Daily Reading
January 5, 2025
God begins our courtship with a surprise. Taking the blindfold off, he turns us around and reveals his handmade wedding present. “Here,” he says. “It’s yours. Enjoy yourselves. Do you like it? Take it for a spin.” A lavish gift indeed. It speaks to t...
Daily Reading
January 5, 2025
We’re after God’s story, the drama from his perspective, so we would do better to start with the opening lines from the gospel of John, which take us back even farther to the once upon a time before time: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word ...
Daily Reading
January 5, 2025
So long as we imagine it is we who have to look for God, we must often lose heart. But it is the other way about—He is looking for us. —Simon TugwelCan it possibly get any more uncertain than this? We so long for life to be better than it is. We wish...
Daily Reading
January 5, 2025
What is this drama God has dropped us into the middle of? What act of the play are we in and what do our scenes have to do with the larger story being told? Is our well-being even a consideration in the story line?There is a stirring scene in Shakesp...
Daily Reading
January 5, 2025
When the living God of the Old Testament came along, he seemed to fit right in with this way of thinking, describing himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He gave Moses a regimen of laws, rituals, and ceremonies to be followed if the Israe...
Daily Reading
January 5, 2025
Indeed, the things that have happened to us often suggest that the real script of the play we’re all living in is “God is indifferent” rather than “God is love.” Deep down in our heart, in the place where the story is formed, this experience of God a...
Daily Reading
January 5, 2025
“Do you care for me, God?”What’s under that question?“The heart has its reasons that reason knows not of,” Pascal said. What’s under that question is our personal stories, often punctuated by the Message of the Arrows: parents who were emotionally ab...
Daily Reading
January 5, 2025
In centuries past, the church viewed the gospel as a Romance, a cosmic drama that permeates our own stories and draws together our fragmented stories into a redemptive whole.Too many expressions of Christianity today have lost that truth. Their gospe...
Daily Reading
January 5, 2025
The deepest convictions of our heart are formed by stories and reside there in the images and emotions of story. Advances in neuroscience reveal that the human brain organizes information in the form of narrative, using the structure of story to make...
Daily Reading
January 5, 2025
The Arrows strike at the most vital places in our hearts, the things we care most about. The deepest questions we ever ask are directly related to our heart’s greatest needs, and the answers life gives us shape our images of ourselves, of life, and o...
Daily Reading
January 5, 2025
For what shall we do when we wake one day to find we have lost touch with our heart and with it the very refuge where God’s presence resides?Starting very early, life has taught all of us to ignore and distrust the deepest yearnings of our heart. Lif...
Daily Reading
January 5, 2025
The truth of the gospel of Jesus is intended to free us to love God and others with our whole heart and to find a life worth living. When we ignore this heart aspect of our faith and try to live out our religion solely as correct doctrine or the purs...
Daily Reading
January 5, 2025
In all of our hearts lies a longing for a Sacred Romance.It will not go away in spite of our efforts over the years to anesthetize or ignore its song, or attach it to a single person or endeavor. It is a Romance couched in mystery and set deeply with...
Daily Reading
January 5, 2025
“There are only two things that pierce the human heart,” wrote Simone Weil. One is beauty. The other is affliction. And while we wish there were only beauty in the world, each of us has known enough pain to raise serious doubts about the universe we ...
Daily Reading
January 5, 2025
At some point we all face the same decision—what will we do with the Arrows we’ve known? Maybe a better way to say it is, what have they tempted us to do? However they come to us, whether through a loss we experience as abandonment or some deep viola...
Daily Reading
January 5, 2025
Eventually this division of head and heart culminates in one of two directions. We can either deaden our heart or divide our life into two parts, where our outer story becomes the theater of the should and our inner story the theater of needs, the pl...
Daily Reading
January 5, 2025
When the young prophet Samuel heard the voice of God calling to him in the night, he had the counsel from his priestly mentor, Eli, to tell him how to respond. Even so, it took them three times to realize it was God calling. Rather than ignoring the ...
Daily Reading
January 5, 2025
The life of the heart is a place of great mystery. Yet we have many expressions to help us express this flame of the human soul. We describe a person without compassion as “heartless,” and we urge him or her to “have a heart.” Our deepest hurts we ca...
Daily Reading
April 4, 2023
Stasi Eldredge's book "Free to Be Me" helps teen girls become the young women God created them to be. Your beauty is under siege. It is being harassed and taunted and mocked because it matters. You matter. The Enemy of your soul attacks the core of ...
Daily Reading
March 27, 2023
God is coming. He has not abandoned us, and he never will. Yes, the pain of life is sometimes too intense to be borne. But when from that place we cry out to Jesus to save us, the heavens rejoice, the demons tremble in defeat, and the Holy Spirit who...
Daily Reading
March 24, 2023
Stasi Eldredge's book "Free to Be Me" helps teen girls become the young women God created them to be.Sometimes I am absolutely amazed at how much Jesus loves people. Some days — okay, most days — people can be pretty odd. We are all living on the isl...
Daily Reading
March 11, 2023
Do not give way to fear. (1 Peter 3:6)Isn’t that why we hide, why we strive, why we control, why we do anything but offer beauty? We are afraid. We have given way to fear. Just think about your life — why you do the things you do. Have you asked your...
Daily Reading
February 22, 2023
Ladies, you are the Bride of Christ ... and the Bride of Christ is a warring bride.Now, often the hardest person to fight for is ... yourself. But you must. Your heart is needed. You must be present and engaged in order to love well and fight on beha...
Daily Reading
February 13, 2023
We are loved. Born out of love, into love, to know love, and to be loved. Yes, we were born into a fallen, sorry world, which is at the same time more lovely than any fairy tale. It is both. And in this beautiful, heartbreaking world, God — the etern...
Daily Reading
January 21, 2023
Stasi Eldredge's book "Free to Be Me" helps teen girls become the young women God created them to be. The kingdom of God will not advance as it needs to advance without girls rising up and playing their role. Guys will not become the men they are me...
Daily Reading
January 15, 2023
Jesus is worthy of our devotion and our thanks. Your Jesus is the One who rode into the depths of the darkest, most dangerous dungeon to rescue his True Love. He is the One who will ride again on a white steed with fire in his eyes and a flaming swor...
Daily Reading
January 12, 2023
We are thirsty, and that is a very good thing. It may not be comfortable, but it is good. If you aren’t aware of your hunger, you’re not very motivated to go to the banqueting table. If you aren’t aware of your thirst, you don’t seek something to dri...
Daily Reading
December 29, 2022
Sarah Young writes: “One thing that traps you in self-absorption is being overly concerned about how you look — in the mirror or in the eyes of others.” (Jesus Always: Embracing Joy in His Presence) I love learning from other people. Watching how a p...
Daily Reading
December 24, 2022
"Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will be with child ..." (Luke 1:30)No matter how troubled Mary was, her heart had been cultivated by faith, and she responded to the news with composure, dignity, and faith. She did not scre...
Daily Reading
December 12, 2022
God gave Eve a beautiful form and a beautiful spirit. She expresses beauty in both. Better, she expresses beauty simply in who she is. Like God, it is her essence.Stasi and I just spent a weekend together in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which boasts the thi...