The wait is over. May your heart be filled with the arrival of Jesus in a new and beautiful way. Have a very merry and blessed Christmas. I'll be back after the New Year!

When we had our first child, my husband and I wondered how we would know what to do as our daughter grew older. We had no idea what to do with a ten-year-old, much less a teenager. Fortunately, she didn't come to us as a teenager, she came as a baby, needing only to be fed, held, comforted, and frequently changed. We could grow along with her, and we did. Jesus will come to us tomorrow in much the same way. A tiny baby, needing little more from us than our attention and our t

Finally, a place to rest. Mary and Joseph, having found no room for them in Bethlehem, settle into a stable for the night. It's not a great option. It's not even a good option, but it was shelter and would do. I have to wonder if they complained at first. I'm pretty sure I would, but then again, I might be grateful to have found anything at all. Nothing is very comfortable when you are nine months pregnant, so I think everyone could give Mary a little space to complain. She p

We were traveling home from Colorado one year and decided to drive as far as we could before we stopped. We mapped it out and thought we could make it to a small town at about midnight if all went well. Things didn't go well. There was a twenty mile stretch of road that was under construction about 30 miles from the town. Around midnight, it was a one-way road, and you had to wait for a lead car to take you through. We just missed the group going our way, so we had to wait ov

I just published my latest newsletter. If you didn't get it, click here to read it!

Did you vote in the mid-term elections last month? The last couple of years, it has been clear that every vote counts. It is important to make your voice heard. But is one vote really that important in a field of millions? I think at this point, we would all agree that it does. Those millions are made up of single votes. Individual people. Each one as important as the next. You don't get two votes if you have more money. You don't get half a vote if you are from the wrong fam

Turns out that being comfortable is not always in God's plan for us. When Mary was nine months pregnant with Jesus, there was an order that went across the land. In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled ... So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town. –Luke 2:1,3 As a mother of four, I can tell you that traveling in the comfort of a car while nine-months pregnant is only comfortable for about five minutes. Traveling by

Don't you love when you get a haircut and people are trying to figure out what is different about you? Is it your glasses? A new shirt? Something's different, but they just can't put a finger on it. We can miss some of the most obvious and visible changes in each other, but today we will see how Elizabeth and John can see well beyond the visible. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the holy Spirit, cried out in a lou

We left Joseph and Mary in a state of rejection. Yes, there was mercy, but in the end it looks like each of them have rejected the other. Mary is pregnant and not by Joseph. Joseph will not raise the child with her and plans on divorcing her. Even with his generosity, this is not a good place to be. But things are about to change. The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do no be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is

Her husband Joseph, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly. –Matthew 1:19 So often, Joseph is overlooked or only briefly mentioned in any discussion of the events leading up to Jesus' birth. We're going to go at it a little differently and spend a couple days with him, because he has a pretty incredible part in this story. In our verse today, Joseph has heard that Mary has been visited by an angel, is pregnant, and h