Reflections on the 2024 State of the Union Address
Last night, the President gave his State of the Union Address. The speech is more than tradition, it is a responsibility laid out in the US Constitution, Article II, Section 3, wherein the President must “give to Congress information of the state of the union.” But today, with hours of TV coverage before and endless…
Read MoreState of the Union (in Christ)
Tonight, the President of the United States will deliver the annual address to Congress known as The State of the Union. Whatever President Biden was planning, due to events in Ukraine (or Israel, or the economy) the plan changed. Life is like that. Life is dynamic. Things change. What doesn’t change? God. God is the…
Read MoreSince you asked, News sources I rely on
Several listeners have recently asked what news sources I rely on in preparing for each morning’s broadcast. This post was originally published on 2/3/2021 and updated 2/14/2024. Here’s a summary of my responses: What about you? What news, newsletters, aggregated lists are you relying on daily or weekly?
Read MoreA love letter
How does God love thee, let me count the ways. There are endless ways to approach the question of “how” God loves you. God loves you as Father, eldest brother, Bridegroom, Companion and Friend.God loves you from eternity past, in the present, and into eternity yet to come.God loves you with all that He is,…
Read MoreLenten prayer of hope
Prepare our hearts This is an excerpt from the free new resource, Our Certain Hope: Prayers for Lent and Easter. Receive the full prayer book through Carmen’s monthly newsletter, Keeping up with Carmen. Lord of all Creation, we bow before You this day awed by the verdant beauty of the world you created. While there…
Read MoreWhen too much of a good thing is no longer good
What the Stanley cup craze tells us about ourselves A woman in Roseville, California, was arrested after police found 65 stolen Stanley tumblers in the trunk of her car. The estimated value? $2500. I was intrigued when I saw the photo. The police displayed the stolen merchandise as if it was a drug bust. That’s…
Read MoreMornings with Carmen Playlist: Lent
Our Christian faith hangs on the reality of the empty tomb (1 Corinthians 15:12ff), and each year, for centuries, believers have been preparing themselves to celebrate Easter during Lent. This is a playlist of Mornings with Carmen episodes to help your heart, mind and spirit draw nearer to God as we approach the Lenten season. February…
Read MoreMy Word of the Year 2024: Small
Do you have a word for the year? I don’t know how long other people have been doing it but, for the past few years I’ve been focusing on one particular word for the year— studying it through the Scriptures, listening for it in conversations, watching for it the world, sitting with it in prayer.…
Read MoreCultivating a life of prayer and prayer in real life
Why does prayer feel so hard sometimes? Perhaps we have forgotten (or never learned) what it means to depend on God throughout our day— and by extension for our lives. And so, prayer is an intermittent part of our day at best, or altogether missing. Or we may have seasons of intensity, suffering or need…
Read MoreConsidering Our Words in the New Year
Words. What do you hear when you listen to the regular rhythm of cultural conversations today? Do you hear what I hear? I hear words that are debasing, offensive, coarse and foul. Do you hear that too? I ask because profanity is normalized— so much that we may not even notice it. What happens to…
Read MoreChristmas Past, Present and Future
You can’t experience Christmas in the United States or Western world and not have some exposure to Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, commonly known as A Christmas Carol. We all know the story then, right? Ebenezer Scrooge is a grouchy discontent who is visited by the ghost…
Read MoreCarmen’s 23 books of 2023
Each year, I have the opportunity to read a lot of books and interview many authors for Mornings with Carmen, and I’m happy to share my favorites from 2023. Bonus: we’ve included a corresponding interview! 1. The Bible Endless are the “other” books that have been and will be written. If you have not read…
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