colossians on Chance

Scientist John Haldane once proposed to the English priest Ronald Knox that, given the vast number of planets in the universe, the emergence of life by sheer chance was inevitable. Knox responded with...

We all love a good comeback story. In such tales, the young upstart rises like a meteor, fails big, then fights back against the odds to win the victory. Tech whiz Steve Jobs was like that. After prod...

In Isaiah 43:25, God says, “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” Here God uses two absolute terms to assure us of the complete removal...

Elizabeth Elliot's story of forgiveness started in 1956 on the banks of the Curaray River in Ecuador when her husband and four other young missionaries were attacked and killed by members of the H...

There’s Republican Jesus who is against tax increases and activists judges, and for family values and owning firearms. There’s Democrat Jesus who is against Wall Street and Walmart, and for reducing ...

His tattoos were flames that licked their way up his neck to his cheekbones. I had caught sight of him only from a distance while I was preaching, a visitor I’d not yet had a chance to meet. But this ...

After meeting Nelson Mandela, President Bill Clinton asked him how he felt as he left the prison: “Tell me the truth: when you were walking down the road that last time didn’t you hate them?” Mandela ...

Medical doctor Paul Brand, who is best known for discovering the cause of leprosy and developing a treatment for it, reflects on the nature and design of the universe. The more I delve into natural l...

The mind in all its intricate beauty can be a place of great anguish. Thoughts can both grip us for the good and plague us for that which is not. In Dickens’ Christmas novella, The Chimes, he describe...

In her book Family Ministry, Diana Garland relates the following account by R.L. Honeycutt on the origin of the Irish expression “Chancing one’s arm”: On display in St. Patrick’s cathedral in Dublin...

Loving God, you show us grace and mercy, again and again and again. You shower gifts on us that we could never earn, and you are slow to punish us when we most deserve it. All too often, we forget to ...

In his book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, author Bill Bryson details the complexity within the human body: No one really knows, but there may be as many as a million types of protein in the ...

Faith makes all things possible. Love makes all things easy.

The only opportunity you will ever have to live by faith is in the circumstances you are provided this very day: this house you live in, this family you find yourself in, this job you have been given,...

A first-century Hebrew walks alone on a hot afternoon, staff in hand. His shoulders are stooped, his tunic stained with sweat. But he doesn’t stop to rest. He has pressing business in the city. He vee...

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you w...

Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.

The wonderful word master used to describe the person who is at the top of his or her craft, whatever the profession. It was a title that one could work toward and with some degree of confidence ascri...

Faith is a how and, more specifically, a way of living in light of an event.

Hope orients all thought, action, and relationships to God’s ultimate redemption of the creation and to the ultimate communion with the triune God...hope is the steady orientation to God’s making all ...

Just as every natural event is the manifestation at a particular place and moment of Nature's total character, so every particular Christian miracle manifests at a particular place and moment the ...

At the beginning to the musical Les Misérables , the lead character Jean Valjean is arrested by the police, with silver he has stolen from a kindly bishop who had given him shelter. Valjean is plainl...

Those who can’t change their minds can’t change anything.

“No thief, however skillful, can rob one of knowledge*, and that is why knowledge is the best and safest treasure to acquire.” (*or Faith)

Relational congruence is the ability to be fundamentally the same person with the same values in every relationship, in every circumstance and especially amidst crisis. It is the internal capacity to ...

In 1990, Elizabeth Newton earned a Ph.D. in psychology at Stanford by studying a simple game in which she assigned people to one of two roles: “tappers” or “listeners.” Tappers received a list of twen...

We cannot change our past. We can not change the fact that people act in a certain way. We can not change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our at...

Lord, You have authority in all places, times, and circumstances. Lord, You are good in all places, times, and circumstances.  Lord, meet us here, now in all our many needs for You to move.

Just before Christmas, my whole family piled into our kid-moving vehicle and rushed to the nearest mall to grab some last minute Christmas presents before dashing to a holiday party. As usual, we were...