matthew on Bravery

A truly remarkable example of sacrificial courage took place in Folsom, New Mexico, in 1908. When a flood was racing toward the valley, a resident from the hills warned a local woman, S. J. Brooks, th...

Courage is Fear That has said its prayers.

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to li...

In this short excerpt written by the Christian Ethicist Stanley Hauerwas to his godson, he pontificates on the topic of courage: Usually courage is identified with dramatic and heroic acts. Though I...

Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. Af...

Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test.

The hymnwriter and theologian F. W. Faber writes with beautiful prose the challenges that each one of us faces when it comes to living a life faithfully according to the truth that is within us: M...

He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of sel...

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones. And when you have finished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake!"

Pastor: Lord God, we thank You that You have taught us what You would have us believe and do. Help us by Your Holy Spirit, for the sake of Jesus Christ, to hold fast Your Word in our hearts.  You ha...

Resilience is not something that can be mustered in a moment of “rising to the occasion.” It is formed over a long period before the crisis of testing so that it can continue the transformation during...

I…vividly remember one of my teachers telling the story of three young boys whose route to school went alongside a high wall. Every day as the boys walked to school, they wondered what was on the othe...

During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Corrie ten Boom tried to enlist a pastor to help hide Jews. Showing him a Jewish baby in need of rescue, the pastor said “No. Definitely not. We could lo...

You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically, to say “no” to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger “yes” burn...

In The Hiding Place Corrie ten Boom tells of the time she and her father needed to find a safer place for a Jewish mother and child they had been concealing from the Nazis. A local clergyman cam...

Eternal God, lead me now out of the familiar setting of my doubts and fears, beyond my pride and my need to be secure into a strange and graceful ease with my true proportions and with yours; ...

In the second century, a priest from Antioch named Sulpicius had steadfastly refused to sacrifice to the gods, even under torture, and was being led away to be beheaded. As he walked, a Christian name...

The invincible weapon against all our enemies is humility.

The unjust steward who, hearing he is going to be fired, doctors his master’s accounts to secure another job, is commended precisely because he acted. The point does not concern morality but apathy. H...

Merciful God, you have moved and changed our lives in amazing ways, yet we have kept these stories to ourselves. We confess the times we have kept these stories to ourselves out of fear of rejection a...

Humble and self-forgetting we must be always, but diffident and apologetic about the gospel never.

Merciful Jesus Grant us courage to deny privilege to lay down favor and safety and take up the cross of opportunity and justice Merciful Jesus Grant us courage to deny consumerism to lay down conve...

On a beautiful April afternoon in 2008, two college softball teams faced off in a decisive playoff game beneath the Cascade Mountains. The Western Oregon Wolves battled Central Washington University, ...

In the early fifth century, even as Rome had officially embraced Christianity, the brutal spectacle of gladiatorial combat continued in the Colosseum, drawing massive crowds. One day, a Christian herm...

Gracious God, our decisions are often rooted in keeping comfortable. We keep quiet in order to protect ourselves. We give just enough to look good in front of others. We hold back to avoid pain. Yet y...

I have a lot to be humble about.

Compassion is expressed in gentleness. When I think of persons I know who model for me the depths of spiritual life, I am struck by their gentleness. Their eyes communicate the residue of solitary bat...

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

*it is possible this story is apocryphal, we were unable to find the original source of the story. Admiral Nelson of the British Navy was renowned for his mastery of naval strategy, a genius fro...