Something Beautiful

I try not to write about politics. More than almost anything else, politics seem to drive people apart and cause division and hurt. It doesn't have to be this way as this article explains , but that is the way it has become throughout my lifetime. And the older I get, the more it makes my heart ache.  The current election, in particular, drains my soul. My soul longs for people to live together in harmony and love (yes, I realize this sounds a little hippie-ish, please bear with me). What has been tearing my heart up over the last few months is the basic lack of respect for other people. As I have grown close to the Lord over the course of my life, I have come to know His heart for me: I am His beloved daughter.  This has been a beautiful revelation simply because of the larger revelation that it brought: every single person (regardless of whether they acknowledge God or not) is a beloved son or daughter of God. Every single person - past, present, and future - is creat

When people find out I have lost over 50 pounds, the initial exclamation is that there's no way I could have been that heavy . T he next question is always: "How did you do it?"  I have been hesitant to write a post about this because I don't think that there is a formula for how to lose weight , and I don't want my journey to become a formula. However, as I was talking to my sister-in-law the other evening, I realized that I do have something to say on the subject that I think needs to be heard.  My journey, while it was initially about losing weight, became so much more. As a sophomore in college, I got on a scale and I forgot what the third number was because the first two were 1-7. I think it was either a 3 or a 5. I determined that I had to lose weight. I tried a low carb - high protein diet. After about a month, I actually gained weight instead of losing it and gav e up . The last word I would ever u se to de scribe my body was beautiful. I was

I watched this sermon on communion the other day . S hortly thereafter I had a conversation about communion with a friend, and I realized that while we practice the sacrament of communion, we often don't take time to understand it or to think about what it really means.  We lose a lot of the meaning of communion because we don't take it as it was intended to be taken, in the context of a meal. When Jesus instituted communion, it was during the feast of Passover. We relegate communion to a tiny cup of grape juice and a little wafer when it was intended to be part of a feast. Why does it matter? It matters because we can get the idea that God is stingy when really He is lavish and generous and giving.  It also matters because of the venue. Jesus gathered His disciples around a table. As a child my family always ate together. We didn't have the distractions of tv and cell phones at our meals. We just spent time in fellowship with each other. We talked about the day. We at