North Side Women
But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. Luke 2:19 I love nativity sets. I have a small collection but through the years I have lost some of the pieces from the different sets. I just love the beauty of everyone standing around Baby Jesus – the angels, Shepherds, Kings, animals, Joseph, …
By Lara Cook But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God …
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Matthew 28:18 Have you ever heard something that you have heard your whole life, but then, all of a sudden, it is like a lightbulb comes on? I have heard this Bible verse hundreds of times …
Everyone has a story. In fact, most of us have many stories from different seasons of our lives that make up our whole story. Some stories we cannot tell, but some stories we can and should. Don’t ever underestimate the story of you and all the experiences of your life that contribute to who you …
A Good Kind of Empty by Lara Cook Empty. Vacant. Unoccupied. Uninhabited. Desolate. Deserted. Abandoned. Have you experienced anything like that this year? Empty can be applied to all of our lives this year in one way or another. We have seen empty shelves. We have driven down empty streets. We have passed empty parks. …
The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. Psalm 18:2 Where is your Cleft? There is a place where we can hide. The safety of the cleft of the Rock of Ages – Trust in …
And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better, she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched …
One thing we have all done a lot more this year than ever before is to clean – our hands, our doorknobs, our cabinets, our refrigerator handles, our homes, everything. But what about our spirits? Our insides are in need of a good cleaning too – our heart, mind, and spirit. They have become cluttered …
All of us have struggled with our “enough” being threatened in the last couple of months. In fact, “enough” has taken on a whole new meaning as we watched the grocery store shelves empty right before our eyes in a matter of hours when this pandemic started. How much is enough for you? How much …
My family is broken. The family I grew up in as a little girl was broken too. My father was an alcoholic and could not even function enough to keep his job. He eventually stopped drinking, but then moved on to prescription medication addiction. He died when he was 63 of liver failure. He never …