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While movies and novels often present stories of a budding love interest willing to give up everything for “true love” (Romeo and Juliet, for example), the renowned poet, and later clergyman, John Don...

O Lord, We marvel that you would take on flesh and blood in order to be crucified, killed, and buried for us. You humbled yourself and submitted to the hatred of sinful men, accepting the thorns, the ...

Preaching Angle: Wheat and Weeds Grow Even in the Church God’s good creation grows food for all living creatures. God made the Earth, God made all the plants, and God made all the humans and animals ...

Preaching Commentary Preaching Angle: Wheat and Weeds Grow Even in the Church God’s good creation grows food for all living creatures. God made the Earth, God made all the plants, and God made all ...

Sometimes moments of forgiveness and friendship come from unexpected places. In 2018, the comedian Pete Davidson appeared on the “Weekend Update” segment of Saturday Night Live (SNL). Davidson made a ...

Attitude is an accurate monitor of where we fall on the spectrum of pride and humility.

Self-righteousness is a sense of moral superiority that appoints us as prosecutor of other people’s sinfulness. We relate to others as if we are incapable of the sins they commit. Self-righteousness w...

We are what we believe we are.

Though beauty gives you a weird sense of entitlement, it's rather frightening and threatening to have others ascribe such importance to something you know you're just renting for a while.

In another day and age, God, religion and church enjoyed the general respect of the culture. Not today. Religion is suspect, church is weird, and Christians are hypocrites. Distrust has become the nor...

Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their wh...

Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the altar of conformity and popularity. Before any great achievement, some measure of depression is very usual.

People can say one thing and do something totally different. You see the darkness that is often hidden from polite society. The thing that you see is a widespread insecurity. I think people put on a f...

Faith is nothing else than trust in the divine mercy promised in Christ…. This trust in the goodwill or mercy of God first calms our hearts and then inflames us to give thanks to God for his mercy so ...

Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.

In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes , Jonathan K. Dodson points out our blind-spots with respect to pride: We rarely think of ourselves as proud. I...

But what will not Ambition and Revenge Descend to? Who aspires must down as low As high he sor’d, obnoxious first or last To basest things.

Some years ago, the syndicated newspaper columnist Sidney J. Harris shared an interesting anecdote from one of his friends. Each evening, this friend would stop at the same newsstand to buy a newspape...

Context As we read the opening chapters of Mark, it becomes clear that Mark is not primarily interested in telling us things about Jesus but showing Jesus to us. We see Jesus the healer, the exor...

Context As we read the opening chapters of Mark, it becomes clear that Mark is not primarily interested in telling us things about Jesus but showing Jesus to us. We see Jesus the healer, the exor...

A person who suffers bitterly when slighted or insulted should recognize from this that he still harbors the ancient serpent in his breast. If he quietly endures the insult or responds with great humi...

In life, whenever someone achieves success, criticism usually follows—regardless of their skill or the effort they’ve invested. An old story illustrates this truth. A woman crafted artificial fruit so...

I spent a considerable amount of time with a guy I’ll call Martin. As a brand-new follower of Christ, Martin felt guilty for having previously embezzled a lot of money from his employer. After discuss...

Two decades after I worked with the airmen, I read a fascinating article, “The Quasimodo Complex,” in The British Journal of Plastic Surgery, Two physicians reported in 1967 on a landmark study of e...

Up until the twentieth century, traditional cultures (and this is still true of most cultures in the world) always believed that too high a view of yourself was the root cause of all the evil in the w...

My husband, Jeff, is an excellent driver. He has never had an accident, excepting two incidents in high school which hardly bear mentioning— Several years ago, I was driving across town to get to a sp...

Almighty God, we take pride in our self-sufficiency while we look down on the weak who cannot provide for themselves. We praise others for their efforts, yet we demand perfection from our own families...

The character trait of humility is the second-most frequently taught trait in the New Testament, second only to love.

If you were to travel back in time to the city of Rome (either during the Republic or the Empire), you may have had the opportunity to witness the Triumph, a colossal spectacle in which the greatest m...

A living faith is that which pours itself out in works.