• Featured,  Intervention,  Rescue

    God’s Miraculous and Timely Intervention

    I suppose I was prepped to believe that God’s intervention can happen miraculously by a youth spent devouring the books of evangelists.  These men and women of God proved over and over how He can and does aid those who for whatever reason find themselves caught in unforeseen and overwhelming circumstances. For instance, the story of Nora Lam gave me an understanding of God’s care of the widow and orphan. Her story of staying pregnant for nearly a year while she worked in a hard labor camp in Communist China is gripping. Though I did not expect to need rescue, I was prepared to accept intervention when it came. The…

  • self-awareness
    denial,  Self-awareness,  success

    Self-Awareness vs Narcissism: How to Tell the Difference

    Self-awareness is to sensitivity as narcissism is to self-absorption. Many make the mistake of glossing over the term self-awareness as one of those jargon words like facilitate, monetize, or self-actualization.  Christians, in particular, are often suspicious of any word that begins with self. We forget that the injunction to love others as we love ourselves presupposes necessary self-love.  But self-awareness is the polar opposite of narcissism. Narcissism projects onto the world an image, while the true self, like the portrait hidden in Dorian Grey’s attic, grows less recognizable with time.  The cry of the narcissist is “I have been cheated!”  Narcissists seek to escape themselves. Those with even a modicum…

  • memory
    Childhood,  Imaginative Prayer,  Memory

    What Our Childhood Memories Reveal

    Memories act as markers for our lives, and our first ones often reveal a lot about how we see the world.  What you make of your childhood makes you, I believe.  One of my first vivid memories involves a small house I lived in at the age of three or four.  We lived in Colorado at the time and were quite poor as my parents attended graduate school.  I would walk up and down the block and once knocked on a neighbor’s door to see if she had any children.  I remember her house as pink and her hair as brown laced with silver.  She had no children and clearly…