What do you do when you have an important decision to make? Wring your hands? Make a list of pros and cons? Run all possible scenarios, both disaster and otherwise, through your head? Bite your nails? Play a rousing game of rock-paper-scissors? Call a friend for advice? Pray? Eat your weight in Fudge Ripple? Perhaps it's all of the above.  Decision-making would be so much easier if it were, well, easy. Clear and concise. Speaking for myself, I don't usually have trouble with the clearly contrasting choices---good versus evil, right versus wrong. But what about the good versus the good?…

Wisdom...some will search the world over and never grasp hold of it. Some seek it by consulting infamous leaders like Ghandi or the Dali Lama and it still seems to slip through their fingers like sand. Most of us want to make wise choices. We are tired of learning the hard way and grow desperate for our lives to take a turn for the better, instead of living in the cycle of mistakes, consequences and failures that scar our journey. So we buy self-help books and binge watch Dr. Phil. We gobble up relationship advice found in magazines at the…

A stable foreshadowing a tomb. A weary girl trembling with fatigue and pain. A father with the weight of a new family pressing on his shoulders. A king gripped with fear that the Promised Child will be his undoing. And shepherds, their limbs trembling as angels announce a message that rocks their world to the core. Yet amidst these poignant images, the part of the Christmas story that touches my heart most deeply comes through the words of an aged man...Simeon. God has promised him that his eyes will not close in death until he physically sees the Messiah. As Joseph…

When asked what my favorite Christmas song is, a dozen tunes flicker through my mind---a bubbly, upbeat version of "White Christmas", "Be Born in Me", "Winter Wonderland" or my guilty pleasure, "Baby, It's Cold Outside"---all top the list. But the one that never grows old and gives me sweet chills every time I hear it is "O Holy Night".  The origins of this beloved song are fascinating. The year was 1847 in a French village, and the local priest made an unusual request of the local wine commissioner, and not-very-religious Placide Cappeau. The priest asked this infamously worldly village man…

I'm so excited to have a special giveaway for you just in time for Christmas! If you sign up to follow my blog (www.TaraJohnsonauthor.wordpress.com), follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/TaraMinistry) or share my blog on Facebook, you'll be entered for a chance to win the Word of Promise Audio New Testament!!! This is one of my favorite ways to soak in God's Word. We play our CDs continually and the Word of Promise features some amazing actors voicing the great men and women from the Bible (including Jim Caviezel as Jesus).  The more shares, the more chances you have to win.…

Past stars and galaxies, the glittering lights of mysteries beyond I flew. I was not alone. No, an entire heavenly congregation soared with me. We danced past shimmering hosts and luminescent wonders, winging and dancing, spiraling and speeding past the diamonds of the Holy One's masterpiece until we pushed past the transparent glass of the blue marbled planet's firmament. I breathed in the frigid air, peering through the night sky, to look down on this strange place...the King's new home. Humble. Broken. Needy. Such a startling contrast from the glory of whence He had come. Indeed, the raw starkness of it swirled…