Gwendolyn Harmon's Blog: Learning Ladyhood, page 12

What to do With Big Emotions

 “Teacher!” A tiny insistent hand pats my arm and I turn to look down into round blue eyes and a freckled face crumpled into a worried pout. “Teacher, this hurts when I press it.” My little student pokes at a small bruise on her elbow. In fourteen years of teaching, I have heard this complaint countless times from many students. But somehow, the conversation always goes the same way.

“I’m sorry that hurts. Try not to touch it.”

“But Teacher, it hurts!”

It’s funny the things we never grow out of. ...

Brave Obedience

The book of Joshua begins with a staggering promise:

“Now after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying:

Moses My servant is dead; now therefore arise, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel.

Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses.

From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great...

The Perfect Work of Patience

This year, I graduated from houseplants to outdoor gardening. What started out as a small tea garden quickly spread into vegetables, fruits, and the occasional flowering plant to attract bees to my squash plants.

I usually buy plants or seedlings, since my record with planting from seed isn’t great, but when I saw a packet of snowdrop bulbs at the garden store last week, I snapped them right up.

But the thing about planting bulbs is, you have to be patient. Snowdrops planted in October won’t pee...

Marks of a Good Friend

If you’ve been reading my posts each week, you probably know that I’m journaling through the Bible this year instead of doing my normal Bible-in-a-year reading plan. That is why I am just now reaching the end of 2 Samuel. As I read through the earlier part of the account of David’s life, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. I found myself paying more attention to Jonathan, impressed by what an excellent friend he was.

We probably all know that Jonathan and David were “best friends,” and yet...

A Biblical View of Singleness and Marriage

I saw a news article this week that bemoaned the large number of Instagram accounts glorifying singleness as better than marriage. The writer’s view of the situation seemed to be that the happily single were demeaning or even disrespecting the institution of marriage by their very happiness (or at least by the way they were expressing it.)

While I know that these Instagram accounts are probably worldly people talking about worldly “benefits” to their singleness, that article should prompt Christ...

Sufficient Unto the Day

We live in a worrisome world, don’t we? We can look around and find all sorts of reasons to worry about all sorts of things, and it often feels like there is more to worry about now than in any age of history. But that simply isn’t true.

In every age this side of the fall of mankind in Genesis 3, there has been ample reason for worry. But what does God say about it?

 

“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is t...

Justice or Vengeance?

I’ve been reading through 1 Samuel recently, and this week I came to the part of David’s narrative where he has opportunity to rid himself of the man who has literally been hunting him down to kill him.

It was night, the entire camp full of soldiers was so sound asleep that David and Abishai had made it right to the spot where Saul lay sleeping.

 

“Then said Abishai to David, God hath delivered thine enemy into thine hand this day: now therefore let me smite him, I pray thee, with the spear even ...

Wash Me

 Last Saturday, I was standing on someone’s porch, waiting for them to answer the door, when I happened to glance up. A ledge near the top of the door had a thick layer of dust on it—and two small smudges. I looked to either side of the door, where the same ledge ran across the top of two windows.

Dusty.

Of course, the only reason I noticed the dust at all had been because of the smudges where the dust had been swiped away by two careless fingertips.  It wasn’t the dust that caught my attention,...

40 Days with the Sheep

1 Samuel 17 is a very familiar chapter of the Bible to me. I have always enjoyed reading the narrative of David and Goliath, and have read it many times, but last week a detail stood out to me that I never noticed before. It comes just after Goliath has made his first appearance in the valley of Elah, causing the armies of Israel to cower in fear. Notice the quiet transition within the family of Jesse:

“Now David was the son of that Ephrathite of Bethlehem-judah, whose name was Jesse; and he had ...

Breaking up the Brazen Serpent

 Do you read the Bible as a book of real events that happened to real people? It’s easy to fall into a dry familiarity with the narratives of the Bible, and I’m just as prone to skipping the familiar bits as anyone else, but when I read with a heart and mind in tune with the reality of the Bible and the people described therein, I find myself intrigued by details I never would have noticed otherwise.

For example, this verse in Exodus got me thinking:

 

“And the holy garments of Aaron shall be his s...