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We see how God has always been working in our stories as we tell them. Our prayer for you is that you start finding Him in your stories too.
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
Cape Town is a city like no other. You can swim with penguins in the Indian Ocean and surf the icy Atlantic on the same day. On a summer night, you can watch the sunset behind Table Mountain at 7pm and watch it set again from the beach at 8pm. There is even a kingdom within the city. The Cape Floral Kingdom is the smallest but most diverse of the world’s six plant kingdoms.
We’ve recently moved to the northern edges of the city to ease our financial burden. I wrestled with moving further from our church community and no longer being able to host church groups from our home.
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
Everyone loves a feel-good miracle. We loved watching joy overcome a family who’d suffered when the crew from “Extreme Home Makeover” shouted “Move that bus!” We are moved by testimonies of healing and radical experiences of modern day faith heroes. But what about our normal lives? What about the inglorious trials that aren’t TLC worthy?
What about the unseen, dark hours of the night when a sick or disabled child can’t sleep? What about the daily weight of caring for degenerating parents? Or thick sorrow of waking up again to an empty side of the bed, empty bedroom down the hall, or some other apparent grief?
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
My 7-year old son has been running to the door since he could walk - always trying to get outside or to school. This year, the cost of regular childhood delights became too high for his nervous system disability. He has been home with me for five months, requiring full-time care and unable to access education.
Recently, I contacted an au pair agency that works with special needs families. I imagined he could learn at home when he’s ready and expend his limited energy on what’s important to him - church, friendship, and sports. He could have the support I’m struggling to remain steady for, and I could have margin for myself, our family, and to develop our church’s disability ministry.
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
We've had an ongoing conversation about algorithms in our church's women's group. It started with an icebreaker, "What's showing up in your algorithms right now?" We laughed about our silly and specific interests. Then, I sent an 80's restyled church photo to our group chat, and they joked I "broke the Internet" when their social media feeds flooded with 80s pictures. We kept noticing how our content was curated by our exchanged messages. Recently, I asked God for encouragement for our group. I smiled as He leaned into our inside joke and whispered, "Create your own algorithms."
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
I still recall the inflection of my husband-to-be’s voice in 2015, when he told me God gave him a specific amount to budget for our housing. The amount seemed outlandish and irrelevant. Even the largest home in our rural town in Mpumalanga, South Africa rented for half of that. Yet we knew we stood in a sacred moment. The Lord was preparing a way we couldn’t see yet. I nodded, “Ok. Let’s do it.”
We moved to Cape Town two years later. Our first month’s rent was the exact outlandish amount my husband heard from God. Ten years later, the economy has changed dramatically in Cape Town. We’ve moved again and again as landlords in financial strain put their properties on the market. That seemingly outlandish amount God spoke became too low a long time ago.
We Survived the Move!
I have to say, there were more than a few times we realized we were in over our heads. But, here we are. Our 10th home in 11 years of marriage. And we’ve already started enjoying new sunset views, new rhythms, and a new pace of life. Here’s a video of our first week.
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
I am surrounded by piles of boxes as I write. My family is moving in three days - just 20 minutes up the freeway to reduce our cost of living. We are leaving the house where our church was born, and where our sons learned to walk, swim and shave. I’ve been asked more than once if I felt emotional about it, but I am surprisingly unattached to these walls that have witnessed so much wonder.
I think God has used hard seasons of life to give me the gift of uprootedness
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
Seven years ago, our family was navigating a new city, ministry fails, racism, legal injustices, puberty, a mental health crisis, losing a baby and having a baby within 365 days. We met our neighbors through the fence and shared just a few visits. We had nothing but cloudy chaos to offer, but Patrick and Kelley kept popping over with a kind of brightness we couldn’t resist. Patrick took pregnancy photos for us in our backyard. Kelley made a baby blanket when Benjamin was born.
The Monday I Never Expected
This is the story of how I ended up like Dolly Parton on a Monday night in South Africa.
Birthday Reflections
And that’s a wrap on 41… What a year.
I’ve been weathered, made wiser, and found possibilities and limitations I never knew existed. More than anything, I saw God in ways I never had... ways I’d never needed to before this year.
The Bible According to Benjamin
We’re getting ready for the launch of a friend and church member’s new business, Sent Collective. We started by studying the Scripture it’s founded on. Nobody loves the Word more than Benjamin Ladd. I tried to edit out the flip-kicks and stimming sounds but saved the content.
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
I've been playing an old hymn on repeat. My younger children don't understand the 18th century lyrics, but we've worshiped wholeheartedly to "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing". Something in that song is reaching something in us, so I did a little digging on the story behind it.
Robert Robinson lost his father as a young boy in the 1700's. He had to grow up fast, start working young, and ran the streets of London as a gangster. Robinson convinced his gang to heckle a Methodist gathering when he was 17.
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
A certain worship song spurs me to write the call to worship on some weeks. On other weeks, a passage of Scripture, a conversation or current events inspire me to write. This week, I listened to a song on repeat. I knew I’d write about it, but I didn’t know what I’d write or why.
The song title, “Less of Me” reminded me of a conversation John the Baptist had with his disciples after Jesus started baptizing. John’s faithful followers were becoming indignant that Jesus was a rising, baptizing public figure. John, however, was overjoyed the Messiah had been revealed.
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
Our church just hosted a two-day women’s event. God’s presence was so palpable among us the second day that I choked up as I shared the idea He had given me the night before. The ladies were sitting at tables spread with abundance—gifts, flowers, hot drinks, snacks, beautiful decorations. They graciously received the idea I shared before our final time of worship.
Pizza with Wyatt
Nothing takes you down the road to regret faster than inviting a 4-year old into your kitchen counter to make pizza dough.
Church Home Women’s Weekend
We had an AMAZING two days together! We laughed. We cried. We worshiped. We learned. We danced. We ate and ate and ate. We drew near to God and each other. It was an altogether holy, wonderful weekend. Here are a few clips to capture the two days.
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
I grew up in a family that celebrated “birthday months”. I thought it was the only way to celebrate and was sure I’d carry on the rich traditions. It hasn’t played out that way, however, as anticipation costs my autistic son immeasurably. At just 7-years old, he’s asked me to not tell him when it’s his birthday or anything exciting at all - until it’s time to celebrate.
My birthday is at the end of August. We usually whisper-plan a family meal or date night. My birthday tradition with friends is to eat an exclusively chocolate meal at my favorite cafe in town.
This year, I’m not even calling it August - it’s “My Birthday Month”. (But please don’t tell my 7-year old!)
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
Cory Asbury released the award-winning song, “Reckless Love”, in 2017 and was thrust into the crosshair of Christian critics. The worship leader was accused of misrepresenting God as “reckless”. He took advantage of the spotlight to talk more about God’s love. “…His love bankrupted heaven for you. His love doesn’t consider Himself first… He doesn’t wonder what He’ll gain or lose by putting Himself out there. He simply gives Himself away on the off-chance that one of us might look back at Him and offer ourselves in return.”
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
We’re in week three of school holidays, and it feels like my skin is buzzing with over-stimulation and high needs. I’ve been more irritable, often setting off a chain reaction with my son who shares my snap-crackle-pop nervous system. My world shrunk as my thoughts looped on my own struggles. This isn’t my first rodeo. I’m painfully prone to self-rumination.
I don’t think it’s just me. The Israelites sung “songs of ascents” to turn their minds from hardship to hope on the arduous journeys to Jerusalem.
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
Human nature is drawn to hiding and disguising. It’s our futile attempt to protect ourselves from the effects of sin. It started in the beginning. Adam and Eve exchanged walking with God for a taste of life outside of Him. After just a bite, “they made coverings for themselves… and hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” (Genesis 3:7, 8)
Much later, sinful King Ahab of Israel convinced righteous King Jehoshaphat of Judah to go to battle with him. Prophets had predicted Ahab’s death in this battle.