Peering Through Life's Window

  A Warm Welcome to Jennifer Slattery Jennifer will give away a print copy (U.S. residents only) of Her Small Town Refuge . To enter the Raffllecopter contest to win Jennifer's book leave a comment and an email address below.  The Messy but Beautiful Call to Love Most of want to be the type of person who notices those standing on the fringe, welcomes them close, and creates safe places where they can experience Christ. At least in theory. In practice, however, many of us discover how challenging and at times uncomfortable and convicting it can be to build relationships with those from hard places and an abundance of rough edges.  Life gets messy when we invite others in; when we reach out to the wounded. Simple and seemingly benign conversation can unexpectedly grow tense, our actions, at times, misaligned, and our best intentions viewed with skepticism if not contempt. And this hurts, not just from the sting of rejection. I’m convinced our greatest discomfort stems from ...

A Warm Welcome to Ada Brownell Hi Ada, first, tell us a little about yourself. I’ve been writing for decades and yet I still discover things I want to tell people through the printed page. One of the ways to do this is op-ed pieces for the two newspapers who accept my opinion writing. My next one will be about how Christian missionaries have changed the world in my lifetime. Why do you write? I feel called by God to share some of the important things in life I’ve seen and learned. When I retired from the newspaper, I thought of writing medical material, such as how to care for a baby who has the croup, how to bring down a fever, and that sort thing that new parents don’t seem to know how to do. We lived 90 miles from a doctor when my first two children were young and there are still people like that. But using my talent strictly for Lord won. Tell us about your latest book. What Prayer Can Do is a collection of 55 of my articles published in The Pentecostal Evan...