Groomed
May 4, 2025 by Cynthia Ruchti
Filed under Daily Devotions, Worship
When a young Ray Barone proposed to his girlfriend Debra (Everybody Loves Raymond), she whooped and danced around the room. Then with barely a nod his way, she whipped out the scrapbook of wedding ideas she’d collected since she was twelve.
I Heard What You Said
April 23, 2025 by Cynthia Ruchti
Filed under Daily Devotions, Worship
Late to get out the door with her brood of four children, my friend “Wanda” shooed them and shoed them.
“Brittany, get your shoes on right this minute!” Mom Wanda grabbed her keys, purse, and errand list plus snacks, sippy cups, and diapers for the littlest one, expecting four-year-old Brittany to slip into her Velcro shoes and fall in line behind her.
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Colorful Characters
April 14, 2025 by Cynthia Ruchti
Filed under Daily Devotions, Worship
By Cynthia Ruchti
Consider any troupe of sit-com characters. What makes the blend work? Their differences linked by a common bond.
For example: the quirky young people with vastly different internal conflicts, all struggling to become full-fledged adults in the big city environment.
The unique family dynamics that often erupt in a firestorm that keeps us laughing because, though exaggerated, the mother-in-law seems like our own…the brother’s phobias sound familiar…the grandpa’s caustic comments show up at our own Thanksgiving dinners.
Locker Room Grace
March 20, 2025 by Cynthia Ruchti
Filed under Daily Devotions, Worship
By Cynthia Ruchti
Our adult small group left our open Bibles and notebooks and coffee cups to spend some time voicing our support of and prayers for the young people who met at the same time in another part of the church. We walked into the multi-purpose room to stand in an embracing semi-circle at the back while they worshiped in all-out abandon.
“We’re here and we care,” we wanted to say.
We had to hurdle something to get into that room packed to the wall studs with teenagers. It smelled like a locker room in there. Teens with lots of energy but too little deodorant and an excess of gym shoes and two-day-old socks.
New Use For Old Pain
March 13, 2025 by Cynthia Ruchti
Filed under Daily Devotions, Humorous
By Cynthia Ruchti
Have you found a new use for old pain? It’s a biblical principle spelled out clearly in II Corinthians 1:4. The wording can seem a bit cumbersome if we skirt over the passage without thinking too deeply about it.
It reads this way, beginning with the last phrase of verse three: “…the God of all comfort… comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (NIV). In one version, the last part is “with the comfort wherewith we’ve been comforted.”
