Let me begin by clarifying: I am not from Alaska. I grew up and attended college in the suburbs of Chicago. Upon graduation I moved south to Greenwood, Mississippi, and after getting married there, my husband and I moved north again to the far north, the Last Frontier: Fairbanks, Alaska. Like the vast majority of my peers, I grew up in a home with running water. Secure i...
Keep ReadingWhy learn The Catechism? A child asked me this question as I explained what we would be doing on Wednesday night. Kathryn asked me to write for the blog and she suggested the catechism as my topic. My first thought was, "Well this is what we do." It is tradition. All "good" Presbyterians learn catechism. But is tradition the reason we do what we do? Why do we tea...
Keep ReadingThough I am not very proficient at all types of social media, I have a basic understanding of how each of the most popular forms is used to communicate. As a parent of two teenagers, I have been somewhat forced to learn. Tweets, posts, snapchat stories, pins, blogs, and other seemingly strange words have worked their way into our vernacular. It seems that only kids and the...
Keep ReadingAnn Voskamp, author of One Thousands Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are says this of the Charlotte Mason Handbook Laying Down the Rails by Sonya Shafer: "Worth every penny and more." "Needful, necessary stuff." "I return again and again to this book, all underlined and dog-eared."It's February 24th, and many of us who haven't attained perfection in the keeping...
Keep ReadingLately there has been much talk about the Holy Spirit and His role in our lives. We just recently finished a Sunday School series on the Holy Spirit, and we have seen the Spirit all through our sermon series on Romans 8. These lessons made me think of a passage in 1 Corinthians 2 that addresses our need of the Spirit. Starting in verse 6 and continuing to the end of the ch...
Keep ReadingIn the popular lyrics of contemporary Christian artist Toby Mac's hit song "Speak Life", he says: "Speak life to the deadest darkest night. Speak life when the sun won't shine and you don't know why. Look into the eyes of the brokenhearted; watch them come alive as soon as you speak hope and you speak LIFE." The women and friends of Westminster had the opportunity to lis...
Keep ReadingLuke 5:17-26 My wife often tells me that I am not the best communicator. I don't believe her, but she claims that there have been times in our marriage when she has attempted to relay a message to me, and for some reason I have either failed to absorb the content, or have conveniently chosen to forget. With this in mind, I would like to share with you a topic that the LOR...
Keep ReadingI started writing this as a challenge to the men of WPC, but the more I wrote, the more God convicted me of my failure in this area. So men, this is written as much for me as it is for anyone. "Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church." - Jonathan Edwards Dads, have you ever considered your family as a "little church" with you as the preacher/elder/d...
Keep ReadingThe Agape Class (yeah, yeah, the old folks) recently finished a study of the book by Paul David Tripp called A Quest For More. I told the class that this book was not the usual Sunday school affair. Many classes tend to gravitate toward easier material something that will facilitate discussion. And discussion tends to make for a good class as it helps people engage with t...
Keep ReadingMany of us have read John Piper's Desiring God and been exposed to his unusual yet enlightening term, "Christian hedonism," the theory that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him, when our pleasure and joy is found most fully in our pursuit of God. While the term is not found in the Bible, the principle certainly is, and few would argue that an unb...
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