Lynne Baab • Wednesday December 2 2020
Lament is a big part of my prayers these days. In my lifetime, I have never experienced so much sadness, grief and pain when I look around at our world. Maybe if I had lived in Europe during World War 2 or Rwanda during the genocide in 1994, I might have had this much to lament. But this pain is unprecedented for me, and lament prayers come easily these days.
My American friends and family members have just celebrated Thanksgiving, and I know they spent some time thinking about what they are thankful for. We have entered Advent, a season of looking...
Read full article »Lynne Baab • Saturday January 11 2020
As a young Christian in my twenties, I was taught to pray using the ACTS pattern: adoration, confession, thankfulness, supplication. Several decades had passed before I realized the prayers in the Bible, especially in the Psalms, contained other prayer components, such as lament, silence and statements of trust. (I wrote a blog post about that.)
For the past two months, I’ve embraced the challenge of holding grief in one hand and thankfulness in the other hand. For the hand that’s holding grief, I have been wondering what exactly is the connection with lament. Are lament and grief the same? Is lament the...
Read full article »Lynne Baab • Friday May 31 2019
I fell in love with the book of Jeremiah in my early twenties. Ever since I hit puberty, I had felt that my emotions were unruly, confusing and sometimes overwhelming. I found a soul mate in Jeremiah, who (in God’s presence) cursed the day he was born and even cursed the man who brought the news of his birth to Jeremiah’s father. Jeremiah shouts at God, “Why did I come forth from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame?” (Jer 20:14-18).
Talk about unruly emotions!
Jeremiah obeys his call to be God’s prophet, but he is not at all...
Read full article »Lynne Baab • Thursday July 23 2015
I’ve been writing about ACTS prayer (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication). Last week I compared ACTS prayer to the Psalms, and noted that lament prayers are common in the psalms, but ACTS leaves no room for lament. In fact, lament is pretty rare in most kinds of prayer today.
A few weeks ago I was on our church’s roster to do the “prayer for others” in Sunday worship, and I decided to try a lament. I chose a psalm of lament, Psalm 10. That week I had read a powerful article about the record number of displaced people in our time. It seemed...
Read full article »Lynne Baab • Sunday August 9 2020
(Originally published inHorizons: The Magazine of Presbyterian Women. May/June 2019, 11-14.Lynne Baab • Sunday August 9 2020
(Originally published in Presbyterians Today, July/August 2019, 8.)Lynne Baab • Sunday August 9 2020
Originally published in Tui Motu InterIslands, Independent Catholic Magazine, New Zealand, September 2017, 26, 27.
Lynne M. Baab, Ph.D., is a teacher and writer. She has written numerous books and Bible study guides. Lynne lives in Seattle, and you can contact her at LMBaab [at] aol [dot] com. Read more »
Lynne is pleased to announce the release of her book on midlife, A Renewed Spirituality: Finding Fresh Paths at Midlife, for kindle. Her 2018 book is Nurturing Hope: Christian Pastoral Care for the Twenty-First Century, and her best-selling book is Sabbath-Keeping: Finding Freedom in the Rhythms of Rest. You can see her many other book titles here, along with her Bible study guides.
Lynne was interviewed recently for the podcast "As the Crow Flies". The first episode focuses on why listening matters and the second one on listening skills.
A few years ago, Lynne spoke at a conference for preachers and others in ministry on "Spiritual Practices for Preachers" (recorded as a video on YouTube). The talk is relevant to anyone in ministry and focuses on how to draw near to God simply as a child of God as well as engaging in spiritual practices for the sake of ministry.
Here are two talks Lynne gave on listening (recorded in audio form on YouTube): Listening for Mission and Ministry and Why Listening Matters for Mission and Ministry.
Here's a sermony by Lynne on Reverent Submission, where she tries to reclaim the word "submission," which has a bad rap in our time.
"Lynne's writing is beautiful. Her tone has such a note of hope and excitement about growth. It is gentle and affirming."
— a reader
"Dear Dr. Baab, You changed my life. It is only through God’s gift of the sabbath that I feel in my heart and soul that God loves me apart from anything I do."
— a reader of Sabbath Keeping
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