of 3,000 miles each. This...

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Praying about the flow of time: Where was Jesus on Holy Saturday?

Lynne Baab • Thursday April 17 2025

Holy Saturday is the day of hushed stillness between Good Friday and Easter. The disciples mourn because this powerful and loving One, who promised to bring life, is dead. The angels weep that the beloved Son of God has been forcibly, but willingly, separated from his Father in the cruelest imaginable way.

Where was Jesus on Holy Saturday?

Was he lying quietly in the tomb, truly dead, while his Father planned the Resurrection?

Was he in hell? In the Apostle’s Creed we say that we believe in Jesus Christ, God’s “only Son Our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin...

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