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Infinite
At a recent Bible study, the pastor had us meditate on an excerpt of Jeremiah 29:11: For surely I know the plans I have for you… to give you a future with hope (NRSV). We were asked to identify the most important word in the verse. I started with hope, others started with give, one…
Add Some Creative to your Christmas
I once took a baby pig to pet pictures with Santa. (Yes, a real piglet.) And I once landscaped a roommate’s bed with castaways from the university compost pile. The masterpiece was complete with past-bloom mums, dried corn stalks, and a carefully curated stone wall. (Don’t worry, I covered the bed with thick black plastic…
With Thanksgiving
Every once in a while I find myself ruminating on a piece of scripture in a curious sort of way. Not that ruminating on scripture is curious, rather I mean that I get curious about what I’m ruminating on. This happened recently with Philippians 4 and that oft-quoted passage: Do not be anxious about anything,…
The Haircut (a.k.a., Growing Pains)
As she was cutting fist-fulls of hair from my head, my hair stylist told me this story: “When I was younger, I always wanted to have short hair and my mom wouldn’t let me. Then when I was in beauty school, I asked one of the instructors to cut my hair and she wouldn’t either.…
The Spice of Life
A few weeks ago, we welcomed a family onto our side of the church. They weren’t new to our congregation; they had simply stepped across the aisle and sat in a new location. During the guest introductions, we introduced them as having moved from the other side of the aisle to visit our side of…
Canned Brown Bread (Reflections on Taste and See)
You will read this post in a couple weeks when I have returned from vacation. But as I sit down to write, I am still on the anticipatory side of a 10-day camping trip. We’ll tour some new stretches of my beloved New England, get lost in the woods (hopefully just figuratively), and enjoy some…
Fighting the Battle (or not)
I was listening to a song the other day on the radio: I’m fighting a battle You’ve already won. The song is a rallying cry to overcome whatever comes our way. Take courage! God has granted you the victory! We need only to persevere (the song seems to say) to the battle’s end. But in…
Keys to Happiness
A note before I begin: I’ve been chewing on elements of this blog post for a couple years, and the specifics have been developing over the last several weeks. Coincidentally (providentially?) I learned only after I sat down to write that Inside Out 2 is being released into theaters this week. During all the days…
It’s Here! New Website Design
With thanks to the design team at Journey Websites who helped bring my vision to the screen – the new Mustard Patch is here! Check out the new look at www.mustardpatch.org. I’m excited to see where The Mustard Patch grows from here. Thanks for coming on this journey with me! Behold I am doing…
Make a Right Judgment
We’re tackling this blog the old-fashioned way: sweating it out at the keyboard one keystroke at a time. This is because for the first time in a long time, I’m sitting down to write with very little idea about what I’m going to say. Most of my writing these days has been voice to text…
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Meet Janet!
Janet Beagle, PhD is the founder of The Mustard Patch. She divides her time between the Midwest and New England, and if she’s not writing, she’s probably out hiking with her 2-and 4-footed friends.