Empathy: Standing in Your Shoes
Matthew 3:13-4:11 Have you ever wanted to read a biography of someone you admired, a person you were curious about? After her death I found Roselyn Carter’s life fascinating. I…
Matthew 3:13-4:11 Have you ever wanted to read a biography of someone you admired, a person you were curious about? After her death I found Roselyn Carter’s life fascinating. I…
Grief hits different people different ways. One of the worst things about grief for me besides the intensity of missing my loved one is dealing with all the business…
The Good Father Luke 15:11-32 After my husband died, I was struggling to fall asleep at night and I was struggling to stay asleep. I had tried singing praise songs…
The dream was perfect. I was at a party and as I moved through the crowd I was really enjoying some sweet revenge by telling stories about someone who…
The fact that Jesus loved women and encouraged them is a very personal truth to me. From childhood I have felt the Holy Spirit stirring in my heart toward…
The Good Woman Luke 15:8-10 The fact that Jesus loved women and encouraged them is a very personal truth to me. From childhood I have felt the Holy Spirit…
One day I was surprised when a childhood friend said to me, “Oh Jan, you never thought the rules applied to you.” I wasn’t sure what she was referencing,…
What happens when we try to plan our own repentance? God reveals his heart in Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son.
The Coming Glory Romans 8:18-25 The last three years have been some of the most emotionally difficult years we have ever seen. Everyone I encounter seems to be stressed to…
The Good Shepherd Luke 15:1-7 Psalms 23 was my father’s favorite Psalm. If you were raised in church like me, you can probably quote 75% of it from memory. As…
My beloved parents believed dancing was a sin, all dancing. And, as I remember it their convictions caused me a little anxiety growing up. As I approached middle school…
Should we pray curses upon our enemies? Psalm 35 As I listened to my friend speak in anguish of her helplessness to stop her husband’s infidelity, my anger began…
At the age of thirteen, I deceitfully hid her desert saga inside my textbook during class, trying to steal any precious reading time I could find. I was tempted to…
The vineyards stretching before us seemed to glow in the early morning dew. After rounding a deep curve on a winding road, a quaint monastery suddenly appeared in the verdant…
June is a brutal month to live in Tucson. With our triple digit temperatures soaring to 115 or worse, the prickly pear cactus pads grow as thin as paper. Everything…
I was crushed when I read the letter. The homeowner’s association had the audacity to call them weeds. The first tiny sprouts had promised me red tubular flowers set against…
Yellowed and shriveled up, the sight before me was inconceivable. The cactus looked dead but was flush with flowers. Gently and carefully my coworker moved around the thorns to pick…
The instructions were simple, but I was struggling to actually believe them. “Make sure you transplant the cactus and succulents with dry soil.” Really? These directions confused me because before…
The chilly morning was full of promise. Listening to a bubbling creek, I watched curious ground squirrels scampering near my seat. When a single red-tailed hawk began making lazy circles…
Nestled slyly in Queen Creek Canyon, under a canopy of towering trees, lies one of the oldest arboretums in the western United States, Boyce Thompson Arboretum. Hiking trails, carefully designed…
The blast felt like a furnace. Opening the door to greenhouse number seven, I could not believe I was going to walk into that atmosphere. The blazing dry heat confronting…
As a celebration for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary my husband, Gary and I saved, sacrificed, and trained to carry backpacks across Italy on a Eurail Pass. Now, that Gary has…
The Bronze Serpent was a picture of the sin that Jesus would become for us. Without executing this spiritual exchange, we could never become the righteousness of God (Romans 3:23).
On October 2, 2020 I became a widow. My husband Gary’s death was not unexpected. For almost 17 months my husband had suffered a slow decline due to a…
“Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees.” Isaiah 35:3 One of the reasons we make a trip to the desert is so God can heal us. God…
How was the New Testament Scriptures Compiled? One day I was visiting with a friend who was raised in church, but a bit of a skeptic. He asked me, “Jan,…
Losing a spouse is heart-wrenching. Loving a spouse through a terminal illness is even worse. Many of us have walked paths of deep sorrow in these uncertain days. But a…
On the night the disciples shared their first communion, Jesus prophesied that one of the twelve would betray him. Jesus’ prediction proved very inflammatory for the disciples. With all…
How can I possibly wait on God? Why do you call it “Wait Time”? Once I was visiting with a friend about the time we spend waiting on God,…
I once saw a poem in a gardening book about growing vines. This is how the poem read, “First they sleep, then they creep, and then they leap.” The poem…
At the age of twelve I started praying for my future husband. In the beginning my prayers were driven by my fear that I might marry the wrong person. …
Why is Jesus called the Bread of Life? “Get me in as fast as you can,” demanded the frantic woman at the blood lab, “I am fasting, and I…
One night after I had gone to bed early, the phone rang, and when my son picked up he heard a woman weeping on the other end. She was crying…
One night after I had gone to bed early, the phone rang, and when my son picked up he heard a woman weeping on the other end. She was crying…
I don’t believe in accidents. But, sometimes things happen that I didn’t plan, like the time Gary and I ended up on an all-Jewish bus tour of Israel. When…
Once on a mission trip to Pakistan I saw an appalling sight in the market place. A man was begging with a gazillion flies swarming around an open sore on…
Recently, my loving husband had surgery to remove a brain tumor. When we learned of the tumor, some doctors were moving fast and some painfully slow. I experienced two prayer…
Ephesians 2:4-5, “But God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together…
We all love romance. We all love a good love story. I don’t know if it is ingrained in us to love romance, or a product of Disney marketing, but…
Sometimes misery comes in waves. For me that was the year both my parents died. I also lost both our dogs that year; my oldest child left for college and…
Have you ever had a difficult person in your life? Maybe it was a family member, or a co- worker. Maybe it was a next-door neighbor you found yourself in…
It is amazing how quickly a reputation can be ruined! I had been asked to be the speaker at my home church’s women’s retreat one fall. The more I prayed…
When my children were young, one of my sons came into the kitchen while I was doing the dishes, and nonchalantly asked me, “Mom, do you know how to tell…
When my family traveled from our small-town home to Tucson for a doctor’s appointment or a back-to-school shopping trip, we always stayed overnight with my mother’s best friend Bea Solley. …
Abraham’s faith is inspiring. Chasing the grasslands of Canaan as a nomadic shepherd Abraham was free to survey the Promised Land his family would one day possess. Catching each vista…
Southeast of Tucson, in the Dragoon Mountains is an Arizona State Park and campground called Cochise’s Stronghold. Cochise was a Native American military leader of the Chiricahua Apaches in the…
Expectantly, Emily looked over the shoulder of her precious grandchild doing a connect-the-dots picture in a coloring book. The seemingly random dots held such mystery. What was hidden from her…
Have you ever made a promise you didn’t keep? Have you ever rushed to judgment? Have you ever felt like walking with God has become harder and harder? How do…
Why do flight attendants give parents flying with young children the instructions, “If there is a change in the air pressure in the cabin and the oxygen masks are…
Recently, I moved to “limbo land.” Do you know how to find that address? Maybe, it is where you have encountered something serious and the doctors have used that dreaded…
God has called us to a ministry of mercy and reconciliation. Without our struggle and subsequent rest in God, we are useless to speak peace to others.
We may not like the path God gives, but our eternal destination makes the scenery we see relevant to our desire to keep flowering in desolate places.
God has privileged us with a ministry born from our own pain. When we begin to boast of the wonderful mercy and healing he has given to us we offer…
When we find ourselves living in a spiritual desert, we must understand God wants us to bloom.
Isaiah 35 is a prophecy about Jesus’ second coming when miraculously the blessings of Eden will once again be restored.
God often uses our deserts to heal us. When we have been wounded, a quiet dryness is exactly what I need to heal.
One of the reasons we make a trip to the desert is so God can heal us. God takes us to a quiet dry place and he speaks tenderly to…
Since the fall of man, the sacrificial lamb represents the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, Jesus.
From Abel’s sacrifice. to Abraham’s ram, to the Passover lamb in Exodus, portraits of Christ foreshadow His coming throughout Scripture.
If you want to understand the Bronze Serpent, you must see that when Christ is exalted, He will draw all men to Himself.
Jesus is the Bread of Life. Eternal life with all its beauty and rest comes from him alone. Our God-created hunger can only be satiated by God Himself.
The picture of Christ as the suffering servant is reflected in the truths of betrayal preceding forgiveness, identification with the sinful and humiliation preceding exaltation.
If you want to understand the picture of Bread you must see only Jesus satisfies.
The Bridegroom’s typology points to Christ’s mission on earth and His loving character. Ironically, we are also the friend of the bridegroom.
The story of infidelity in Hosea, Abraham’s servant, the story of Adam and Eve are just a few examples of Christ’s Old Testament pictures as the Bridegroom.
Why did Jesus choose a cornerstone as a poetic metaphor to describe Himself? This ancient picture emphasized Jesus’ work and His power.
Jesus is described as the Rock, the Cornerstone struck once for all on the cross. Moses striking the rock was the Old Testament picture.
The picture of Jesus as the Suffering Servant is one of the most precious portraits of Christ in the Old Testament (Matt. 16:21). Joseph is a perfect example of…
Melchizedek, King and Priest as described in Genesis 14, is the perfect picture of Christ serving as King and Priest in the New Testament.
Jesus Christ was the real and final sacrifice for sin, as well as the high priest who offered the sacrifice in the heavenly sanctuary.
At first, Vickie was convinced he was preaching heresy. How could her pastor do this to her sweet little church? As she stared at the stain glass window above the…
The clock was ticking, demanding her urgent attention, and yet she sat still. Martha breathed deeply and tried to close out the clamor of her to-do list. Rest. She wanted…
If we want to avoid misunderstanding God’s plan, we have to respect God’s eternal plan must take precedent over our human instinct of self-protection.
When we trust in Jesus, we are exhorted to not judge others. Our character will be changed and so will our reputation.
Two bears or lies: God could never love me. Well, if I were God I would never have done it that way.
Who are angels and what do we know about them? The Bible has answers, especially from verses about Christ’s birth.
God is using the side effects of living in a sinful world to make you long for heaven. Jesus came to restore all that was lost in the Garden.
The elaborate wedding garments of the Bride of Christ are being adorned every time we simply trust God.
This study of the life of St. Valentine gives us great insight about the holiday we celebrate today (with or without candy).
God calls us uniquely to perform ministry, on His terms. Our foremost concern is to bear fruit in our lives that reflects His nature.
Patricks vision for evangelizing Ireland was rooted in his knowledge of the lrish and seeing gospel metaphors hidden within Irelands soul. He believed genuine Christian community shared among the population…
When we bring before God’s throne of grace those who curse us we are exercising spiritual muscles of mercy and faith.