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Providing Christian care: The importance of spiritual practices

Lynne Baab • Friday August 24 2018

I am having a conversation at coffee hour with a woman who is struggling in her job. As she talks about her discouragement, I say, “Can I say a quick prayer for you?”

She says yes, and right there amid the people chatting over coffee, I put my hand on her shoulder and pray for God’s guidance, strength and mercy for her.

Pastoral care that is uniquely Christian must have a component of prayer. Sometimes we can pray aloud for the person we are caring for as I did at coffee hour that day. Other times, the prayer is silent within us, because...

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Contrasts: Engaging in spiritual practices because of grace or guilt

Lynne Baab • Thursday June 14 2018

I’ve been speaking and writing about the Sabbath for more than a decade, but I recently had an aha experience about Sabbath keeping in my life and its connection to other spiritual practices.

Much of my speaking and writing about spiritual practices flows out of my own Sabbath observance. The Sabbath taught me how spiritual practices work: we know God loves us, so we set up structures in our lives to draw near to this God of abundant blessings.

When we were young adults, my husband and I lived in Israel for 18 months. Our apartment was in a Jewish neighborhood in Tel Aviv, so...

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On Pentecost, let's ponder the Holy Spirit

Lynne Baab • Saturday May 19 2018

We celebrate Pentecost this Sunday, the day when we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit to the people gathered in Jerusalem for the Pentecost festival. You can read about it in Acts 2 (which you can access here.) Almost two millennia after Pentecost, we benefit every day from the presence of the Holy Spirit with us.

One of my seminary professor called the Holy Spirit the “shy” member of the Trinity. This professor was referring to the fact that the Holy Spirit’s role is to bring glory to the Father and the Son. Thus the Holy Spirit is the least visible...

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Prayer as listening to God: Looking back at last year

Lynne Baab • Saturday December 30 2017

A year is ending. A new year begins in a few days. Newspapers and magazines are full of ideas for New Year’s resolutions, and how to keep them.

I wish more people wrote and talked about how to look back on the past year in a way that is fruitful and helpful. As a way to do that, I want to propose a prayer of examen for the whole year.

I wrote last week about Examen, an ancient prayer form that focuses on identifying where God was present and where we resisted God. The prayer has four movements, which I’ll describe and illustrate...

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