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Nature speaks about God: Mountains and clouds on Easter

Lynne Baab • Friday March 9 2018

On my first Easter Sunday as a committed Christian, I sat on a balcony overlooking the Rhone River Valley in Switzerland, listening to a sermon about the resurrection. My back was to the church building, with a window right next to me, so I could hear the sermon. In front of me, the hillside dropped away to the valley floor 2000 feet below me. On the other side of the valley, the seven peaks called Les Dents du Midi rose to an altitude of 10,000 feet.

The preacher was Francis Schaeffer, and the church building was the chapel of the community he...

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First post in a new series: Nature speaks about God

Lynne Baab • Friday March 2 2018

I was 15 the first time nature spoke to me. We had lived in southern Virginia while I was in junior high school. My dad was stationed at Langley Air Force Base, and right before I turned 15 he retired from the air force. My parents decided we would move to the West Coast.

We traveled by way of Toronto, Michigan, Missouri, Texas and Colorado, pulling a 14 foot trailer behind our Dodge. We visited grandmothers, cousins, aunts and uncles, and family friends. For a teenager, six weeks of close intimacy with her family, while driving 8,000 miles and mourning the loss...

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Listening to God in Prayer: Some helpful quotations

Lynne Baab • Saturday February 24 2018

Below are thought-provoking quotations about contemplative prayer, which has as a central focus listening to God in prayer.

“Put simply, the contemplative life is the steady gaze of the soul upon the God who loves us. It is ‘an intimate sharing between friends,’ to use the words of Teresa of Avila.” —Richard Foster, Streams of Living Water

Ben, 56, says, “The contemplative experience helped me focus on knowing God and the presence of God and God’s love for me. It’s what got me outside myself and outside of thinking about how I’m doing in life. The traditions that I grew up with emphasized holiness...

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Listening to God in Prayer: Availability

Lynne Baab • Thursday February 15 2018

The contemplative prayer tradition has always emphasized listening and receptivity. Richard Foster points out the dangers inherent in this tradition. Foster believes that the most common danger is the separation of prayer from everyday life. In addition, he mentions the peril of devaluing intellectual efforts to articulate our faith and the tendency to become so individualistic that we neglect the community of faith.[1]

M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., Asbury Seminary professor, might respond to Richard Foster’s concerns this way: “A life of abiding in God is characterized by a heart whose deepest cry echoes and re-echoes through every aspect of its life –...

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