Life by Grace Alone

Our congregation reluctantly voted yes.  Steve will no longer be the pastor of this church after the last Sunday in September. Instead he will be exploring possibilities for new churches in our presbytery as the regional home missionary. What will be my part,if any in all of this? What insights of mine as a veteran pastor's wife should I share with the wives of church planters? Are there things I can share with individuals in new congregations that might make them look a little more kindly and realistically on their new pastor and his family? What has God taught me over the years?                                                                                                                     ...

It wasn't until recently that I really understood the concept of judgement of charity. There are so many times we quickly jump to the worst possible conclusion. Instead we should assume the best until we know otherwise.  You tell your son to clear his materials for his school project off the kitchen table before he goes to bed and the next morning it is still spread from one end of the table to the other. You are ready to tear in to him for disobedience just as you notice all the telltale signs that he had a nasty touch of a stomach bug. Your best friend at church has hardly spoken to you since you took different sides of an issue ardently discussed at the congregational meeting. You decide she's still upset about what happened. You're ready to talk  to her about her bad attitude when you find out she's always rushing off to check on her ailing mother. Her added responsibilities were what made her seem distant. You see another friend out with a man, not her husband. The...

Remember the small 4 lb. puppy our church gave Steve in the summer of 2010? Marlee was supposed to be 10-12lbs full grown. At 2 years of age when she goes for walks, she pulls with greater strength than you would expect from her 16 lb frame. On every walk she seems to think the only reason anyone has walked out of their house is to greet her.  We haven't felt comfortable letting her roam the house and so she has spent many hours confined to one room behind a black metal enclosure.Recently we greatly expanded Marlee's inside the house world. Hopeful that she had matured past biting holes in the walls or destroying lamps, we put away the metal enclosure that had so often defined the borders of her world. The occasion for this added freedom was Steve's surgery and the 3 days when he centered his life around the room that held his dog. Steve is allergic to cats and he has only owned 2 dogs and those in the last 20 years. He has managed to become a devoted dog owner without go...