Note by Note

  Good morning, my friends! I have a bit of exciting news for you today. My second poetry book, Dear Mr. Covid, is launching NEXT WEEK!!! Today I have a post about everyday poetry as well as a sample of the poems you will find in Dear Mr. Covid. I hope you enjoy! Maybe you’ve never written a poem in your life, except for those silly ones they make you write in English class. Or maybe you’ve written dozens of poems before and you want to see what this other poet has to say. Maybe you find it easy to sit down and spin off tales with rhymes and meter to boot, or maybe you struggle to make it through one line.  Maybe you’re even wondering right now, “What is a poem?” “What is the first thing I do when I start a poem?” The first thing I can tell you is that there is no magic formula. There is no secret that we poets have mysteriously hacked into. We’re all just a bunch of people who have decided to make words look like art, and sometimes that art looks pretty terrible. But we don’t...

 Hello again, friends!  I am so excited to bring you a guest post by Erika Mathews, author of the Truth from Taerna series. I hope you enjoy it!  What is love? All of Scripture defines love. God   is   love, and knowing God is knowing love. Everything in the Bible that reveals God to us reveals love to us. Dwelling in God is dwelling within love itself, and dwelling in love is dwelling in God. Scripture is clear: we love because He first loved. The essence of true love is encompassed in the descriptive Hebrew word   hesed . Translated   mercy ,   lovingkindness ,   steadfast love , and similar terms in Scripture,   hesed   refers to the unchanging, strong, loyal, faithful, deep covenant love of God. True love is described in depth in 1 Corinthians 13. After talking about what love is not (it’s not speaking eloquently, prophesying, understanding mysteries, having all knowledge, giving all you have to the poor, or martyrdom in themsel...

  Hello, friends! I hope you enjoyed celebrating our Lord's resurrection and have started a fantastic week! Today I am so excited to share my first book spotlight with you all: Romance's Rest by Erika Mathews (check out her blog here:  http://restinglife.com/blog).  Here is the blurb before I jump in: Her love seems to have passed him by. Little does he know that true covenant Love is knocking at his door. Kethin Ellith’s life is brimful: a new town, his dream job working with people and animals, an active social life, and now a spunky, godly woman who has captured his heart. But how can he have any sort of relationship with her when she’s not even interested in a single conversation? Faeth Dale delights in being an avid flower gardener and the middle sister of a lively, close-knit family. She has her own non-negotiable reasons for avoiding all male friendships, particularly with spiritually shallow men like Kethin. But would Adon Olam give her this apparently conflicte...

  Good Friday, everyone! And it is. The Friday right before Easter, the day we remember one of the most important events in human history. At Christmas we remember a life. On Good Friday we remember a death. We know Easter is coming. We know that Jesus doesn't stay dead. We know that there will be light and joy when Sunday finally comes. But today, it's only Friday. There is no hope. For the disciples it was all over.  They were hiding in the dark. Maybe we'll be next. Peter had denied Jesus. Can you imagine his guilt? Judas had betrayed him. He couldn't live with that knowledge. And Jesus... Jesus was alone. Utterly, completely forsaken.  We can't imagine what it was like to be the Son of God in His moments on the cross. He had always existed with God the Father's presence. He didn't know what it was like to be separated from the Father even for a moment. But God the Father is all holy. He is all good. He cannot stand to be in the presence of sin. And so, i...