“Lord, I believe: help my unbelief.” Mark 9:24

Can faith really heal? Can wholly trusting the Lord, having absolute faith that He will heal, or produce a miracle, really yield that positive result?

My minister husband and I were just discussing this, and by the end of the conversation, it sure did seem like 100% faith is the source of miracles.

We all have issues – some are major, some minor, but we’ve all got ’em – and, being religious folk (by definition, since we’re reading this blog), we probably all pray about them at some time or other. If our prayers don’t yield the result we want, is it because we didn’t pray hard enough? Is it because not enough people prayed for this particular cause? Is it a critical mass thing, where if you have 9 people praying for you, ah, shucks, sorry, no luck, but if you’ve got that 10th, well, there you go, that’s your ticket! I highly doubt it; I can’t believe that could possibly be so,… but I am pausing to wonder. Maybe I’m wrong? (No, surely not! The Lord is more merciful than that! ….Right??) Continue reading Faith Healing →

“And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His Work which God had created and made.”
– Genesis 2:2-3

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates.”
– Exodus 20: 8-10

This article is being written as a reminder to myself and a permission slip to all women that it’s ok to say no, it’s ok to take time for yourself and it’s ok to rest. Continue reading Rest →

Fall is coming, and a hush falls over the neighborhood playground as children trickle back to school. My oldest is old enough for kindergarten. These days I read a lot about education, shoring up my reasons for keeping her out of full-time school this year.

One author worth reading is Carol Black. Black is a writer, filmmaker, parent, and education activist. Her essays are thought-provoking and exhausting — exhausting because they challenge me to make drastic changes to the ways I think and act.

In August, The Washington Post ran one of her articles, “What the modern world has forgotten about children and learning.” In it, she notes,

“[W]e speak of our familiar school experience almost as though it were an integral part of nature itself, a natural and essential part of human childhood, rather than the vast and extremely recent experiment in social engineering that it actually is.”

Continue reading Saving the WEIRD Child →

One of the most commonly heard phrases in our household, due to a propensity towards heated arguments recently, is “do unto others as you would have done to you.” But what does this really mean to us in our daily lives?

First of all, the original quote is a command based on the words of Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the mount, and is a central teaching in Christianity, often referred to as the Golden Rule.

Matthew 7:12 “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.”

Luke 6:31 “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.”

This commandment is stated in similar ways across many ancient religious books: The New Testament, the Talmud, the Koran, as well as the Analects of Confucius and in the writings of Socrates. Continue reading Do Unto Others… →