December, 2018 | Breana's Blog

Time to get back into your devotional routine? If you’re looking for a great personal or family devotion book, check out From a Pastor’s Heart and Hand by Joseph Oswald.

This book is reminiscent of the compiled sermons of classic theologians. They are presented in a direct, oratory style, and you can almost hear the author’s voice addressing the reader passionately and personally. The text is engaging and punctuated with short illustrations from the lives of influential people, catchy sayings, and humorous anecdotes. Scripture and prose flow together seamlessly.

This devotional is perfect for families, but it’s applicable to any believer. The writing is clear and succinct, conveying practical messages that are alternatively encouraging and convicting. The devotionals are short enough and straightforward enough for children to grasp, but they cut to the heart of issues experienced by adults as well. Topics range from faithfulness to finances and everything in between.

If you only have time for a devotional reading, you can absorb a chapter of the book with your morning coffee. Or, you can sit down with your family at dinner time and expand the devotional with the questions and Bible reading at the end of chapters.

As someone whose life has been deeply influenced by the author of this book, I can testify that From a Pastor’s Heart and Hand is the perfect title for this devotional. Pastor Joe Oswald has spend his years shepherding congregations, children, P.E. classes, and youth with both loving guidance and hands-on engagement.

From a Pastor’s Heart and Hand flows from this discipleship, which is at the heart of Christian teaching and leadership. For this reason, this book is sure to impact your life in a small way each day and for the rest of your life. Years after reading it, you may find yourself engaging in “Thankful Thursday” prayer or reminding yourself that “when you point a finger at others, four are still pointing at yourself.”

You can get this book on Amazon in either print or Kindle format. If you don’t have a devotional for the New Year, why not make a strong start with From a Pastor’s Heart and Hand?

Most of the time, applying for residency is very, very expensive for med students. It’s not uncommon for them to drop ten grand on interview season!

However, there are those unicorn interviews where you get treated instead of paying out the nose.

We got lucky enough to get one of those.

A hospital in Palm Springs, California invited Ben to interview for residency, and since it is pretty close to home, he decided to go and take me with him. Actually, we decided to make a family road trip out of it! As I was planning our Airbnb bookings, Ben told me that the hospital was paying for interviewees’ hotel stays. In the Marriott Resort.

Oh, yeah.

Even better, they told Ben to bring me to the pre-interview dinner, which was at the very fancy resort restaurant.

I have never been to an open-bar event before, so I felt a bit out of my element! Especially since the other significant others seemed to fit into this setting quite easily. Let’s just say I don’t do well in conversations about decorators and deaigner purses.

But the homemade ginger ale was pretty bomb, and some of the other inteviewees were also from Caribbean schools, so cocktail hour ended up being a lot of fun! Dinner was great, too- one of the resident’s wives was from Mexico, and she and another resident patiently let me bushwhack my way through conversations in Spanish.