Philippians 4:8, Romans 12:2, Luke 21:34, Psalm 46:10, Matthew 6:22-23
In the 1990s, political scientists began to study what they called the “CNN Effect.” Breathless, twenty-four-hour media coverage makes it considerably harder for politicians and CEOs to be anything bu...
In his highly book, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares the importance of finding balance, even as life seems to pull us in different directions: Overextending yourself is stretching your physic...
Matthew 13:22, Philippians 4:8, Proverbs 4:23, Luke 10:41-42, Isaiah 30:15
In his novel, The Pale King , David Foster Wallace discusses the issue of boredom, or, as he puts it, dullness: . . . Maybe it’s because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that’s where phrase...
The last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned them dry as dust, who have...
1 Timothy 6:6-8, Proverbs 15:16, Matthew 6:19-21, Philippians 4:11-13, John 6:
The story is told of Socrates walking through the market in Athens, with its groaning abundance of options, and saying to himself, “Who would have thought that there could be so many things that I can...
In a study conducted by Timothy Wilson, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, researchers discovered what most of us already know: people do not like to be left alone with their own tho...
Matthew 6:31-34, Luke 10:41-42, Philippians 4::6-7, Ecclesiastes 12:13, Proverbs 3:5-6
Life has become a smorgasbord with an endless array of dishes. And more important still, choice is no longer just a state of mind. Choice has become a value, a priority, a right. To be modern is to be...
Comparison can be a bad thing, but it can also be a good thing. I’m a millennial, so I would never tell you to shut down all your socials and go back to the Dark Ages. I love that I know you had sushi...
As a stranger walked down a quiet residential street, he noticed a man struggling with a washing machine at the doorway of his house. The homeowner was clearly having a hard time, so the passerby, wan...
Here is the uncomfortable truth: Humans run to a much slower evolutionary clock than our inventions. To use an engineering term, we are the “gating factor” that keeps a process from running faster. It...
Most alarming is the absence of peace among our youth. Research from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is showing an epidemic of mental health problems among eighteen- to twenty-four-year...
Isaiah 55:2, Philippians 4:8, Romans 12:2, Colossians 3:2, John 15:11
In an article for The Atlantic, social scientist Jean Twenge shares the results of a study on the activities of American teenagers and their impact on happiness. Some of these activities included scre...
Comparison is the root of most of the misery we feel in life. Comparison makes it impossible to view ourselves from any sort of godly perspective. It is an absolute snare for the soul. Consider what c...
We come into this world blissfully unaware of these fragile, beautiful things we call our bodies. In our mother’s womb, we bathe in continuous warmth and nourishment, changing shadows and muffled voic...
1 Samuel 18:1-4 , Ruth 1:16-17 , Ecclesiastes 4:9-12, John 15:12-15, Philippians 2:1-4, Psalm 133:1
Our current cultural moment makes rich, life-giving friendships like the one David and Jonathan shared a challenge. We are connected like never before, yet isolated and lonely like never before. MIT p...
There was a time when adults were neatly categorized into one of two groups: you were either neurotic or psychotic. Psychotic meant that you were out of touch with reality and afraid; neurotic meant t...
Philippians 4:8, Exodus 32:, Ecclesiastes 12:13, Matthew 19:16-30, Proverbs 4:23, Romans 12:2, 1 John 2:15-17
Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared that we would become a trivial culture. . . . Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
With the global coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, life stopped. Overwhelmed by the threat of a disease we couldn’t stop and for which we didn’t have the hospital capacity, everyone moved work and s...
A common question I’m hearing from folks these days is whether it is beneficial (or a moral imperative) to pay attention to the news. The Catholic nun and social activist Dorothy Day asked the same qu...
Does it ever seem like the world around us is changing at breakneck speed? Well, it turns out, you’re right. A team of researchers have concluded that the Western world’s “environment and social order...
As I have worked to clarify my calling, I have learned to pay attention to my energy levels in response to different activities. If I experience a particular activity as being inordinately draining, I...
In those same weeks, Harper’s Magazine featured an evening-long conversation between two professors, Neil Postman and Camille Paglia, about the meaning of television for persons and for polities...
Hebrews 13:5, John 6:35, Isaiah 55:1-2, Matthew 5:6, Ecclesiastes 5:10, Philippians 4:11-13, Proverbs 30:8-9
In one of the classic scenes from Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist, the misfortunate young orphan, Oliver, is stuck in a workhouse, laboring for long hours and getting barely enough gruel to keep h...
Dan B. Allender, in his book Leading Character, tells the story of a friend whose daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. He kept news of his daughter’s illness to himself, fearing that his employees wo...
Philippians 3:13-14, Matthew 11:12, Galatians 1:10, Daniel 3:18, 1 Corinthians 1:27, Acts 17:6
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Our family is radical, but we are definitely not Amish—although we love to eat the fruit, vegetables, meat, and cheese produced by our Amish neighbors forty miles away in Lancaster County, Pennsylvani...
Luke 10:38-42, Matthew 14:28-31, Philippians 3:13-14, Proverbs 4:25-27, James 1:6-8, Hebrews 12:1-2, Matthew 24:13
As we travel through the New Testament, it becomes clear that Jesus’ disciples often get distracted, almost like they have a case of spiritual attention deficit disorder. They quickly lose focus and w...