An Easter discipline? Isn’t that for Lent?

Yes, it’s been a bit quiet around here. Some of the things keeping us temporarily away from the blog: a new small person has arrived (congratulations, Haley!); Easter Sunday was welcomed with feasting and friends; I got to attend the Wheaton College theology conference; and the usual rounds of preschool, ballet, tennis lessons, Sunday school [...]

Reading through Holy Week: Maundy Thursday

Last night, we read Mark 14:1-52. I had planned to stop at verse 31, but we were both so into the story that I just kept going. Two things (apart from the young man fleeing naked at the very end – unwise choice on my part to stop there!) really caught my daughter’s attention: Judas’ [...]

Reading through Holy Week: Wednesday

Today’s reading: Mark 14:1-31 In Mark’s gospel, this is the part where the story really picks up and gets moving. (Well, the whole book is kind of fast-paced, but this is where everything starts to accelerate towards the climax!) So I think we’re just going to read big chunks and let the story wash over [...]

Reading through Holy Week: Tuesday

Our walk through Holy Week continues! My five-year-old daughter and I read Mark 11:12-33 tonight. She was distracted and I was tired, so I was afraid it was a wash — until, while we were looking at my study Bible picture of the Temple, she commented, “I have a picture of this story in my Bible!” [...]

Reading through the events of Holy Week

This evening is Palm Sunday, and as always, it feels like this week has snuck up on me. In my ideal world, I would have cleared my calendar for the week; already have Easter baskets done; have the menu for Easter dinner mapped out and a shopping list complete; and be ready to settle in [...]

Looking for some spring break reading?

I don’t know about you, but our family reading goes in cycles. That is, we’ll bring home a stack of books from the library or a new volume from the bookstore, and we read them over and over. And over. Then they go back to the library, or join other well-loved titles on the shelves, and we [...]

Reading Over Their Heads

Last week, in the midst of a nasty bout with strep throat, my five-year-old daughter and I snuggled up on the couch with E. Nesbit’s classic, Five Children and It. Typically, we read one chapter book at a time, making our way slowly through at bedtimes and while her brother naps. We had just finished Pippi [...]

Lent as a Gift

Each year the season of Lent asks us to embrace a spiritual gravity, a downward movement of soul, a turning from our self-sufficiency and sinfulness. In such quiet turning we are humbled and thus made ready to receive from God a fresh and joyous grace. Bobby Gross, in Living the Church Year When I came across [...]

Sights and Sounds of Lent

  Somehow we haven’t talked at all about Lent this year!  Part of the reason is that I’m very (very) pregnant and have been working on my nesting to-do list like crazy, so it’s taken me more time to get into the swing of the season.  But we do love talking about celebrating the church [...]

Liturgy and literature

Being a disciple of Jesus is not primarily a matter of getting the right ideas and doctrines and beliefs into your head in order to guarantee proper behavior; rather, it is a matter of being the kind of person who loves rightly – who loves God and neighbor and is oriented to the world by the [...]