Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian LifeSabbath Keeping FastingA Renewed SpiritualityNurturing Hope: Christian Pastoral Care in the Twenty-First CenturyThe Power of ListeningJoy Together: Spiritual Practices for Your CongregationPersonality Type in CongregationsPrayers of the Old TestamentPrayers of the New TestamentSabbathFriendingA Garden of Living Water: Stories of Self-Discovery and Spiritual GrowthDeath in Dunedin: A NovelDead Sea: A NovelDeadly Murmurs: A NovelBeating Burnout in CongregationsReaching Out in a Networked WorldEmbracing MidlifeAdvent DevotionalDraw Near: Lenten Devotional by Lynne Baab, illustrated by Dave Baab

Praying to see everyday miracles

Lynne Baab • Wednesday May 15 2024

Praying to see everyday miracles

My beloved artist husband, Dave, and I both have had a pretty bad case of covid. The blog post I planned for this week, the lowering of the paralytic through the roof, will have to wait until next week. I've combined sections of two past posts about seeing daily miracles.

I used a Jewish Sabbath prayer in my book, Sabbath Keeping: “Days pass and the years vanish, and we walk sightless among miracles.” The prayer speaks to me about a common experience of humans. We simply don’t see the miracles around us.

As the prayer continues, the significance of seeing is stressed:

“Lord, fill our...

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Praying about Jesus’s miracles: Crumbs are an abundant feast

Lynne Baab • Tuesday May 7 2024

Praying about Jesus’s miracles: Crumbs are an abundant feast

One of my favorite prayers from my childhood evokes crumbs. I feel sure Thomas Cramner (1489-1556), writer of The Book of Common Prayer, was thinking about Jesus’s healing of the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter when he wrote the prayer. I’ll start by describing the prayer because I knew it long before I learned about the story in Mark 7:24-30 and Matthew 15:21-28.

In my childhood, we were in church every Sunday, even though we prayed only at dinner and bedtime, and my parents never mentioned God in conversations. Our churches were Episcopalian in the many places we lived in the U.S., and Anglican...

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Praying about Jesus’s miracles: Let’s find someone to blame!

Lynne Baab • Wednesday May 1 2024

Praying about Jesus’s miracles: Let’s find someone to blame!

Human brains love dichotomies. If this thing is true, then this other thing is wrong or a lie. Human beings also love to assign blame. Something inside us longs to believe that the universe is ordered and logical. Therefore, when things go wrong, someone or something must be at fault.

In John 9, the human love for dichotomies and blame is on full display. Jesus and his disciples have just left the Temple because some of the Jewish leaders started throwing stones at Jesus.

“As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this...

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Praying about Jesus’s miracles: Jesus heals a blind man twice

Lynne Baab • Thursday April 25 2024

Praying about Jesus’s miracles: Jesus heals a blind man twice

When I first encountered the story of Jesus healing a man twice at Bethsaida (Mark 8:22-26), it seemed crazy. I was 20, I’d been a committed Christian for a year, and I felt that things related to faith should be clear and straightforward. Why would Jesus have to heal a blind man twice? If he was there at creation (John 1:3), he surely knows how eyes work. If he sustains the creation and all things hold together in him (Colossians 1:17), he surely knows how to heal eyes the first time.

This is the story where Jesus puts saliva on the man’s...

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Featured books

Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian Life Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian Life A book for people grieving because of the pandemic, health challenges, family conflict, or other losses, while also seeing so many things to be thankful for. A book for small groups – each of the seven chapters has discussion questions at the end. A book for Advent and Lent. This book draws on a vivid word picture of holding grief in one hand and gratitude in the other, and allowing ourselves to be stretched large by both.
 Buy online » Joy Together: Spiritual Practices for Your Congregation Joy Together: Spiritual Practices for Your Congregation Although interest in spiritual practices has grown in recent years, most of the books available address individuals who wish to try Christian disciplines such as fasting or fixed-hour prayer.

This book, by contrast, offers guidance and examples to Christian leaders as they seek ways to involve their congregations or small groups in spiritual practices. Buy online »

Featured articles

NEW: Nurturing a contemplative stance for navigating challenging times

Lynne Baab • Friday August 11 2023

By Lynne M. Baab

NEW: Spiritual Practices for People in Ministry

Lynne Baab • Sunday June 26 2022

Making Space for a Continuing Conversation with the Living God

NEW: Yes, Jesus Told Us to Pray in Secret. But He Also Prayed with His Friends.

Lynne Baab • Saturday October 9 2021

By Lynne M. Baab. Originally published in Christianity Today, July 8, 2021