Category: New Life Notes

By Justin King, Elder at New Life Brothers and Sisters, Over the last six months, I’ve had a growing concern for the church. We are being driven by the spirit of the culture, not by the Spirit of the LORD. The result is a lack of love.  We are quick to tear down people, especially...

By Ward Shope I grew up in a family where my parents took us to worship and Sunday School every week. Yet, other than dinner grace prayers that we learned from rote (5 children had 5 different rote prayers), I don’t remember talking much with my parents about Jesus. Faith was private—even for us as...

By Nancy Unks Trying times. Challenging circumstances. The new normal. These are common descriptors we hear for the Covid-19 pandemic. Common effects range from torturous togetherness to lock-down loneliness and isolation insanity. Who would have thought that the middle of a pandemic would be a good time to sell a house and move more than...

By Ward Shope When we arrived at the New Hampshire cabin on vacation this summer, it was incredibly still.  There was no traffic noise, no bustle of people, not even the sound of birds when we first arrived.  No leaf fluttered, and only the sound of small insects rubbing their wings or legs could be...

By Debbie Shope Reading is one of my favorite summer indulgences.  I recently finished a relatively harmless mystery novel. I say ‘relatively’ because it had 438 pages but didn’t really tie up all the loose ends until somewhere around page 420.  Now, I know being able to keep your reader hanging on for that many...

By Ward Shope “Everything in moderation” is the oft-quoted sensible phrase which originates from the Greco-Roman era.  Certainly this sage advice has its strong points.  If I don’t eat cookies in moderation, I’m likely to wind up resembling the same roundness as the cookies.  If I don’t exercise in moderation, my body is likely to...

By Shannon Keenan If I had to choose one word to sum up Mike Hollenbach, it would be messy. Mike was not afraid to get into the mud puddle with people. Relationships, of any kind, are hard. He knew that in order to love people the way Jesus called him to love people, sometimes he...

By Jane Highley Ever since our area went into the “green” phase of the state’s reopening plan, everybody in my family was cautiously eager to venture out wherever we could safely. Everyone but my eight-year-old son. Grant is not a shy kid, but he is also not necessarily outgoing. He loves building LEGO towns, watching...

By Beth Ann Olesen There seems to be a lot of tension recently. Tension over masks, over statues, over presidential candidates, to name a few. I’ve been wrestling with this idea of tension on a smaller, less divisive scale in my own life. Tension between work and family, between two working parents, between safety and...

By Ward Shope I grew up in a small farming community.  My parents taught us not to be prejudiced against people of color, but we had little practice.  I believe there were only two African American families in our school district.  In my childhood years I remember asking my father whether Martin Luther King Jr...

By Beth Ann Olesen The stay-at-home order has forced me to consider my prayer life. During the normal hustle and bustle of life as a working mom of three young children, it is all too easy to avoid thinking too deeply about the shallowness of my prayer life. I tend to pray for something, ask...

By Nancy J. Unks “This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ‘Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message’” Jeremiah 18:3. I like to play in mud. Maybe it started in childhood when I spent summer days with my little brother building roads and villages...