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

Praying about the flow of time: Paying attention to our stories

Lynne Baab • Wednesday July 16 2025

Praying about the flow of time: Paying attention to our stories

“People in fact change by the offer of new models, images, and pictures of how the pieces of life fit together. Transformation is the slow, steady process of inviting each other into a counterstory about God, world, neighbor, and self. This slow, steady process has as counterpoint the subversive process of unlearning and disengaging from a story we find no longer to be credible or adequate.” —Walter Brueggemann, Texts Under Negotiation

In this church season of Ordinary Time, I’m encouraging you, my beloved readers, to think about the daily, ordinary Christian journey. One aspect of our daily life of discipleship is to be...

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Praying about the flow of time: Wind and water

Lynne Baab • Thursday July 10 2025

Praying about the flow of time: Wind and water

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

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

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

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

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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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

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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