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About Kathy Wargo

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So far Kathy Wargo has created 260 blog entries.

Cultivating Hearts of Adoration

ABBY HUTTO | GUEST One summer while my children were in elementary school, I instituted a new prayer policy in our home. I could no longer take hearing the same prayer over and over again. Every single day, three times a day, they prayed, “Thank you, Jesus, for our food and please help us have a great day.” I finally had enough. I purchased a little chalkboard, downloaded a prayer guide with 31 names/attributes of God, and made a new rule: before we thank Jesus for our food, before we ask him to make every day a great day, we must first thank him for being himself. I declared that summer a season of adoration. Meditating on God’s Character My children were doing what comes instinctively to all of us. When we pray, it’s easy to thank God for the things he has done for us. We don’t have to search our minds for things we want to ask him for. If we’re truly spiritual, we confess our sins. But appreciating God for just being who he is doesn’t seem to come naturally to us. Adoration is not something modern American Christians spend a lot of time doing. Our culture, our schedules, and our overactive hearts don’t leave us time to slow down and meditate over who God is in his character and nature. We rarely separate who God is from what he does. At first glance, that may not seem like a big deal. After all, who God is in his character and nature is displayed in his acts of power as he works in our world to rescue and save his people. Thanksgiving and supplication are vital to our prayer lives. Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts.” It is good and right to be moved by God’s intervention in our life. When he provides, comforts, rescues, it is right to be thankful for what he has done. But do we also adore him for who he is? Do we open our prayers as Jesus taught us, adoring our Father who is hallowed and enthroned in his heavenly kingdom?

Cultivating Hearts of Adoration2023-03-24T18:08:40+00:00

John 14: Our Heavenly Home

SHARON ROCKWELL|GUEST A favorite in my book collection is one that has no words at all. Artist John S. Goodall’s Above and Below Stairs is a series of water-colored paintings portraying the lives of the privileged in England from the Middle Ages to the early 1900’s. The book must be held horizontally. Each picture covers two full pages, separated by a half page which meshes into the original painting, but when turned, changes the scene from what was happening to the elite to what was happening to the servants and working people in the same time period. The “upstairs” may show a lovely formal banquet, but when covered with the half page, the picture changes to depict the cooks and servants working “below the stairs.” Things have not changed much over the years. There are still some people who are born into luxury. They may live in massive houses with never a financial worry other than how to spend their money. Then there are those who live in modest homes and who sweat and toil to put food on the table and pay the mortgage. Finally, there are people who seem to encounter one significant set-back after another to the point where they wonder how much more they can take. These we may find in a homeless shelter, wondering where their next meal will come from.

John 14: Our Heavenly Home2023-03-24T18:08:45+00:00

In the I.M.A.G.E. of God

STEPHANIE HUBACH | CONTRIBUTOR Elementary school seems to be the time period when we learn all about different forms of communication. Letter writing. Short stories. Poetry. My younger son Tim, who has Down syndrome, once graced me with a school Valentine poem/project that read something like this: Roses are blue, violets are red. Be careful this crocodile, doesn’t bite off your head. That’s the kind of poetry that only an 8-year-old boy can create. (Thank goodness Hallmark doesn’t hire 8-year-old boys to write their Valentine cards!) One poetic form that I remember learning, and that the Bible actually employs in the Psalms, is the acrostic. Miriam Webster defines an acrostic this way: “a composition usually in verse in which sets of letters (such as the initial or final letters of the lines) taken in order form a word or phrase or a regular sequence of letters of the alphabet.” Over the years, I’ve written many pieces on the image of God. For a change of pace this time, let’s try an acrostic. Acrostics can make it easy to remember things—so maybe this format will help all of us to remember, throughout the year, what it means to be created in the image of God. I.M.A.G.E.

In the I.M.A.G.E. of God2023-03-24T18:08:56+00:00

Cultivating the Art of Reading at Home

ANN MARIE MO|GUEST In a technology-driven world, books face stiff competition. Have a question about George Washington or what to make for dinner tonight? It’s just easier to google than to read an entire book. Books require time, concentration, effort. Reading War and Peace necessitates devoting weeks, if not months, to unlock the treasure within. In contrast, our handheld devices offer instant gratification. Why Read Good Books? Yet good books impart to their readers what no digital device can match: Some of my fondest childhood memories are the summers I spent living at the library immersed in one compelling hardbound story after another. I recall the summer before fifth grade when I discovered the genre of historical fiction and a few years later in middle school when I read Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and in high school, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Through these books, I learned the world is powerfully unjust and not everyone grows up with the same opportunities. By my junior year in high school, I knew I would major in English at college. Books were my gateway to understand another person’s experiences and be exposed to new ideas. Fast forward to adult life, teaching my children to read and cherish books has been of paramount importance.

Cultivating the Art of Reading at Home2023-03-24T18:09:04+00:00

John 13: Love Made New

STEPHANIE FORMENTI | GUEST There is something special and even powerful about old things made new again. Perhaps this is why millions of viewers regularly follow various home makeover shows on HGTV. It is mesmerizing to watch an old, broken, and dilapidated building transform into a shiny and beautiful new home. It is thrilling to celebrate the character of old wood, stone, and brick alongside new plumbing and electricity. The gospel of John is full of similar beauty. John consistently points his reader to consider how the coming of Jesus transforms old into new. From the opening words, “In the beginning,” John invites us to consider Jesus’ work and ministry as one of new creation. We see the same beauty and emphasis of old things being made new in the Upper Room Discourse when Jesus turns the conversation to love. In John 13:34-35 Jesus says: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Any reader of Scripture would pause for a second. How is the command to love one another new? In fact, isn’t it as old as the law itself? After all, we find these words in Leviticus 19:18 “you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” Love for others has always been at the heart of God. It is woven throughout the law and the prophets and Jesus himself regularly summarized the law as love for God and others (Matthew 22:36-40). Loving others does not seem like a new thing. In fact, it seems rather old.

John 13: Love Made New2023-03-24T18:09:50+00:00

On Suffering Well and the Mercy of God

MARISSA BONDURANT | GUEST She stood next to me one Sunday with tears streaming down her cheeks. Without looking at her, I gave her arm a squeeze. Both our faces were up; both of us were singing loudly. But I was singing of God’s faithfulness with a new baby strapped to my body, and she was singing of God’s faithfulness with the stinging news of another failed IVF treatment. In my heart I wondered, “How is my friend doing it? If I were in her shoes, there is no way I’d be able to sing to the Lord this morning.” Suffering Well Have you ever had a similar thought? Have you ever watched a fellow believer suffer well and wondered how she did it? It might help to define “suffering well.” To suffer well is to suffer like Jesus. To acknowledge the real pain and sorrow of the experience, while simultaneously holding on to the hope that the pain will not last forever. Before he went to the cross, Jesus was honest with his Father about his pain – asking God to “let this cup pass from me” (Matt 26:39). Then his prayer moved directly into hope and trust, “nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matt 26:39). My friend who sang praises to the Lord in the middle of heartache was not ignoring her pain. She was pleading with God to make her a mom, but she also held onto God’s promise to make beauty from ashes (Isaiah 61:3). Perhaps hardest of all, she trusted that God’s version of beauty would be better than any version she could imagine.

On Suffering Well and the Mercy of God2023-03-24T18:09:56+00:00

The Provisions of God in the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Days

KATIE POLSKI | CONTRIBUTOR One of my favorite childhood books is, “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.” The brilliant little story depicts the daily frustrations that create a terrible, horrible day for a child: gum in the hair, dropping a sweater in the sink, tripping over a skateboard, and all the no good, very bad things in between. My freshman year in college I had a knee injury that required me to travel home for surgery. The day I returned to campus, I hobbled around on crutches sporting a massive brace on my leg. I also returned to campus the day after an ice storm, so hobbling outside became more like sliding. On crutches. With a knee brace. Super fun. I also returned to campus to find that the elevator in my dorm building was broken. I then discovered that not only would I be required to limp down four flights of stairs to get out of my dorm, but I’d need to stumble down two additional flights to get to my music classes. Because those elevators were not working either. That day I returned to campus was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

The Provisions of God in the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Days2023-03-24T18:10:12+00:00
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