humor from romans 8

Brennan Manning recounts the story of an Irish priest traveling through a quiet countryside when he comes across an elderly peasant kneeling in prayer by the roadside. Struck by the man’s devotion, th...

John Chrysostom, the eloquent Church Father, had incurred the wrath of the Byzantine (aka Roman) Emperor Arcadius. Enraged, the emperor consulted his counselors on how to punish the powerful preacher....

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...

In Arkansas, it is illegal to pronounce Arkansas incorrectly. It is illegal to build, maintain, or use a nuclear weapon within Chico, California, city limits. In Connecticut, a pickle fit for human co...

At university, I knew a guy called Captain Scarlet (nicknamed after the lead puppet in a cult TV series to which he bore a striking resemblance). The Captain was the only nineteen-year-old I’ve ever k...

Right before my freshman year of high school, I was hospitalized for a severe asthma attack that landed me in the intensive care unit. It was one of a dozen such hospitalizations during my younger yea...

Ronald Rohlheiser begins his excellent book, Our One Great Act of Fidelity , with a story of a young girl. She had awoken from a nightmare, convinced that monsters had invaded her room and were comin...

Pastor Matt Chandler describes a humorous encounter with his daughter that illustrates the absurdity of assuming we know better than God. Just as a small child couldn’t possibly know better than a par...

While movies and novels often present stories of a budding love interest willing to give up everything for “true love” (Romeo and Juliet, for example), the renowned poet, and later clergyman, John Don...

The law is harsh and cannot help us to receive forgiveness. In Craddock Stories, a collection of outstanding stories by Fred Craddock, is the following account with one who could understand law, but ...

When the Bishop’s ship stopped at a remote island for a day, and he determined to use the time as profitably as possible. He strolled along the seashore and came across three fishermen mending their n...

One of the early hits of the internet had to be eBay. Suddenly getting rid of your old junk, or otherwise unnecessary “stuff,” could be sold, not just to your neighbors in a yard sale, but to anyone w...

And I was reminded of an event from my father’s childhood: He was in a Sunday school class, listening to his teacher expound on Genesis 1 and a young earth, and asked his teacher how to make sense o...

A man went in for his annual checkup and received a phone call from his physician a couple of days later. The doctor said, “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.” “What’s the news?” the man asked...

Tom Watson, Sr., is the man who founded IBM. You can imagine the money, the investments, the experiments, this man, and his multi-billion dollar company have made through the years. Once, years ago, w...

When prayer consists of the same spoken sentences on every occasion, naturally we wonder at the value of the practice. If our prayers bore us, do they also bore God? Does God really need to hear me sa...

The Summer Before Junior High School was filled with anticipation. I was excited to leave elementary school behind me. Junior high sounded so robust and adult. And I felt ready—with one caveat. Physic...