New book, great story - The Map Quilt

Author Lisa Lickle snagged me with the first sentence. Her new release, The Map Quilt, caught me up in the lives of Hart and Judy Wingate, a young Wisconsin couple expecting their first baby. A former teacher myself, I knew just how Judy felt lumbering her way through the final days of school with her fifth-grade class.

But Judy refuses to take maternity leave. She wants to hear the speaker scheduled to culminate their studies of Harriet Tubman. She also anticipates the release of her husband’s latest ”green” project for his employer—until someone steals the prototype. And burns down the barn. 

Do these disasters have anything to do with an old quilt upstairs, an unidentified body Hart’s mother finds buried on the property, and the famed Underground Railway of the 1860s?

Lickle’s lively writing and flesh-and-blood characters drew me into the family farmhouse kitchen and right up to the table for a cup of hot coffee and vanilla nut cookies. And her story’s fast pace left room for nothing but a must-know yearning rivaling that of Hart and Judy.

There’s more than one story unraveling between the pages of The Map Quilt, and more than one family’s heritage on the line.

The Map Quilt is the sequel to Lickle’s original cozy mystery from Barbour, The Gold Standard. But Map Quilt stands on its own as well. If you're looking for a good summer read, pick up Lickle’s latest—and a tall glass of lemonade to go along with it.

For more about Lisa Lickel and her great new book, visit http://www.lisalickel.com/2012/02/map-quilt.html

How sweet is your grapevine?

Just the other day someone replied to an e-mail of mine by saying, “I forwarded your e-mail on to …”

Oops. I intended that correspondence for the recipient’s eyes only.

Too late. Tapping the “send” button is like squeezing the toothpaste. There’s no putting it back in the tube.

I have often told my children, “If you put it online it’s public.” Yet when I send an e-mail, I believe no one else will see it other than the person I wrote—especially not the person I may have written about.

Who am I kidding?

I cannot control what happens to my correspondence once it leaves my cyberspace docking point. So I’d better be sure that I don’t mind the content going viral, as they say.

Do my words belittle someone? Are they derogatory, insulting, offensive? Have I spoken as though in confidence about a private matter?  Would I mind if the general public read what I wrote?

Jesus saw this coming. He warned that our whispered words would resound from the housetops. Was he thinking of e-mail, cell phones, Twitter, and all the instantly humming avenues of social media that encircle our planet today?

“Let your conversation be always full of grace,” Paul told first-century Christians (Col. 4:6 NIV).

When my words hit the proverbial grapevine, I hope they’ll taste like grace.

TO MY E-MAIL READERS: Click on the title of the blog post to go to the actual blog where you can comment in the box at the bottom of the post. I’d love to hear from you!

Are You Washed?

I’ve been reading the Gospel of John for more than a year. Over and over. Every time I read through it I see truth more clearly or discover a new facet of God’s love.

Recently I read the familiar passage in Chapter 13 that recounts Jesus’ last private moments with his disciples. They celebrated the annual Passover feast, commemorating God’s deliverance of the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery. And then Jesus washed their feet.

When Jews in first-century Palestine gathered in someone’s home, it was a cultural practice for guests to have their feet washed by a household servant—not by the host himself or another guest. The Lord’s deliberate act of servitude demonstrated the humility of love. But I believe it revealed even more.

Within the first few verses of chapter 13 we find a thumbnail sketch of Jesus’ entire mission. Each detail of the foot-washing—which may have taken roughly thirty minutes—can be matched to another corresponding action during Christ’s thirty or so years on earth.

The sketch begins with verse 3 as Jesus considered that he was soon “returning to God.”

Verse 12 repeats the verb: “When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place” (NIV). These bookend references triggered the connection for me.

In my journal, I wrote out what I saw happening and paralleled it to biblical references I’d heard or read elsewhere. It looked like this:

He removed His outer robes             He laid aside His heavenly glory  

He put on a towel                        He clothed Himself with humanity

He stooped before them                  He took the form of a servant

He washed away the dirt                He washed away our sin

 (It wasn’t His dirt.)                    (It’s not His sin.)

He put his robes back on                He resurrected in His glorified body

He returned to His place                He returned to His Father in Heaven

John prefaces his entire account of the Passover meal: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love” (John 13:1 NIV).

In “the full extent of his love,” the creator of the universe wrapped a towel around his waist and washed dirt from men’s feet. And in the further extent of that love, he washed the stain of sin from their lives.

Passover recalls the lamb’s blood spread above the doors of Hebrew slave homes. Those who believed and applied the blood turned death away. Those who did not believe did not apply the blood and their firstborn died.

The lamb’s blood saved the slaves from death only if they applied it. Christ’s sacrifice and the spilling of his blood saves us only if we accept it.

What about you this Easter/Passover season? Have you been washed by the blood of the Lamb?

Photo by AJ Spencer

The Magic of Mothers and Daughters

I remember the day the community editor dropped a book on my desk in the newsroom. “You might like this,” she said.

At the time, I covered crime and wrote features for a midsize daily newspaper in Colorado. I picked up the green and white paperback with red lettering on the front and thought, “Catchy title.”

So catchy that the New York Times bestseller list snagged it over and over again.

Since those long-ago days in the newsroom, the original book has hatched nearly 200 subsequent titles in 40 languages, and sold 112 million copies. Not bad for a slow starter.

I’ve tried several times to throw my name in the pot that first simmered that book, and this month the results of those efforts appeared in book stores across the nation. For me, it’s testimony to not giving up. Seeing the story about my daughter Amanda on page 135 opens my heart and rekindles my spirit—to borrow a phrase from the men who compiled those original 101 stories.

Jack and Mark believed in their dream enough to pursue it. So did I. I hope you do too.

Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Magic of Mothers and Daughters is now in bookstores everywhere. Check out story number 41 and let me know what you think.


Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. —Psalm 37:4

What are you doing at the moment?

A dear family friend called one cold, dreary morning this winter. We chatted about our respective families and the conversation quickly worked around to the Lord. It always does with Pat Day, world-renowned thoroughbred jockey and proclaimer of the faith.

My husband, Mike, and Pat became close friends during Mike’s tenure as Chaplain on the backside of Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Over the years they have stayed in touch and continue to lift each other up with encouragement and prayer. However, on this particular day, I answered the phone.

Our discussion keyed on “quiet time” spent alone with the Lord, and Pat shared something he’d heard from a pastor.

“The only time you can be with God is in the immediate moment,” he said. “You can’t be with him five minutes ago, or five minutes from now. Only now, this instant.”

Pat’s comment opened an avenue of thought that led me to God’s timelessness. The Bible tells us Jesus is the same today as he was yesterday and will be tomorrow. That’s something to count on. Jesus isn’t going to change his mind or be shifted by a cultural tide.

As occupants of this modern world, we are caught up in time and all its constraints. Though it is an intangible commodity, time drives our labor, priorities, and dreams. We have either too much of it or not enough. We spend it and save it and measure it, but we cannot grasp it.

All of us have heard the witty clichés about past, present, and future, but the scripture says, “Now is the day of salvation.” This moment.

“Only now, this instant.”

So what could be more important than pausing daily to spend some of our time in the presence of the King?

Nothing comes to mind.

What are you doing at the moment?


Scripture taken from 2 Corinthians 6:2 (NIV)

Collapsed in His Embrace

I heard a dull thump as I entered the church. Like a heavy heart thrown against the floor.

I wasn’t far off.

We had a special speaker that Sunday morning, a potter. He stood near the edge of the platform with a large block of red clay in his hands and slammed it onto the tarp-covered stage. Then he picked it up and slammed it down again.

I shuddered.

I knew the Old Testament account of God sending Jeremiah to the potter’s house. I liked the part about the artisan creating a useable vessel. I didn’t like what I was seeing at the moment.

Our guest held cold and unyielding clay. He had to soften it, make it pliable before he could use it. The force of his throw surprised me, but his purpose was clear and focused. Justified, though fierce.

The Bible hadn’t mentioned this part. Did it apply, too?

The potter seated himself behind his wheel, a small mound of formless clay in the center of it. He set it to spinning, dipped his hands in a bowl of water, and then tenderly grasped the clay, wrapping his fingers around it, smoothing it upward, downward, dipping again in the water and returning to the clay.

His slightest impression made a rim at the top. The potter pressed his fingers into the clay and slowly it cratered. He reached into the center and pulled, it seemed, for the sides beneath the edge began to grow, stretching upward and out. All this time he spoke, telling us how God had worked in his life, how He had carried him through divorce and loneliness, out of darkness and into light. Into marriage again. Into ministry. His voice soothed us as gently as his fingers smoothed the clay that transformed before our eyes.

The potter’s patience and pressure created a large bowl from that formless lump. Just the right amount of water, just the right speed of the wheel, just the right movement of his fingers. We were transfixed by the miracle.

He stopped, dried his hands on a towel, and picked up a tall, stately vase from a nearby pedestal. He continued speaking, but his words slipped away as I fixed my eyes on the vase, not yet fired, still the dark copper color of workable clay. As he spoke, he turned the lovely vase in his hands, revealing the other side—disfigured by jagged cuts that marred its symmetrical grace and made it unfit to use.

And then he wrapped his arms around the piece and pressed it to his body, crushing it against his chest. The vase collapsed in his embrace, and he folded it over and into itself and spoke of how he would remake it.

It would be new, he said. Nothing would be lost.

Nothing wasted.

He would make it a worthy vessel, a thing of beauty and purpose again.

In that moment I felt the gentle pressure of fingers on my heart. And I understood the hope of healing at the touch of the Potter’s hand.


Jeremiah 18:1-6

Romantic at Heart

I enjoy a good love story with a happy ending.

Some people discredit such tales as unrealistic and irrational. But I’m not talking about ruffles and lace and hearts and flowers and chick-flick movies (though sometimes I like those things too). I’m talking about love and happy endings.

A crusty old fisherman said God is love. He said God was so good at loving that he gave his best gift to those who didn’t deserve it. That doesn’t sound like ruffles and lace to me.

An unknown singer of songs said pretty much the same thing.

“…the earth is full of his unfailing love … ” —Psalm 33:5 (NIV)

I think the God of unfailing love had a happy ending in mind. Otherwise, there would be no eternal home awaiting us, there would be no new heaven and earth, and Jesus would not have said, “I want you to be with Me forever.”

He would not have died.

The Great Author added a surprise twist to his love story: a never-ending. You can read more about it in Psalm 136.

In fact, if you read one verse from that Psalm each day of this month, you'll see there are nearly enough to go around. A lover of love stories might do that, and find that the Great Author was trying to make a point. Twenty-six times.

I’d call that a good love story with a happy ending.

Wouldn’t you?


Surely goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever. —Psalm 23:6 (NIV)