Draw Near: Lenten Devotional by Lynne Baab, illustrated by Dave BaabTwo Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian LifeA Renewed SpiritualityNurturing Hope: Christian Pastoral Care in the Twenty-First CenturyThe Power of ListeningJoy Together: Spiritual Practices for Your CongregationSabbath Keeping FastingPrayers of the Old TestamentPrayers of the New TestamentSabbathFriendingA Garden of Living Water: Stories of Self-Discovery and Spiritual GrowthDeath in Dunedin: A NovelDead Sea: A NovelDeadly Murmurs: A NovelPersonality Type in CongregationsBeating Burnout in CongregationsReaching Out in a Networked WorldEmbracing MidlifeAdvent Devotional

Can we feel sad when we have something we longed for?

Lynne Baab • Friday December 10 2021

Can we feel sad when we have something we longed for?

Heather went through three rounds of exhausting in-vitro fertilization before her healthy baby was born. In the months after the birth, she experienced post-partum depression, but she felt she couldn’t tell anyone about it. “I just felt I should not be feeling this way. After everything we’ve been through, why should I have any kind of depression?”

Kristin, mother of one child, lost a baby at 39 weeks of pregnancy, then miscarried. A year later, when her daughter was born with significant digestive issues and cried a lot, Kristin just about went crazy. She wanted to be thankful for having a child...

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The pivot between grief and gratitude

Lynne Baab • Saturday November 27 2021

The pivot between grief and gratitude

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 gratitude in Ezra, Nehemiah, and Gerard Manley Hopkins

Lynne Baab • Friday November 12 2021

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

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: Pride and ego

Lynne Baab • Wednesday June 16 2021

Holy Spirit disruptions: Pride and ego

Being a writer/teacher/preacher has created a form of pride or ego in me that the Holy Spirit has been disrupting pretty intensely during the pandemic. You might think the biggest form of pride or ego for writers/teachers/preachers would be the conviction that we are right. That has certainly been an issue for me for much of my life, something that my family members have mentioned dozens or even hundreds of times.  It feels like I’ve learned a lot about that. Maybe I will have more to learn at another time, but that hasn’t been the pandemic pride/ego issue.

The form of pride...

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