Welcome to this blog about living as apprentices of Jesus!
One of Karen's favorite quotes is: "Whatever job we get and whatever task we are assigned can serve as a container for grace" (Eugene Peterson in "Practical Resurrection"). We pray that the words and sentences on this blog may also serve as "containers of grace" for its readers.
Joy and Karen
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Monthly Archives: June 2016
From my Reading
“Most of the time, people will not come out and say that they are good people in contrast to those who are not, but that is often what they mean. And this strikes me as a dangerous proposition. History demonstrates, … Continue reading
Posted in From My Reading...
Tagged "bad" people, Christina Grof, darkness, fear, Joyce Rupp, Kathleen Norris
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Who am I when my Body Fails Me? – Someone in the Hands of God
Last night was the last class of a series on my booklet Living as a Wounded Healer. We were talking about the difference between co-dependency, enabling, and Christian service. Someone asked a question which I couldn’t quite decipher. So I … Continue reading
Posted in Who am I when my Body Fails me?
Tagged chemotherapy, control, helping others, Living as a Wounded Healer
2 Comments
Preparing for Freedom
The National Aquarium in Baltimore is preparing to release eight bottlenose dolphins into an environment that approximates their natural homes. All but one of the dolphins was born in an aquarium or zoological park. Nani, the eldest, was born in … Continue reading
Posted in Living as Apprentices
Tagged dolphins, heaven, National Aquarium, training to be like Jesus
2 Comments
My Once in a Lifetime Life: Finding Community in the Concrete Blocks
“My Once in a Lifetime Life” is a series of occasional blogs written by Joy in reflecting on her time as a Christian missionary with three young children in the mid-2000’s. This post recalls her life in the Budapest apartment complexes … Continue reading
Posted in My Once in a Lifetime Life
Tagged Budapest, building community, Hungarian Reformed Church, The Concrete Blocks
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Seeing Beyond the “Vehicle that Carries Us”
“I had never understood before the invisibility of a human. How what we take to be a person is in fact a spirit we can never see. Not until I sat in that room, with the dead vehicle that had … Continue reading
Going Deeper with God – Stages of Spiritual Maturity
Eugene Peterson’s book Eat this Book teaches us to chew on a passage of scripture, digest it, and then put it to use in practical ways. Our Christian fathers and mothers called this process Lectio Divina. In these passages, we learn … Continue reading
Posted in Going Deeper with God
Tagged Adele Calhoun, Holy Spirit, James Bryan Smith, Spiritual Disciplines Handbook, spiritual formation, The Good and Beautiful God
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An Easy Blessing
We were sitting in the blazing sun at my largely unsuccessful yard sale when she talked about how hard it is to get motivated to make the changes we need to make, particularly as we get older – and older. … Continue reading
From my Reading
“To offer hospitality to a stranger is to welcome something new, unfamiliar and unknown into our life-world. . . . Strangers have stories to tell which we have never heard before, stories which can redirect our seeing and stimulate our … Continue reading
Posted in From My Reading...
Tagged Dallas Willard, denial, hospitality, Michael Card, Shayne Looper, sorrow, Thomas Ogletree, wrong information
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Living as Apprentices 