Keri Wyatt Kent's Connecting eNewsletter Archives:

• December, 2010

     To thank you for subscribing, I’m including a little gift: a chapter
     of my forthcoming book, Deeper into the Word: Reflections on
     100 Words from the New Testament. You will find a sample of the
     first chapter...

     Read the entire December,2010  issue.

• November, 2010

     Living with teenagers is like sailing a small ship on a rolling
     ocean. You have to constantly adjust to keep your balance. It’s
     full of surprises: like last week, when my daughter asked if I’d
     take her and her brother downtown to spend the day: to go out 
     to breakfast, explore Millennium Park. She wanted to shoot some
     photos. I enticed my son along with a promise to visit the Art
     Institute. I cancelled other plans to adjust to this favorable wind.

       Read the entire November 2010  issue.

• October, 2010

       Dallas Willard writes, “People are meant to live in an ongoing
       conversational relationship with God, speaking and being
       spoken to…”

       Read the entire October 2010  issue.
 

• September, 2010

       One of my greatest challenges, spiritually, is to live in the
       moment, to enjoy the gift of the present (pun intended). I’m    
       the type who likes to plan ahead. I love calendars, lists, sticky
       notes with reminders of what to put on my list. Being
       organized and setting goals is helpful, but if we are always
       thinking about tomorrow, we never really enjoy today. The
       contentment we long for is not in the past or the future—it
       comes from being right here, right now. Contentment brings us
       freedom.

       Read the entire September 2010  issue.
 

• August, 2010

        I have a friend who lives in one of the worst neighborhoods in
        Chicago, on purpose, because God called her to minister to the
        poor. (And frankly, it’s hard to do that as a commuter and have
        people take you seriously). So she lives in an apartment with
        bullet holes in the front window and drug dealers on the
        corner.  She’s taking territory for the kingdom every day by
        loving her neighbors. I look at her life with awe and admiration
        and wonder if I could be that obedient to the call of God.

        Read the entire August 2010  issue.

• June, 2010

  It is early on a summer morning, the sun filters through the trees in the backyard. The pattern it draws on the dining room window shifts as its rising gains momentum in the hazy sky.

  
  Read the entire June 2010  issue.
   

• May, 2010
  
  As we soldier on through what some people are now calling The Great Recession, the question we may be asking ourselves is this: is God still good? Will he provide? Can we trust him?
  
  Read the entire May 2010  issue.
   
• April, 2010
  
  I did  not feel like waking up at 5:45 this morning. I slapped at the alarm clock, lay back down, snuggled under the comforter. Persistent cardinals whistled to each other in my backyard, as if they’d been assigned the task of enticing me out of bed.
  
  Read the entire April 2010  issue!

   

• March, 2010

  The song Amazing Grace contains this rich lyric: “I once was blind, but now I see.” The truth is, we are all blind, in some way. And in desperate need of healing.The gospels tell us that Jesus healed many blind people. Two stories stand out: one in Matthew 20, the other in Mark 10. The stories are very similar, and are likely to be describing the same event: both incidents happen on the road outside of Jericho, and the conversation recorded is almost the same in both stories. In Matthew’s version, there are two blind men, in Mark’s, only one. In Matthew’s narrative, Jesus heals with a touch, in Mark’s, he does so with a word.
  
  Read the entire March 2010  issue!

   

• February, 2010
  
  We are living in times more financially difficult than anyone under the age of 70 or so can probably remember. It seems every week we hear about another company going out of business or laying off thousands of workers. Upwards of 25 percent of U.S. homeowners are “upside down” on their mortgages—meaning they owe more than the house is worth. Our lives feel uncertain. Anxiety has become normal.
  
  Read the entire February 2010  issue!
   
• January, 2010
  
  During the holidays, it’s fairly easy to find ways to extend compassion. Opportunities to serve a meal in a soup kitchen, contribute to a coat drive or donate “Toys for Tots” seem to inundate us. We show hospitality to our neighbors and even strangers. This year, our family bought gifts for the Breakthrough Urban Ministries Christmas Store, bought kids coats for the coat drive at our church, contributed to our year-end fund which helps international missions, put coins in Salvation Army collection kettles. My kids bought “education for an orphan” through World Vision as a “gift” for my parents by making a donation in their name. My daughter volunteered in the three-year-old room at our church’s Christmas services, my friend and I served breakfast at the homeless shelter, we welcomed our neighbors over for dessert after taking them to a Christmas service, and so on.
  
  Read the entire January 2010  issue!

   

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