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The pivot between grief and gratitude

Lynne Baab • Saturday November 27 2021

Imagine you are crying about something, perhaps the death of a family member, the loss of a dream, an argument with a friend, or something deeply frustrating that’s happening in your body. Perhaps you feel distant from God in the midst of this sorrow, and you wonder if God sees what you are experiencing. Then imagine some time passes, and you are now laughing at a joke, relishing a delicious meal, or gazing awe-struck at a blazing sunset. What got you from one place to the other?

Almost all of the psalms of lament pivot from sadness/grief/anger to thankfulness/praise/joy. Some of them...

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Grief and thankfulness at the same time or back and forth?

Lynne Baab • Friday November 19 2021

Two years ago I began a journey of trying to hold grief in one hand and thankfulness in the other. The journey resulted in a series of blog posts (see below) and a new book. As a part of the journey, I found myself asking a question. Do we hold grief and gratitude in two hands equally at the same time? Or is one hand or the other sometimes more prominent?

I looked at lament psalms that describe grief. They almost always follow a pattern of sadness/anger/grief followed by thankfulness/praise. These psalms imply that we grieve and then we move out of...

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Grief and gratitude in Ezra, Nehemiah, and Gerard Manley Hopkins

Lynne Baab • Friday November 12 2021

A few days after my always-helpful husband, Dave, proofread my recent book on grief and gratitude, he told me that he was seeing grief and gratitude everywhere. He was studying Ezra and Nehemiah, and they are full of both, he said. As the Jewish people returned from exile in Babylon, there were so many challenges and so much to grieve: Jerusalem’s city walls and temple lay in ruins, the rebuilding took much longer than expected, and the people kept falling into idolatry. Yet the first celebration of the Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles presented such lovely opportunities to express thanks...

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Holy Spirit disruptions: Overview of the series

Lynne Baab • Thursday November 4 2021

For five decades, I have known that Jesus is present in my life through the Holy Spirit. During those same decades, I also have affirmed that God works in our lives through the Holy Spirit. But I had no idea how many examples I would see when I looked at my life through the lens of “Holy Spirit disruptions.” Here are all the weekly posts in this series that ended up running six months – because I kept finding new memories to write about:

Introduction to the series Embodiment Pride and ego We are God’s beloved What if something being hard shows we’re doing it right? Go/wait Wait Ignite...

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