Note: After you read todays devotional, scroll down to the bottom for a note from my friend/director about a new Christian movie he has coming out just in time for Thanksgiving!

According to Wikipedia, Thanksgiving began as “a day of giving thanks and sacrifice for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year.”

As I read that today, one word stood apart from the rest: “sacrifice.” I always knew that this day was a reminder to stop and give thanks, but I hadn’t considered the sacrifice.

As I got to thinking about all of this, I was reminded of Ruth who gave up her past to embrace a new life. How fitting it was, that she and Naomi arrived in Bethlehem just as the Barley Harvest was starting. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Thanksgiving than that.

I believe the heart of this story centers around this verse:

But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. (Ruth 1:16, NIV)

Unlike her sister-in-law Orpah, who wasn’t ready to give up her past, Ruth died to herself. She gave up her home, she gave up her people, and she gave up any financial security she might have had to follow God. Her future was uncertain, and still, she followed, showing us that she was willing to put her faith to the test.

Her story is a reminder of the sacrifice made by the faithful both then and today. Ready and willing to give up all that they have to surrender themselves to the Lord.


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Tilling the Soil

Read The Book of Ruth this week. Her beautiful story of sacrifice and submission is only four chapters long.

Planting Hope

But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. (Ruth 1:16, NIV)


Hope for The Holidays

A note from my friend/film director Ricky Borba about his new movie Hope for the Holidays. I was able to get an early sneak peek at this faith-based movie and loved it. It’s definitely a great movie for this holiday season.


I’ve known Darlene since the early 2000s, and she has been one of my biggest supporters when it’s come to chasing my dreams! And now, I am overjoyed that she is sharing my film with all of you.

Hope For the Holidays is a film I began working on in 2017. It stars Oscar Nominated and Golden Globe winning actors and actresses.

The basic story is that a faith-filled mother, played by Sally Kirkland, finds out she has cancer. Her son, played by George Stults, goes into panic mode and decides to rob a bank to pay for her medical bills. He gets caught, goes to prison, and the rest of the film is a race against time for him to see his mother one last time before she passes away, IF he can get out of prison.

This is where things get really personal and beautiful for me. Yes, beautiful. Just two months later, that July, my own mother called to tell me she had Stage IV cancer, and she died just 7 weeks after finding out. My mother and I were as close as a son and mother could be, so this was incredibly difficult. However. With the permission of the original writer of the script and the producer, I was able to almost completely rewrite the character played by Sally Kirkland, to say in the film, the same exact things my mom told me on her seven-week battle with cancer. Without exception, almost every scene in the film, Sally’s character Georgia is saying verbatim, what my mom said in real life.

It was a truly cathartic and beautiful way for me to honor my mother. To direct a film, my first film at the time, about the story of a mother and son, a mother who has cancer and wants to see her son one more time. I feel truly blessed and thankful that I was able to honor my mother this way, and that is one of the many reasons I can’t wait for you to see this film. It’s my hope that it encourages and inspires you, and at the same time is a film that you agree is made with excellence.

Look for “Hope for the Holidays” on Amazon, Apple TV, Youtube movies, Google movies, fandango, iscreening room.


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Darlene Schacht and her husband Michael live in Manitoba Canada where the summers are beautiful and the winters are cold. Together they’ve come to learn that relationships aren’t always easy, but that marriage, the way God intended it to be, is a treasure worth fighting for.

She began her publishing journey about twelve years ago when she pioneered one of the first online magazines for Christian women, known at the time as “Christian Women Online Magazine.” After three years, Darlene left CWO to blog as a solo author at Time-Warp Wife Ministries.

It was also during this transition that she worked alongside actress Candace Cameron Bure to write the NYT Best-Selling book, Reshaping it All: Motivation for Spiritual and Physical FitnessReshaping it All was the winner of both the 2011 USA Best Book Awards and the 2012 Christian Reading Retailers Choice Awards.

Author of more than 15 books, Darlene continues to write and to minister to her readers through her blog at TimeWarpWife.com.

Connect with Darlene:

Facebook: @timewarpwife
Instagram: @timewarpwife
Pinterest: @timewarpwife
Twitter: @timewarpwife

You are loved by an almighty God,

Darlene Schacht
The Time-Warp Wife