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I once told a spiritually mature friend of mine that I had finished reading the weekly Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly. He replied, “Oh? I am just on the first section!”  It’s tempting to enjoy the spiritual concepts in the Bible and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy while reading about them, but then allow them to drift out of thought.

I had just finished reading the story of Moses’ encounters with God in Exodus. The Bible records that “the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend” ( Exodus 33:11 ).

The apostle Paul’s admonition  “Pray without ceasing” ( I Thessalonians 5:17 ) is one of a list of prayer counsels I’ve come to call my prayer checklist. Unceasing prayer can seem impossible with everything else one has to do.

A fellow church member said to me, “Our church is just a shadow of what it used to be. ” I reflected on that for a moment.

Court trials—real ones or those in movies or on TV—tend to promote the concept that there are many minds, many approaches, many sides, and many laws at odds with one another. There is the defendant, the prosecutor, the judge, the witnesses, and the jury, among others—all with many opinions and often conflicting motives.

At first Moses shrank from the divine demand to free the Israelites from bondage. He asked, “Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?” ( Exodus 3:11 ).

It was a Sunday morning. I arrived at church early to take my post as usher, ready to greet newcomers as well as our regular attendees.

Six years ago, a very special event in my life made me think more deeply about the topic of equal rights for women and men. This event was the birth of our first daughter.

I sat alone at one point, praying something like, “Wow, I honestly thought I’d do okay at this parenting thing, but God, I feel like I am messing up and I really, really need Your guidance right now to help these kids. ” In the Bible, the Apostle Paul said, “When I am weak, then am I strong” ( II Corinthians 12:10 ).

As a teenager , I was working above a new display of soda pop at my job in a grocery store when some bottles exploded, sending shards of glass into my face and eyes. Soon after, I sat alone in a hospital emergency room waiting for my mother to arrive to authorize medical treatment because I was a minor.