Impacted By Grace

Mindfulness is popular term going around in our culture today. Knowing exactly what mindfulness is and how to use it can be confusing. Mindfulness is important because it can help calm us down and ground us as we face our day-to-day, busy lives. Mindfulness can help with things such as anxiety, depression, and stress. Life can be messy and chaotic, and when it is, the biggest thing we can gift ourselves with is 5 minutes of silence and peace. Today I will share with you what mindfulness is and ways to incorporate it in your lives. The Three Ingredients of Mindfulness First off, I reference Diane Gehart when talking about mindfulness. Incorporating it into our lives is SUPER hard. It sounds easy initially, but when putting it into action, it can be a different story. Three major ingredients for achieving mindfulness include: Intentionality Attention to present experience Grace and compassion There are many ways to do mindfulness, but it has to include those 3 ingredien...

12th-13th century Mosaic depicting Jesus walking on water in Matthew 14:22-33.  The Cathedral of Monreale, Sicily. The story of Jesus walking on water in Matthew 14:22-33 is one of my favorite Bible stories. A few years ago I was in a Biblical Interpretation class and I was ecstatic because my group and I had the opportunity to teach this story.  When it was my turn to present I began by explaining how faith in the context of this story meant trusting the words of Jesus when Peter’s mind told him otherwise.  Sometimes people fear having doubt or bury their feelings and concerns about God under hollow statements of faith.  But having doubt is a natural thing and it is wrong to repress doubt and hide it under the rug.  You might think that odd that I say that, but the reality is while Peter may have been many things, he was not stupid.  He was an experienced sailor and fisherman who knew what would happen if he got out of the boat during a storm....

With only a few days into October I’m sure you’ve seen some quote like this shared by a friend or follower on social media. You know, one of those basic girls that shares this quote while she drinks her pumpkin spice latté, wearing furry boots and flannel. While I may only be doing one of those things now, and will most likely use this quote as an Instagram caption in the days to come, I think the quote above reminds us about something important as Christians.  At Generations of Grace on Wednesday nights our different small groups have been studying the Overcomer Bible study that goes along with the Overcomer movie. One Wednesday night a few weeks ago, in the women’s class we began discussing what our lives were like before and after encountering Christ. And everyone’s “after story” included some kind of change.  That’s what happens when Christ becomes a part of your life. You change how you see the world, how you think, how you act, and what you say because y...