The Kingdom of God Drawn Near

February 15, 2026 When you hear the term Lent what images come to mind? Perhaps it elicits feelings of disappointment, even shame, because every year you “give up chocolate or alcohol for Lent” and every year you cheat and break your Lenten promise. Or maybe you are like me, and honestly thought lent was just the past-tense of lend and an excuse to eat and do whatever you wanted the week prior! I...

Light white candle - The Christ Candle Today’s the day! Christmas is finally here!! If you have a house full of children, then you were most likely up late last night, putting toy bikes and kitchen sets together, wrapping those gifts that were hidden all over the house and placing them under the Christmas tree. You’ve probably been up since before daylight with children or grandchildren awake and...

Light last purple candle - The Love Candle I was crying loudly by the time I opened the door of my house and ran into my mother’s open arms. I was 6-years-old, in first grade at Bells Ferry Elementary School in Marietta, Georgia. I rode the big yellow bus back and forth to school and had a long walk up our street from our house to the bus stop. The first couple of days, my mom and little brother w...

Light last purple candle - The Love Candle “What on earth happened?” “I heard that she cheated on Joseph and ran off to relatives, but they must have sent her back because I saw her at the well yesterday. She’s trying to hide her baby bump with flowy robes but eventually everyone, even Joseph, will figure it out.” The small agricultural village of Nazareth overlooking the Sea of Galilee rarely exp...

Light last purple candle - The Love Candle “John? Marry? You mean that poky old Mr. Brooke? How did he weasel his way into this family?” Jo March has just walked in on a private conversation Marmee was having with her eldest daughter, Meg, about potentially marrying John Brooke. The 1994 cinematic portrayal of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women follows the budding romance between Mr. Brooke, the for...

Light last purple candle - The Love Candle How can it be that we have so quickly come to the fourth and final Sunday of Advent? With Christmas only four days away, I imagine that you, like me, might be rushing to secure those last gifts for friends and family, and grocery shopping to prepare as much of the holiday meal as you can beforehand. School is out for a couple of weeks, so the kids are hom...

Light pink candle - The Joy Candle There are many traditions which are unique to southern culture. The monogram is a big one. From the moment a baby girl is born, her monogram is embroidered on her Sunday dresses, hairbows and backpacks. I’ve noticed at UGA football games recently that the college girls wear custom UGA Tecovas boots, the Georgia “G” on one side and their monogram on the other. Las...

Light pink candle - The Joy Candle I love the smell of a fire on a cool autumn evening. Whether we are on a trip in our camper, pulling into a campground after a long day’s travel or just hanging out around the firepit in our backyard, there is something so comforting and relaxing in that smell. Not everyone feels the same, though. For instance, fire fighters whose job is to douse flames and preve...

Light pink candle - The Joy Candle “What was I thinking when I marked this up?” Dale and I are listening to the Bible this year, along with Paul David Tripp’s devotional, Everyday Gospel. I like to listen and also read along in the Christian Standard Bible (CSB) I have used for several years. There are different highlighter colors marking specific passages, along with the occasional notes I’ve wri...

Light pink candle - The Joy Candle Gentle Parenting…for the Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers among us, I can sense your eyerolls and deep sighs. So many of our adult children, those darling Millennials and Gen Z’s, are adopting this latest trend in parenting as they raise their own little ones. Why do my fellow grandparents tend to roll our eyes when our grands throw themselves on the floor, kicking and...

Light pink candle - The Joy Candle I try to end my counseling sessions with appreciation and encouragement for my clients. I might say, “Thank you for trusting me with your story. I know that was hard.” or “Great work today! I’m so proud of you and the way you are cooperating with the Spirit to affect healing, growth and change.” Being proud of a client’s cooperative work involves admiration, grat...

Light pink candle - The Joy Candle Popularized by the folk-rock band The Byrds’ version in 1965, “Turn! Turn! Turn!” quickly became an international hit and understandably so. While the 1960s saw change and movement towards equality for all citizens of the U.S., it came at a huge cost. The decade was marked by social unrest sparked and fueled by the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement as well a...

Light pink candle - The Joy Candle We’re over halfway through our 2025 practice of Advent, God’s Promise Through Generations . This week we’ll turn our focus to the kings in Jesus’ lineage; some who recognized their own limitations as sinful, broken people and relied on the Joy of the LORD for strength, for wisdom, for courage and faith to move forward in obedience. King David understood his despe...

Light second purple candle - The Peace Candle The Last Supper…the Mona Lisa …these timeless artistic masterpieces are perhaps the most famous works of Leonardo da Vinci, a towering figure of the Italian Renaissance, but that is not why he is known as a Renaissance Man . Born in 1452 near Vinci, Italy, da Vinci became not only a renowned artist, but a scientist, inventor and engineer as well. His l...

Light second purple candle - The Peace Candle I imagine that some of you have read the title of today’s devotion and already begun thumbing back through the previous pages, certain that you accidentally skipped a story or two. Yesterday’s ancestral character was Judah and today’s is Rahab? How could that be? How can we skip over Moses and the Exodus or the Israelites’ 40 years in the wilderness? I...

Light second purple candle - The Peace Candle “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me I once was lost, but now am found Was blind but now I see” This beloved hymn, “Amazing Grace,” was written autobiographically by former English slave ship captain and slave trader, John Newton. Born in London in 1725, John was the only child of a ship captain who was constantly at sea. His...

Light second purple candle - The Peace Candle Our television was set to the local CBS station, midmornings when we weren’t in school. The camera would scan the studio audience, most of whom were dressed up in hilarious costumes, then the announcer’s voice would ask, “Would you make a deal to trade up to five hundred dollars in cash for one of these three doors, knowing behind one of them is $3,254...

As many of you know by now, our family regularly enjoys Friday Pizza and Movie Night. Even now that the kids are grown and gone, Dale and I make our cauliflower crust pizzas after work on Friday evenings and watch a movie or an episode or two from whichever television series we’re following. An all-time Brown Family favorite movie is Finding Nemo . In the opening scene, a darling orange and white...

Light first purple candle - The Hope Candle As I write today’s entry in our Advent devotional, I’m visiting the south rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona with my husband and our youngest daughter and son-in-law, Rebecca and Luke Danek. Last night we jumped in the trucks with the dogs and drove up to a spot on the rim where sunset views are spectacular. Last night’s display was no exception. Once th...

Light second purple candle - The Peace Candle Welcome to week two of our Advent journey together of God’s Promise Through Generations! I’m so glad you’re here. For this second week of Advent we’ll focus on the theme of peace. Peace , in Hebrew, shalom, signifies more than just the absence of conflict. It encompasses wholeness, well-being and completeness, both individually and in relationship with...

Light first purple candle - The Hope Candle I am certainly not an architect, but I have always loved building towers. Using any given materials, I enjoy trying to see how high I can make a structure, and how I need to create a solid base to withhold the tower’s weight. Eventually, of course, it begins to teeter as I try to add just one more block and it crashes to the floor. You might be asking, “...

Light first purple candle - The Hope Candle How are you feeling today? Excited because you are starting a new job, yet nervous that you might make a rookie mistake? Exhausted because you have a newborn who is up every other hour to nurse, and then wants to play and coo for an additional hour, yet overjoyed at this darling miracle baby? Disappointed that an old friend hasn’t responded to the text y...

Light first purple candle - The Hope Candle A longed-for pregnancy finally happens, only to end in miscarriage; addiction wreaks havoc not only in the addict, but all that love him/her; an engagement to be married is broken, the wedding cancelled, after a year of preparations; sibling rivalry, perhaps cultivated by a parent’s preferences and favoritism, results in judgement, jealousy, comparison,...

The summer between my sophomore and junior years of college I spent three months in Bandung, Indonesia, as a summer missionary teaching English in a school there. Up to that point in my life, it was the most challenging thing I’d ever done, but also transformative. I returned to the States with a strong calling to pursue early childhood education rather than the public relations degree I had been...

Light first purple candle - The Hope Candle How many of you have a child who is your “mini-me?” You may look at a child and think, “I know who his father is!” Originating from the 1999 Austin Powers film, a “Mini-Me” is a person who resembles a smaller or younger version of another person. Our oldest grandson, Séamus, looks so much like his dad it is uncanny! We keep trying to find our oldest daug...