Picture of Laura Sweet

Laura Sweet

Laura N. Sweet is a wife, mother, grandmother, and former Christian school teacher from Midland, Michigan. She writes devotional material for both adults and children, and her work has appeared in more than a dozen publications.
Devotionals

A Plan for Repair

Read: Nehemiah 2:1-10 The king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me. (v. 8) Have you ever asked God for an “open door”?

Read More »
Devotionals

A Prayer from Nehemiah

Read: Nehemiah 1 O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant. (v. 11) The book of Nehemiah is really the first-person memoirs of Nehemiah himself—a contemporary

Read More »
Devotionals

A Penitent Population

Read: Ezra 10:1-15 We have broken faith with our God . . . but even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this. (v. 2) When you drive past the rescue

Read More »
Blog

Dealing with Discouragement

Are you stuck in discouragement? Nehemiah’s prayer in Nehemiah 1:4-11 gives you a model to leave discouragement behind, by remembering God and his promises. As we drove through Wyoming, my

Read More »
Devotionals

A Prayer of Confession

Read: Ezra 9 As soon as I heard this, I tore my garment and my cloak and pulled hair from my head and beard and sat appalled. (v. 3) The book

Read More »
Devotionals

A Priest’s Arrival

Read: Ezra 7:1-10 Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach his statutes. (v. 10) Eighty years after the first

Read More »
Devotionals

A Passover Observed

Read: Ezra 6:13-22 And they kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the Lord had made them joyful. (v. 22) Seventy years after Solomon’s temple was destroyed

Read More »
Devotionals

A Project Renewed

Read: Ezra 6:1-12 Concerning the house of God at Jerusalem, let the house be rebuilt. (v. 3) The work of rebuilding the temple of God and the city of Jerusalem came

Read More »
Devotionals

A Pernicious Lie

Read: Ezra 4:17-24 Then the work on the house of God that is in Jerusalem stopped. (v. 24) Alfred Lord Tennyson once wrote, “A lie that is half-truth is the darkest

Read More »