Luana Ehrlich's Blog

On a visit to Sam’s Club the other day, I got mildly irritated—not angry or mad—just irritated.

It happened as I came into the produce section and went by an area of the store where a Sam’s Club worker was putting oranges through a machine to make freshly squeezed orange juice.

I usually enjoy the tangy fragrance as I go through the aisles selecting the produce I need, but today, I was assaulted by a high-pitched noise coming from the machinery that automatically squeezes the oranges to p...

Whether you spend time reading the Bible on a daily basis, or you’re only familiar with it from hearing a minister preach from the Bible, you can’t miss the fact that joy is one of the predominate themes in the Bible.

Depending on which Bible translation you’re using, there are over 200 verses that talk about experiencing joy, which I would define as a deep sense of well-being that comes from knowing Christ through the presence of his Holy Spirit.

Joy isn’t happiness, which is a temporary...

When a stranger suddenly sneezed when I was standing in front of her in the check out line at a grocery store, I responded by saying, “Bless you.”

She nodded and said, “Thank you. I needed a blessing.”

Her response amused me, and as I thought about this encounter later in the day, I was curious why we say, “God bless you,” or “Bless you,” when a person sneezes.

Naturally, that led me to do a little research on it, and I discovered this practice started during the Bubonic Plaque in Euro...

When someone makes the statement, “I’m not able,” it can be an admission of weakness, but it can also be an admission of faith.

When a person realizes they’re not able to stand before God as blameless, they’re not expressing weakness; they’re validating the truth of Romans 3:23:  “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

But that’s not the full story. Even though everyone has sinned, Hebrews 7:25 tells us that Jesus, the Son of God, “is able to save to the uttermost those ...

I recently saw this quote attributed to Winston Churchill: “Success is not final; failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”

As I thought about the sentiment behind this quote—that neither success nor failure defines a person, but what truly matters is the determination to keep going—I realized that while the language was inspiring, it wasn’t Biblical and therefore wasn’t true.

Churchill was emphasizing human determination rather than faith in God. He suggested that...

A newly remodeled house burns to the ground. A long-awaited child is stillborn. A businessman dies on the day he retires.

It doesn’t make sense.

Abraham waiting twenty-five years before his promised child is born. A chosen people suffering in slavery 400 years before freedom comes.

It doesn’t make sense.

The son of God becomes a man and lives among His creation. His creation despises and rejects Him.

It doesn’t make sense.

The One who never sinned takes on the sin of all ma...

No matter what age you are, you probably have a Christmas tale about a sad Christmas, one that didn’t go exactly as planned, one that was disappointing, one that was so sorrowful you can’t think about it without the tears flowing.

Or you may have a Christmas tale about a happy Christmas, one where someone surprised you with an unexpected gift, one where you reconciled with a loved one, one where everyone loved the gifts you bought them, or one where you had enough money to buy someone the gi...

During our college days, my husband and I befriended Benjamin, a student from Lagos, Nigeria, who traveled halfway around the world to attend a Baptist college in East Texas after becoming a believer through the witness of some Baptist missionaries.

Benjamin, who was the son of a tribal witch doctor, was at least fifteen years older than we were, and he seemed much wiser. His wisdom came from years of lived experiences, and he wasn’t shy about sharing those stories with us, something we enco...

Body language experts are on the news a lot these days. Because it’s an election season, they’re asked to interpret the subtle, nonverbal cues that give insight into a political candidate’s feelings.

One particular observation got my attention recently, because I had never heard anyone put a name to certain gestures a speaker makes, like clutching hands together, putting hands to the face, or massaging an arm. Body language experts call these “comfort gestures.”

Such actions serve to soot...

“I think I figured out who the doubters are.” That’s what a reader emailed me after I released my newest book, Four Doubt.

She followed up that sentence by saying, “But I found more than four doubters in this book. If I counted correctly, there were at least eight. It was like everyone had doubts. Did you realize that?”

I write series, so as a way of making it easy for my readers to know which book to read next, and also as a way of having an author “brand,” I include the number of the bo...