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Draw near: Praying to listen to our bodies

Lynne Baab • Tuesday May 9 2023

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

“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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Draw near: Praying to act like a friend

Lynne Baab • Tuesday April 25 2023

Six years ago, I won an award for an article arguing that to be a neighbor we need to nurture our listening skills. (That’s the only time I’ve won an award for an article. It was a cool moment.) Here’s the opening to the article:

Many years ago, I heard a sermon on the prodigal son. “Who is my neighbor?” the teacher of the law asks Jesus (Luke 10:29). In response, Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. At the end of the story, Jesus asks, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands...

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Draw Near: Praying to love our limits

Lynne Baab • Tuesday April 18 2023

Take a look at this cool book title: You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News. I truly love that title, which seems increasingly relevant as I get older and experience the limitations (and even humiliations) of aging. The author is Kelly M. Kapic, a professor of theology at Covenant College, who has written numerous books. This latest book, with the title I find captivating, was published in 2022.

In an interview in Christianity Today, Dr. Kapic mentions the gap between our high expectations of ourselves and the limits we live with. He says this gap probably comes...

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