Jenn Tolbert's

Posts

Wrestling with God

  • July 5, 2023
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by Jenn Tolbert With two teenage boys in the house, wrestling is a constant. Arm wrestling, leg wrestling, thumb wars,staring contests, milk chugging…if it can be turned into a strength or endurance contest, it’s on. Ofcourse, every competition is fun and games in the beginning, but then it escalates. Someone doesn’tplay fairly. Someone takes it too far. Or someone decides that their actual worth as a human isdetermined by the strength of their right thumb. In Genesis 32:22-32, Jacob wrestles...

Poisoned Wells

  • May 8, 2021
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In 1854, during the reign of Queen Victoria, there was a cholera outbreak near Broad Street in Soho, London. The illness was on a rampage. Within three days, 127 people had perished, and just ten days later, that death toll soared to over 500.  There was very little knowledge about illness or its transmission, but the theory that it was spread through the air was accepted by most people. That is, until a Soho doctor, Dr. John Snow, working closely...

Restore the Garden

  • February 20, 2021
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One of the things I hear from so many people is what is my purpose? Why did God put me here? I think we can find the answer when we look back at the story of creation. God created us in His image, to connect to each other and to him, and to care for his creation. We are all creators. And rightfully so because we are made in the image of our Creator. We are made in the image...

The Vine Project

I called it “The Vine Project.” It sounds like a cool, new program at church or a new group on Christian radio, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it was just me, traipsing through our woods in rubber rain boots with a pair of borrowed gardening shears, trying to free my trees from thorny vines that had grown around them. After six years of unintentional neglect, these vines weren’t going down without a fight. It started when my neighbor knocked on my door...

The Courage to Pour

  • November 2, 2020
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In 2 Kings 4: 1-7, we are told of a widow who comes to Elisha with a desperate situation. She had faced a health crisis resulting in the death of husband, and now faced an economic crisis which would send her sons into slavery. She was living her own version of 2020. For some, the story of the widow feels familiar. We have buried friends and family and we have prayed with families wondering how long the savings account can...

My Mixer for the Master

  • September 22, 2020
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I come from a long line of excellent cooks. Women who have signature recipes that always seem to be the first to disappear at a church potluck.  Women who know just the perfect meal to drop by for a new mother and are the first to make sure a funeral luncheon is properly presented.  They make picture perfect pie crusts. Perhaps you come from women like this too.  They preach their sermons of love as they prepare a good, hearty...