Almost Peaceful: My Journey of Healing from Binge EatingFriendship, Listening, and Empathy: A Prayer GuideDraw Near: A Lenten Devotional Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian LifeSabbath Keeping: Finding Freedom in the Rhythms of Rest Fasting: Spiritual Freedom Beyond our AppetitesA 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

Draw near: A favorite prayer about peace, freedom, and much more

Lynne Baab • Tuesday August 23 2022

Draw near: A favorite prayer about peace, freedom, and much more

“O God, the author of peace and lover of concord, to know you is eternal life and to serve you is perfect freedom: Defend us, your humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in your defense, may not fear the power of any adversaries; through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” —The Book of Common Prayer

This is my second favorite prayer from my childhood. (My favorite is described here.) The Book of Common Prayer laid such a profound foundation for me on Sunday mornings in Episcopal churches with my family. I believed in God until I...

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Draw near: Confessing sin without wallowing

Lynne Baab • Tuesday August 16 2022

Draw near: Confessing sin without wallowing

Esther de Waal, in her book The Celtic Way of Prayer, writes about the sense of guilt that bedeviled her childhood, the feeling of never being good enough, of failing again and again in trying to measure up. In Celtic Christian prayers she found something different, a complete absence of that kind of self-focused guilt, and a joy in Jesus’s gift of forgiveness. She writes that in the Celtic poems and songs,

“I have found sorrow, deep sorrow, many tears, an outpouring of grief, but it is never turned on itself, never the kind of sorrow that becomes inward, self-destructive guilt, feeding...

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Draw near: Feeling unworthy as an obstacle to prayer

Lynne Baab • Tuesday August 9 2022

Draw near: Feeling unworthy as an obstacle to prayer

“For many years I believed I couldn’t even approach God in prayer until I had dutifully catalogued a litany of the sins I had committed since the last time I had prayed. Quite often the process of prayer made me feel unworthy, unholy, and exhausted by my own inadequacy. And I was taught, and indeed believed, that these were the things I was always supposed to feel – inadequate and unworthy – so that I could be properly grateful for the extension of divine grace. The consequence was that sometimes it simply felt better not to pray.” —Britney Cooper, professor at Rutgers...

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Draw near: Tune our hearts

Lynne Baab • Tuesday August 2 2022

Draw near: Tune our hearts

Come, thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace; streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise. Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above. Praise the mount I'm fixed upon it mount of God's redeeming love.

Robert Robinson was 22 years old when he penned those words in 1758 as a hymn for Pentecost. He was in transition from his work as a hairdresser in London to the preacher he would become. Notice the two things this verse asks for: “tune my heart to sing thy grace,” and “teach me some melodious sonnet sung by flaming tongues above.” Jesus’s...

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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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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