Ezra Bible Study - Introduction

In this space, I try to encourage you in a way that points you back to God's Word. In my life, I have seen the value of reading the Bible and I want you to reap a similar benefit. I love to read the entire Bible, but I have a particular fondness for the Old Testament.

The Old Testament highlights the time before Christ; before the realization of the Messiah. With this void, we can see men and women of faith, fallen men, and a favored nation - the Israelites.  We see unfavorable actions, the bad side of human nature and through it all God's grace, power, and sovereignty. Man is nothing without God.

When I studied the book of Judges, it had a profound impact on my life. (Type The Book of Judges in the search bar on the blog.)

Book Review - Prayer, Does It Make Any Difference by Philip Yancey

The titles of Philip Yancey's books captivate me because he's asking the questions that are in my head. While in the library, I saw PRAYER in big, bold print on the spine of this book which immediately grabbed my attention; when I saw that it was by Philip Yancey (one of my favorite Christian authors), I knew I would be borrowing it.

If we're honest, I think many Christians struggle with prayer. We pray because it's how we communicate with God, but we know it goes deeper than this yet many of us don't grasp the more profound meaning. We struggle with why, how, where, what. Why are we praying? How do we pray? Where do we pray? What do we say? We wonder, are my prayers heard? Is my prayer making a difference?

What I appreciate about this book is the author's honesty. Despite his pedigree, he too struggles. Writing as a fellow pilgrim about that mysterious intersection where God and humanity meet and relate, Philip Yancey pushes beyond conventional treatments to

The Rabbit

In my neighborhood, I usually see a family of wild rabbits with bushy white tails. They're harmless and pretty, but they hop quickly. As I studied the pace of their movements, I remembered that in the sport of Track and Field, if you want the field to go faster than intended, there's usually a rabbit in the race. The rabbit's role is to set the pace for the field, but the rabbit does not complete the race. He merely ensures that the others running are doing what they're supposed to do so that when he drops out, the remaining runners have the momentum to keep going.


According to Runners World, in distances as short as the 800 meters and as long as the marathon, the

Book Review: Cross of A Different Kind

In my life, in recent memory, I have lost two close friends to cancer. The first was Dwight, a young man who was a friend of my children. As with all of my children's friend, I treated him like my own. He was at my house having Sunday dinner when he started to complain of pain in his back. This was new to me, but I thought nothing of it and thought it was normal childhood pain. It turned out that this pain was the indication of a relapse. Dwight fought valiantly, and cancer went into remission before it came back and stole his life from him. He was 23 when he left this earth.

Then there was Michelle. Michelle was a joy to be around. She exuded joy. Her family and my husband's family grew up together, and so my husband considered Michelle his sister. In the summer of 2017, we got the news that Michelle had breast cancer. We saw her that Christmas, where she still exuded joy though waging a valiant fight. But after that Christmas things took a turn for the worse and Michelle left us too soon in March of 2018. Michelle was 51.

The title of this book appealed to me because of these close