Top 3 Books, 2025

Where the Light Fell, Philip Yancey

From a disturbing childhood shaped by fundamentalism and racism, Yancey emerges as a portrait of God’s gentle pursuit.  He says, “I assumed that surrender to God would involve a kind of shrinking - avoiding temptation, grimly focusing on the “spiritual” things while I prepared for the afterlife. On the contrary, God’s good world presents itself as a gift to enjoy with grace-healed eyes.”

Answers to Prayer from George Muller’s Narratives, George Muller 

Muller’s life message to believers was this: no matter the century in which we live, God’s care and promises apply to us. Journaling about this, Muller writes, “So many believers with whom I became acquainted were harassed and distressed in mind or brought guilt upon their conscience on account of not trusting in the Lord…[so] the first and primary object of the work was (and still is) that God might be magnified by the fact that the orphans under my care are provided with all they need only by prayer and faith, without anyone being asked by me or my fellow-laborers, whereby it may be seen that God is faithful still and hears prayers still.”

From Strength to Strength, Arthur Brooks

Brooks outlines the path to joyful purpose later in life, courageously transitioning from a career based on fluid intelligence to one grounded in crystallized intelligence, inspired by the fact that, “The people who are happiest and most satisfied in their fifties, sixties, and seventies are those who made this leap.”

Let me know if one of these makes it on your 2026 list!

The Lambs in our Lives

“Like a good shepherd, he takes care of his people. He gathers them like lambs in his arms. He holds them close, while their mothers walk beside him.” Isaiah 40:11 (ERV)

I don’t know who the vulnerable are in your world right now. Maybe you’ve experienced the Good Shepherd’s care for you, but you’re wondering about your sons or daughters, nieces or nephews, mentees or disciplees, foster children or co-workers: does God notice them? Do they notice Him? 

Is He considering their fragility and development as He leads? 

Does He realize how much their welfare weighs on you, and yet how incapable you are of carrying them through life, noticing each and every danger and defending them from it? 

Nestled in a chapter of scripture that begins with comfort and ends with strength, comes this pivotal image offering us both: 

A Shepherd, most attentive to the vulnerable and weakest.

A Shepherd, carrying them where they’re most secure. 

A Shepherd, setting a sensitive pace for the concerned mom to walk beside Him.

A Shepherd, intervening in ways that she cannot. 

Sheep, who are with young, as other versions translate it, cannot carry their young. It’s physically impossible for a sheep to pick up her lamb and take it along with her, and it’s improbable that she even knows where safety might be found. To bleat in complaint that she should be the one bearing the lamb’s weight herself would be senseless, so the only thing left for the sheep to do is follow the shepherd who takes her lamb in his arms and trust that He does a better job at holding them.

When you’re burdened about the vulnerable in your life, it isn’t your responsibility to carry them, but to walk beside Him.

Water & Power

A friend recently texted that their town was replacing their neighborhood pipes, so they’d be without water for a short time. Ugh! If you’ve gone without water or electricity for a day or longer, you know that not having something so essential, highlights how essential it really is! Suddenly, its absence makes the heart grow fonder, and we tell ourselves we’ll never take it for granted again.

For me, familiar scripture can be like running water or electricity in our home - it’s there, and it’s nice to have, but sometimes I take it for granted and forget why it’s so crucial.  But what if the Living Water didn’t flow in my life and my power source was cut off? To imagine life without the truth of a familiar passage, I re-write the verses stating the opposite reality. For example, here’s what life would be like without the Shepherd of Psalm 23:

The Lord is not my Shepherd; I lack everything.

No one settles me down in green pastures;

I just keep pushing on through barren deserts.

No one leads me beside still waters;

All I can find are turbulent ones.

No one restores my fatally sick soul.

No one has any reason to point out the right path to me;

I always pick the wrong one.

When I’m trapped in the valley of the shadow of death, 

I fear all the evil, because I’m all alone.

There are no guides or guardrails to comfort me.

I’m starving, but there’s no food around - 

only my enemies are before me, and they consume me.

I’m dry and empty.

Truly, wickedness and steady hatred have chased me down all the days of my life,

and I’m far from the Lord, homeless forever.

If you need fresh appreciation for familiar verses like these, try taking their truths and writing what your reality would be if the opposite were true, because the water and light of the Word become even more precious in their absence.

A Mind that Stays

“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.” Isaiah 26:3 

Does your mind “stay”?

Some friends brought their dog to our place one day, and since our yard at the time was safely fenced in, they let the dog off its leash. Immediately it dashed to the furthest corner of the grass, sniffed the perimeter for about 1.5 seconds, and wormed its way right off of our property through a small gap in the posts. So much for a peaceful afternoon.

Everyone jumped up, frantic. We shouted the dog’s name, chased it all over the neighborhood, and our friends yelled at it to “stay!” as they ran out of breath. Not a chance. He wouldn't stay.

And my mind won’t either. All of the what-ifs from the other side of the fence spark my imagination and beg for exploration, and my mind runs wildly. For me, this is especially true at night, when darkness closes in around me. How can we experience this truth from Isaiah 26:3 when we have minds that wander more than they stay?

First, I look at each word in this verse. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon (unless otherwise noted) gives these insights for better understanding:

Keep: “guard, watch over” 

Perfect peace: “shalom shalom” (repetition is the Hebrew way to emphasize a concept)

Mind: “imagination, frame of mind” 

Stay: literally, “to place or lay something upon any thing so that it may rest upon and be supported by it” -Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon

Trust: “have confidence in” 

If I were to use these definitions in application to my own struggle, the verse would sound like this: “You stand guard with your extra-wide shield of peace over me when my imagination lays its head down on you, because I’m confident in you.” 

When my mind tugs relentlessly at its leash in the middle of the night, I’m securing the fence posts around my imagination with a simple practice: Picture every post painted with a letter of the alphabet,  A, B, C, etc.  Each letter represents a truth, whether it’s a verse that begins with that letter, or an attribute of God himself, or something for which I’m thankful. 

Hammer the A post deeper into the grass: God is All-seeing

Pound the B post so it’s not going anywhere: Every spiritual Blessing is mine in Christ

Stake down the C post with: “Cast your cares on Him, because He cares for you.” (bonus for 3 c’s!)

I keep going around the border of my mind, letter by letter, so that it’s only bound by reality and resting on God. And those parameters leave me free to be shielded by peace that comes from staying.

Questions I ask myself: 

Is my imagination supported by God or by something else? 

Do my thoughts filter through a framework of confidence in God?

Am I so eager for the reward of peace that I’m willing to train my mind to “stay”?

P.S. Yes, the dog was eventually found, and I’m sure our friends keep a watchful eye on the condition of their fence;)

Retreat Recap

I spent the weekend of September 12-14 with about 250 women at beautiful Lake Ann Camp in Michigan. Together we addressed the apparent dissonance between the God-centered requests and the need-centered requests that Jesus teaches in The Lord’s Prayer. Is it possible to be God-centered when we have so many needs?

When I began studying The Lord’s Prayer, I wondered whether hallowing God’s name could ever be a desire in the middle of a practical need like daily bread. I questioned whether a longing for God’s kingdom would be possible under the burden of broken relationships in this immediate world. I asked whether doing God’s will on earth - a hostile place full of temptation and very unlike heaven - could ever truly be possible.

But if we allow God’s holiness to inform us about bread, His kingdom to teach us about relationships, and His will to be our path of deliverance, something in us changes. What we discovered over the weekend is that as Jesus teaches us how to pray about our needs, he teaches us how to live in our neediness.

I’ve attached #3 of the four sessions, which brings together the second set of requests: “Your kingdom come…forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.”