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Draw near: Praying to be present when people change

Lynne Baab • Tuesday March 7 2023

The week before Valentine’s Day, a friend posted a quotation on Facebook. Since then I have returned over and over to this quotation, which is increasingly relevant as I get older, and as my family members and friends are aging, too:

“To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be. The people they’re too exhausted to be any longer. The people they don’t recognize inside themselves anymore. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back...

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Draw near: Praying about starting, stopping, and finishing

Lynne Baab • Tuesday February 28 2023

When my husband Dave was a child and teenager, he spent a lot of time with his dad, Hubert, in Hubert’s workshop. When Dave would help Hubert with a specific project, Hubert frequently said, “You’re a finisher, Dave.” Those words of blessing helped Dave complete his undergraduate degree in three years, persevere in the challenging years of dental school, and learn to do academic research as an associate professor in a dental school. To my great benefit, Hubert’s words helped Dave persevere in being a consistent and loving dad and husband.

There are moments, however, when those words keep Dave from stopping...

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Draw near: praying about being as relationship

Lynne Baab • Tuesday February 21 2023

John Zizioulas recently died. I imagine many of my readers have no idea who he is, and I certainly didn’t until about ten years ago. He wrote a book that was life-changing for me, or perhaps more accurately a book that enabled me to take a large step on a journey I was already on. Zizioulas (1931-2023) was a Greek Orthodox bishop who wrote many books on theology. The one I read a decade ago is called Being as Communion, and his argument there is not unusual these days: humans are made in the image of a relational God. Therefore to...

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Draw near: Names for God in prayer

Lynne Baab • Wednesday February 15 2023

Until I was nine, my father was an air force pilot. I got my love of maps from him because he always showed me where he had flown. Apart from that, I had little relationship with him because he always seemed tired and unavailable when he was at home. I could understand being tired after flying a plane, so I wasn’t mad about it. After he quit flying, he stayed in the air force another six years, and then he was a banker. He was still mostly unavailable when at home, which was a bit baffling and even upsetting because he...

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