Category:
Living the Faith
The RLT Principle
Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, “This is the way; walk in it” (Isaiah 30:21). I call this verse the RLT Principle. This is not to be confused with the BLT, which is a delightful deli sandwich comprised of bacon, lettuce, and…
God’s Letter to Me
I wrote a similar idea on the new resources page, but I keep thinking about it. And thinking for me is one step short of writing. Which brings me here. (Lucky you.) One of the habits I try to uphold is to read something Christian every night before I go to bed: the Bible, a devotional, an…
Rotten Bananas
My apartment currently smells like bananas. This is because I have a banana languishing on my counter encased in an increasingly brown skin. It has passed the point where I actually want to eat it, but it is not quite so far gone as to be demoted to the compost bin. What it really needs…
Welcome, Friends!
Here’s a quick snippet about how this blog started. I began writing monthly articles for my church newsletter in December 2009. (Wow, time flies.) The archive of these articles appears below this post. Even though they all say they were posted in March 2012, they were actually written over a two year period. This is…
Lazy
Picture this: you’re sitting at the kitchen table and need a paper towel from the roll on the counter. Rather than simply stand up and take the one step to reach it, you try to stretch from where you are. Why get up if you don’t have to? Only you can’t…quite…reach… So you scoot the…
Speeding
I have received two speeding tickets in my life. (According to Murphy’s Law, I suppose I should add the caveat “so far.”) The first one was well deserved. I was driving back from a conference in Connecticut to my apartment in western New York. I’d stopped to visit my parents and left way too late. …
Vacation
I gleaned a bit of wisdom recently from one of those “Take This Quiz” articles stamped in the midst of a check-out line tabloid. The quiz wanted me to guess when the greatest benefit of a vacation was realized. Before? During? Immediately after? Having recently returned from a vacation, I can tell you the answer…
Do It
I am a total Harry Potter fan. I have read every book (multiple times) and frequently find myself pondering one brilliantly penned scene or another. Recently, I found myself contemplating the complexity of a scene at the end of book three. A swarm of dementors are descending upon Harry and his friends, ready to deliver…
Lest We Forget
Not too long ago I read Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns. It was perhaps the most horrible book I have ever read. I highly recommend it. If you think that is a contradiction, it is not. The book sat on my bookshelf for several months before I raised the gumption to open it. I…
Planning
Here’s something I need to hear, so I’m going to tell you, too: Sometimes God has a different plan. My mother sometimes laments how her days often do not turn out the way she expected. “I can have my whole day planned,” she’ll say, “and it can turn out completely different. We’re just not in…
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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.