Kim Levings

Think about the last time you were halfway to work and suddenly weren't sure you'd closed the garage door. You probably did close it. You always do. It's such a well-worn pattern that your brain didn't even bother keeping you in the room for it — it ran the routine and moved your attention elsewhere. That's not a flaw. That's your brain doing exactly what it's designed to do: automate anything it can, so it can save its energy for what actually needs thought. The trouble is that your brain...

A few weeks ago, I undertook the worst kind of gardening work. Not the pleasant kind, where you trim a few overgrown branches and step back satisfied. The real fight — dandelions all through the lawn, and clover creeping through the landscape rocks, so quiet and unassuming you almost don't notice it until it's taken over entire sections. If you've ever pulled a full-grown dandelion, you know the truth about weeds: what you see is never the real problem. The real problem is underneath — a...

If you've ever felt like your life is too chaotic and scattered, you don't have the time, the money, the skill, and, in fact, everything is just too much of a mess for God to do anything with...I want to share a scripture lesson from an easy-to-skim passage of Scripture that says otherwise. 1 Samuel 13 tells the story of Israel's army on the edge of collapse. Saul's men are terrified, hiding in caves and thickets and cisterns, watching an enormous Philistine force gather against them. And in...