Friendship, Listening, and Empathy: A Prayer GuideDraw Near: A Lenten Devotional Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian LifeSabbath Keeping FastingA Renewed SpiritualityNurturing Hope: Christian Pastoral Care in the Twenty-First CenturyThe Power of ListeningJoy Together: Spiritual Practices for Your CongregationPrayers of the New TestamentPrayers of the Old TestamentPersonality Type in CongregationsSabbathA Garden of Living Water: Stories of Self-Discovery and Spiritual GrowthDead Sea: A NovelDeadly Murmurs: A NovelDeath in Dunedin: A NovelBeating Burnout in CongregationsReaching Out in a Networked WorldEmbracing MidlifeFriendingAdvent Devotional

Creativity and imagination

Lynne Baab • Friday July 10 2020

Creativity and imagination

Before I give you my thoughts on this subject, I want to ask you to ponder some questions:

Are creativity and imagination the same? Different? Overlapping a little? Overlapping a lot? Does creativity fuel imagination? Or does imagination fuel creativity? Or both? I’m asking those questions because I’m pondering them. Those two words are often used with similar or overlapping meanings. In my mind, they are not the same thing, but I’m still working on figuring out exactly how I think they differ. I want to give some examples that I have thought about as I have tried to answer my questions above. You...

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Creativity and the body

Lynne Baab • Wednesday July 1 2020

Creativity and the body

I’m thinking about friends who have been doing a lot of crocheting and knitting during the pandemic. I’m thinking of their hands rhythmically moving the knitting needles or crochet hook, threading yarn through their fingers.

I’m thinking of friends who have been baking bread in these strange days. I picture them moving around their kitchens, from fridge to sink to countertop to oven, using their hands and their feet as they gather ingredients, knead and shape their loaves.

I’m thinking of a friend who is a poet. I’ve never asked her whether she writes her poems on a piece of paper with a...

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Creativity though hidden art

Lynne Baab • Wednesday June 24 2020

Creativity though hidden art

Today I want to describe a book that changed my life in the area of creativity, a book that I don’t recommend reading. I wonder if I’m not recommending it because it’s old, a bit out of date, and perhaps too perfectionistic. Or, maybe I’m not recommending it because of a run-in I had with the author that perfectly illustrates some of the issues of creativity in the home.

Hidden Art by Edith Schaeffer was published the same year that I met Mrs. Schaeffer (I was 19), although I read it a year or two later. It was the first book I encountered...

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Creativity: One key prayer

Lynne Baab • Friday June 19 2020

Creativity: One key prayer

I became a committed Christian when I was nineteen and a half. Right before my twenty-second birthday, I attended the “Mark 2 Bible study dig-in,” offered at Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship summer camps. “Mark 1” allowed students to focus for five full days on the first half of the Gospel of Mark, and I had participated in that seminar the summer before. “Mark 2” enabled students to look at the second half of Mark for five days. That summer camp, held in the beautiful Santa Cruz mountains of California, forever merged in my mind the Gospel of Mark with stately live oak...

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Featured books

Featured articles

Meeting God in Grief and Gratitude

Lynne Baab • Wednesday January 22 2025

By Lynne M. Baab, author of Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian Life

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Lynne Baab • Friday August 11 2023

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Yes, Jesus Told Us to Pray in Secret. But He Also Prayed with His Friends.

Lynne Baab • Saturday October 9 2021

By Lynne M. Baab. Originally published in Christianity Today, July 8, 2021