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Receptivity and offering: And-ness

Lynne Baab • Wednesday May 11 2022

“The world we inhabit is full of splendor and misery, our fellow humans are brilliant and inspiring and selfish and vicious, and we ourselves are hopelessly motley, full of mixed motives and mixed feelings.” —Kathryn Schulz, a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of the memoir “Lost & Found.”

Schulz describes the big and small losses she experienced in the pandemic and concludes:

“All these are examples of what I think of as the fundamental and-ness of life, the way it requires us to experience so many contradictory or unrelated things all at once. There’s no getting away from this and-ness, because it is...

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Receptivity and offering: Tears

Lynne Baab • Wednesday May 4 2022

My husband Dave and I have been talking about the growing number of times we get tears in our eyes. We are both experiencing this as we get older.

Dave often tears up when singing hymns or praise songs at church, and when that happens, he feels okay about it because no one can see him in the pew. However, in our church we come forward to receive communion, and Dave often has tears on his face as he comes forward. He finds this embarrassing (and he gave me permission to write about this).

He says that his tears sometimes reflect sadness for...

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Receptivity and offering: Fatigue

Lynne Baab • Thursday March 31 2022

“I’m just tired. I think America is essentially an optimistic country. That’s the nature. ‘A more perfect union’ is an optimistic thing to say. We’re all just tired.” —Stephen Colbert, host of The Late Night Show [1]

Maybe Stephen Colbert’s words don’t resonate with you at all. Maybe you’re not tired. (Maybe you’re not American.) If you’re not tired these day, you are profoundly blessed, and I hope you can spend some time praising and thanking God that your optimism, hope, and joy are intact.

Sadly, I can’t remember a time when so many people have told me they are tired and discouraged. I...

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Receptivity and offering: Posture/stance

Lynne Baab • Thursday March 24 2022

Back in 2014, a wonderful Australian friend, Darren Cronshaw, co-wrote a book that I really appreciated. The title is a made-up word, “Sentness,” which refers to John 17:18, Jesus sending us into the world as he was sent. “Sentness” – making the verb “sent” into a state of being – captures a lot about how we live in the world. The subtitle gives further helpful vocabulary: “Six Postures for Missional Christians.” Darren and his co-author, Kim Hammond, want us to think about our posture as Christians – the way we stand in the world, our approach or attitude.

They write, “There are...

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