psalms on Innovation

Sir Alexander Fleming (1881–1955), the British microbiologist and co-recipient of the 1945 Nobel Prize for Medicine for the discovery of penicillin, often credited his breakthrough to a fortunate acci...

I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent. Curiosity, obsession, and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas. Especially strong thinking powers (...

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

There is a great difference between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success comes from strength, control, and respectability. A successful person has the energy to create something, to keep control o...

Living in a society governed by technique conditions us to believe that in every way life is easier than it ever has been. Technique is the use of rational methods to maximize efficiency, and we...

Our business in the world is not to succeed to but to continue to fail in good spirits.

Far too easily we settle for holiness rather than wholeness, conformity rather than authenticity, becoming spiritual rather than deeply human, fulfillment rather than transformation, and a journey tow...

Adversity is always unexpected and unwelcome. It is an intruder and a thief, and yet in the hands of God, adversity becomes the means through which His supernatural power is demonstrated.

Leader: The good news in Christ is that when we face ourselves and God with the awareness of our need, we are given grace to grow, and courage to continue the journey. Friends, believe the good news o...

In an essay on friendship, the renowned poet Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “My entire success, such as it is, is composed of particular failures.” There’s a deep truth in that line—one many of us need to...

We will have to start over, with a different and much older premise: the naturalness and, for creatures of limited intelligence, the necessity of limits.

In the desert outside of Tucson, scientists dreamed up an experiment to re-create the conditions of earth for space, when and if the earth could not be made great again. The biosphere was a little wor...

One summer, the composer Edvard Grieg stayed at a small Norwegian hotel. A restless child also resided there, constantly annoying the guests by attempting to play the piano, producing nothing but disc...

If you do not transform your pain, you will surely transmit it.

One of the dangers of living in a constant state of distraction is that we never go to the bottom of our pain, our sadness, our emptiness, which means we never find that rock-bottom place of the peace...

Leader: The God we worship is steady and faithful; People: Yet He continues to surprise us. Leader: Before we ever knew about God. People: He knew us and loved us. Leader: Even if we are...

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; ...

My friend Wendy calls the incremental disappointments we endure over the years “the slow leak of life.”

Before any great achievement, some measure of depression is very usual.

In today’s culture, it’s a race to the top of the ladder. According to Pew Research, millennials are the most educated generation. No one does comparison quite like millennials. We have apps for every...

Triumph and failure always go together in the wait of faith. They are the head and tail of the same coin. Show me a person who has had no struggle with waiting, whose faith has known no swings between...

In her book The Broken Way, Ann Voskamp shares a beautiful exchange between her and her husband (The farmer). His encouragement is for all of us: that God uses the broken things in this world for good...

One of my favorite sayings is, no matter how difficult it is to hear, “Reality is always your friend.”

Healing begins when, in the face of our own darkness, we recognize our helplessness and surrender our need for control… we face what is, and we ask for mercy.

Of the medieval church’s many intellectual leaders, none has had more influence than the philosophical theologian Thomas Aquinas. He was born to a noble family near Naples, Italy, and joined the Domin...

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction, where it was never meant to be. A man was mean...

Almighty God, we trust in our own strength, abilities, and resources. We think too highly of what we have to offer this world. The truth is we cannot do anything without your strength and all we have ...

When John Stuart Mill—the influential philosopher and political economist—arrived at Thomas Carlyle's door that evening, his face drained of color, bearing the devastating news that the manuscript...

But the man who is not afraid to admit everything that he sees to be wrong with himself, and yet recognizes that he may be the object of God's love precisely because of his shortcomings, can begin...

Where there’s humility there is majesty; where there’s weakness, there’s might; where there is death, there’s life. If you want to get these things don’t disdain those.