Background

I was invited to visit a friend who was very sick. He was a man about fifty-three years old who had lived a very active, useful, faithful, creative life. Actually, he was a social activist who had car...

New Testament scholar and Anglican bishop N. T. Wright recalls being at a party once when someone decided to read a portion of the seventeenth-century Prayer Book for laughs. The Prayer Book includes ...

The most striking feature of the teaching of Jesus is that he was constantly talking about himself. It is true that he spoke much about the fatherhood of God and the kingdom of God. But then he added ...

Of the seventy-three psalms that are linked to David’s story, thirteen refer to specific incidents in his life. These references pull into focused clarity various parts of the story of this person who...

You don’t need to look far today to notice that personal identity is a do-it-yourself project. A gym near where I live advertises itself with the slogan: “Be Fit. Be Well. Be You.” A new apartment com...

The African Methodist Episcopal Church began when Richard Allen and Absalom Jones demanded an equal place in the Methodist Episcopal Church and were refused. In their preaching and teaching, jus...

In the world of ecology, the tallest trees in a forest form a canopy that is called the overstory. It provides shade for the understory—all the vegetation that grows beneath the uppermost layer of fol...

Jesus explains what undergirds the actions of Paul, Isaiah, and Rev. Dr. King in two of his Beatitudes. He says, “Blessed are those who grieve, for they will be comforted. . . . Blessed are those who ...

What we need to realize, however, is that there is no such thing as autonomous or “self-grounding” knowledge. All systems of interpretation and all claims to true knowledge are ultimately grounded out...

When Frederick Douglass asked his famous question, “What to a Slave Is the Fourth of July?,” he didn’t simply ask a question about the United States of America . He asked a question about Amer...

In his book Scream-Free Parenting , family therapist Hal Runkel recounts a visit to the Waffle House with his family that went horribly awry. It was a Saturday morning and the place was busy beyo...

On April 12, 1963, eight clergy—two Methodist bishops, two Episcopal bishops, one Roman Catholic Bishop, a Rabbi, a Presbyterian, and a Baptist—wrote a letter addressed to the citizens of Alabama. Thi...

Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addic...

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for y...

Russell Conwell, founder of Temple University and half the namesake of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, was an American minister who began his ministry in 1880. While he wrote and preached countle...

In his book Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt , author and professor Arthur C. Brooks charts the rise of anger — and more importantly, contempt — ...

A YouTube video from the Today Show in 1994 shows Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric asking each other “What is the Internet?” and debating if the “@” symbol means “at” or “about.” The world is very diffe...

The cornerstone was a critical element of ancient architecture, the anchor that the rest of the building relied on. The cornerstone was the stone that set the alignment of the entire building. Every o...

Rituals are procedures or routines that are fused with meaning. Ritual actions include various rites of passage (birth, marriage, death) or calendrical rites (religious holy days, national holidays), ...

While there is a place for condemning, critiquing, consuming and copying culture, the primary posture Christ followers are to have in the world is as culture makers. In regard to history, the word cul...

The other afternoon, in an effort to avoid doing my work, I picked up Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. It turned out to be a fitting choice, as Thoreau has quite a bit to say about wasting time. “The cos...

Social scientists define procrastination as “delaying a task for a maladaptively long time,” and it bedevils almost all of us. One study found that more than 70 percent of university students procrast...

In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov , Alyosha, the novel’s central protagonist, asks his father for permission to join a monastery, where he seeks to purify his soul and sanctify his wo...

The robbing of our lives occurs when the core story of who we are—created as “very good” (Gen 1:31) and never downgraded, and “beloved” of God (1 Jn 3:2)—is taken through specific memories and twisted...

The Forming of a Memory Before we truly remember anything, it starts as an experience. It is a moment when our senses (sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch) interact with the world around us. Those ...

The astonishing good news that the Bible gives… is that God has a personal will for each of us. Because we find this truth so hard to learn by heart, we need to hear it repeatedly. So let me repeat it...

George Garrett, a novelist and amateur boxer wrote about a transformation that often takes place for fighters who stick with the sport. Throughout their journey to boxing excellence, in which they mus...

What, then, should a Christian be afraid of regarding God? Think of it like this. Imagine that you suddenly are introduced to some person you have always admired enormously—perhaps someone you have he...

A few years ago I led a two-day retreat for some Christian men. …We agreed that we don’t want to be a bunch of dudes , allowing American cultural images of masculinity to shape our hearts. Nei...

The image of a lamb doesn’t evoke feelings of confidence or strength. Sports fans will never hear an announcer say, “Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together to welcome the mighty Fighting Lambs!...