A Holy Experience

You know life at your limits. You, with your promising calendar and brave to-do lists and begging prayer journal, you with your dog-earred how-to books and your determined jaw and scuffed up knees and weary shoulders, you know exactly what it’s like to live at the edge of hope, at the very brink of dreams, at the cliff of prayers and gaze out with longing for all that is beyond. You know what is …

I’m standing in the kitchen this week when I whisper to the Farmer: “We need a password.” He raises his eyebrows, and I look for the answer to the question his eyes are asking: “It’s just — when we’re caught up in some circling vortex of dark, I think we need a password to cue us to cut the mental Gordian knot. Some gentle password that’s our cue to mentally shift gears – to just cut through the …

We know we won’t be perfect in this lifetime… For those who struggle with perfectionism in their relationship with God, Faith Chang has words of rest and relief born of her own wrestling with the desire to be holy. Today, she addresses, in particular, the sense that because of our imperfections, God at best just tolerates us. May you feel God’s welcome as you join us at the farm table today... Gu…

Ruth’s walk with Jesus is the real deal and she’s one of my most cherished friends, a deep well of wisdom. Her articulation of the tension we all live in—between where we are and where we long to be—resonates so deeply with my own experience. It’s my true joy to welcome my dear sister, Ruth, to the farm’s table today… Guest Post by Ruth Chou Simons I recently saw an old photograph of me from coll…

“In one sentence, what does it come down to — what is the one most important thing for people to know?” The Romanian journalist leaned forward, asking me the question at the end of an hour long interview on live radio broadcasting across a country that was under rigid and oppressive Communist regime still in our recent life times. What I don’t feel was rushed or hurried, only this palpable, certa…

Weeks after her twenty-sixth birthday, Katherine Wolf suffered a catastrophic brainstem stroke that should have killed her. But she survived, although her life, her body, and her soul would never be the same. Today, she and her husband Jay are using their second-chance lives to find treasures hidden in the darkness of their pain, and inviting others to do the same. As an advocate, speaker, author…

Maybe when your first real introduction to Jesus is through a dream, you should expect life to take an unexpected turn. Tessa Afshar, who was born in a nominally Muslim family in the Middle East, ended up being a best-selling author of Christian books. In today’s reflection, she writes about her battle with anxiety and how she learned an important lesson from Esther. It’s a joy to welcome Tessa t…

It was on Holy Week Thursday, Maundy Thursday, maundatam Thursday, that the betrayed Jesus gave His people all a new mandate, that command of the Last Supper: “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. A new command I give you: Love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34–35) Only those who love, are sent by Christ. Without…

Author Craig Allen Cooper is no stranger to disillusionment, discouragement, and despair. Frequently rolled by the waves in his own life, Craig has dug deep for decades into the well of God’s tender mercy for comfort, encouragement, and strength. Out of the depths of his own personal devotions, comes the conviction that God wants His children to be more aware of His faithfulness than they are of …

Just after a winter sun rose scarlet across snow white fields, I find a curled newborn lamb shivering, still freshly wet, in the corner of the chilled tiny barn. The narrow way is the only way to life. Sometime in the still dark of the early dawn hours, she’d made her way down the dark and narrowest of passageways – the birth canal – and slipped out into this cold world and she trembles. Since th…

To answer the question so many of us ask, “What is my purpose?” Dr. Naomi Cramer Overton looks to the Bible to see what we can learn from people who God works through greatly. She lives to realize beauty-filled visions that lift us to flourishing, and through ministry leadership, academic research, and writing, Naomi has helped more than a million people get into God’s story and discover their ow…

I went down to the river to pray. And that may sound like living some highfalutin old time spiritual, when in reality the river at the back of the farm runs through an abandoned old gravel pit with piles of crushed rock and overgrown weeds and more than a boulder or two. When I’m sitting there on the edge of the woods, on the edge of an old pit – the metaphor of it all is not lost on me – there, …

Charaia Rush pulls us in today with the vulnerable story of her labor and delivery, one of the hardest moments in a woman’s life, and reminds us of the story of Naomi from the book of Ruth: While we are in the midst of suffering, it can feel all-consuming and we can even start to believe we’ve lost our identity to our pain as well. It’s a joy to welcome Charaia to the farm’s table today as we dis…

Has something taken your focus off of the Cross this Easter season? Master storyteller Charles Martin has written twenty-five books, and in this sacred space leading up to Resurrection Sunday, he invites us to walk Jesus’ path to the Cross, where brokenness meets healing and despair gives way to hope. Let’s kneel on this Herodian road with him and focus our hearts and minds on the inconceivable e…

In a world where we are told we need to be enough for everyone, including ourselves, the weight of being the savior of our stories is too much for us to bear. What if you could lean into the capacity of Christ and practice the beauty of God-dependence instead of self-dependence? We don’t need to empower ourselves in order to face life’s hardships and heartaches. Let Becky Beresford’s words offer …