We’re Loading In The Wood…

Tonight my entire family joined me in our rough rubble basement, where we loaded in our winter wood for the upcoming season, and stacked it into massive wood walls.

With Garrison Keillor and Prairie Home Companion playing in the background, we spontaneously broke from our work and began a line dance to some down home fiddle playing.

My youngest (Ben, 9) couldn’t contain his exhuberance. Britney Spears would be shocked at the dance moves we witnessed from him during our impromptu, lower level barn dance.

It is in the moments where work and play become indistinguishable that we grow together as community.

When laughter and playfulness can meet meet labor and stress head on, there is an ease to the processes of living, dying and the expending our energies.

Community can make the largest tasks bearable, because we get to do them together.

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Sheltering Mercy: Prayers Inspired by the Psalms

Sheltering Mercy, along with its companion volume, Endless Grace, helps us rediscover the rich treasures of the Psalms—through free-verse prayer renderings of their poems and hymns—as a guide to personal devotion and meditation.

The church has always used the Psalms as part of its prayer life, and they have inspired countless other prayers. This book contains 75 prayers drawn from Psalms 1-75, providing lyrical sketches of what authors Ryan Smith and Dan Wilt have seen, heard, and felt while sojourning in the Psalms. Each prayer is a response to the Psalms written in harmony with Scripture. These prayers help us quiet our hearts before God and welcome us into a safe place amid the storms of life.

This artful, poetic, and classic devotional book features compelling custom illustrations and foil-stamped hardcover binding, offering a fresh way to reflect on and pray the Psalms.