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

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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Draw near: Praying for hope

Lynne Baab • Tuesday May 2 2023

Draw near: Praying for hope

“Hope is optimism with a broken heart.” —Nick Cave, Australian singer, songwriter, screenwriter, and occasional actor inFaith, Hope and Carnage, co-authored with Sean O’Hagan. [1]

I have written before about the toxic optimism I was raised with, an optimism that makes no room for emotions of sadness, anger, and fear. As a result of the tension between my own intense emotions and an atmosphere that negated them, I have struggled my whole life to figure out what exactly God desires related to a positive outlook, optimism, and hope. 

I resonated with Nick Cave’s perception that hope is connected to both optimism and a broken...

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