By Joanna Kimbrel
Director of Theology
In the beginning, God was with us.
He walked with us in the garden.
He dwelt among us.
The uninhibited, unrestrained, unimaginable presence of God with us,
And it was very good.
The holy Creator delighted in His good creation—
The man and woman called to bear his glorious image.…
By Kristyn Perez
Staff Writer for The Daily Grace Co.
I was sitting with my friend at the local, college coffee shop as she anxiously gripped her steaming coffee mug. She struggled to look me in the eyes. Nervously, she fiddled with her hair and glanced side to side around the room, almost as if to make sure that he wasn’t there. …
By Emily S. Davis
Guest Contributor
It’s not that I meant to wander. It’s not that I purposefully determined in my heart to stray from my first love. It was the sinking revelation that I had made the Lord familiar, commonplace. When had His name stopped being so very precious to me? When had things that once moved me suddenly fail to move me anymore? When had that passion for Him become an unrecognizable flicker?
Over time.
Slowly, without purposed intention and devotion and priority to fuel the once passionate heart of mine, my soul slowly withered, and Jesus became a familiar aspect of my life, commonplace and taken for granted, when He is anything but common.
Tricked by life’s busyness and Satan’s cunning patience to slowly lead me away, I didn’t recognize myself as a wanderer until I reflected and realized I had strayed from my first love. This wanderer stood in her pit—with a name that no longer seemed precious, with a hardened heart that wasn’t so easily moved, and a passion in crisis.
The book of Hosea also describes the story of a nation’s wandering status. The people of Israel were God’s own people, and He had not just become familiar to them—they decided He wasn’t enough for them.…
