Home & Blog | Lynne Baab

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...

Read full article »

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...

Read full article »

Receptivity and offering: Extract a lesson from regrets

Lynne Baab • Thursday March 17 2022

“Though we would like to live without regrets, and sometimes proudly insist that we have none, this is not really possible, if only because we are mortal.” —James Baldwin, American writer and activist, 1967

Numerous times when people have talked with me about something they’re struggling with, I have suggested they imagine that a friend has come to them with the same problem. What would they say to that friend? To my surprise, I learned that the effectiveness of this strategy is actually backed up by research. Daniel Pink mentions this research in the article on regret that I’ve been writing about for...

Read full article »

Receptivity and offering: Sharing regrets with others

Lynne Baab • Thursday March 10 2022

As a young adult, I was curious what it meant that humans are created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27). I started asking older and wiser Christians what they thought, and the uniform answer was that humans are rational like God. In the decades since then, an idea has exploded on the theological scene that humans are social because the Trinity is relational. Many theologians now argue that the image of God in humans is our drive and need to nurture connections with other people and with God. The level of sociability from one person to another varies, of course. The pandemic...

Read full article »

<< Newer | Older >>