humor on Responsibility

Two shipwrecked men in tattered clothes slouch together at one end of a lifeboat. They watch casually as three people at the other end of the boat bail furiously, trying to keep the vessel afloat. One...

Emma Darwin, a devoted wife to Charles, did not share his passion for science, nor did she pretend to be captivated by the many lectures and events she attended by his side. On one occasion, as they s...

When singer John Davidson was learning to drive, his father, a Baptist minister, offered him a deal: he could have a car if he earned straight “B’s” on his report card, read the Bible more, and got a ...

In her compelling memoir Still Life , author Gillian Marchenko recounts her struggles with depression. In this excerpt, Marchenko shares a funny but poignant moment as she deals with the challenges...

One Sunday morning, after delivering a sermon, a preacher was asked by a friend how it was received by the congregation. The sermon focused on the Christian responsibility of the wealthy to help the p...

Could joy, then, be a candidate for a one-word definition of the good life, perhaps in the same way some people think happiness is? Indeed, could it be better able to integrate in itself the requisite...

A pastor friend of mine once brought about ten people onto the stage at his church and assigned them roles to play on an imaginary fire truck. One person was assigned to drive; another controlled the ...

I’m not sure that I could have articulated the ground rules for the search for resilience the way I understand them today, but I must have intuited them nevertheless. Some of the basic ideas were thes...

If you’ve ever watched a war movie, or a film that takes place in the military, you’re likely to have encountered a specific scene, in which a subordinate will have something to tell a senior officer ...

I recently attended an event sponsored by Compassion International, the International Child Sponsorship Organization. The event was called “Stepping into My Shoes”. The purpose being to show children ...

There’s a story about philosopher John Dewey walking with his young son on a cold, wet, and windy day. The boy, barefoot, was gleefully splashing in a puddle despite the weather. A concerned friend pa...

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 ...

A man started a company and built it into a very large enterprise, and was planning to hand over the reins to his son at retirement. One day, he was walking through the factory and observed his son an...

Two shipwrecked men in tattered clothes slouch together at one end of a lifeboat. They watch casually as three people at the other end of the boat bail furiously, trying to keep the vessel afloat. One...

The late comedian Sam Levenson enjoyed sharing funny anecdotes about his childhood, especially his early school days. One of his favorite stories was about his first day of school, when his overly pro...

The British poet Thomas Campbell, attending a horse race with some friends, bet one of them (Thomas Wilson) £50 that the horse Yellow Cap, would come in first place. After the race ended, Campbell, th...

… Larry Laudan, a philosopher of science, has spent the last decade studying risk-management. He writes of how we live in a society so fear-driven that we suffer from what he calls risk-lock – a condi...

An elderly master carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer of his plans to leave the house building business and live a more leisurely life with his wife enjoying his extended family. He w...

Sister Joan Chittister writes about regret in the context of aging, though I think most of us can identify with this personification of Mr. R.: Regret…comes upon us one day dressed up like wisdom, l...

Have you ever heard of "Stein’s Law"? Named after University of Virginia economics professor Herbert Stein, it states: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." Do you...

Do you remember those birds in Finding Nemo? They get me every time. As they fight for what’s on the ground, they are flying around screaming, “Mine! Mine! Mine!” Never has Disney nailed a picture of ...

Clara Barton, the distinguished founder of the American Red Cross, made the personal decision not to hold grudges against those who had wronged her. At one point she was asked whether or not she remem...

In a talk about faith and doubt, the Irish Londoner Charlie Mackesy shares a humorous anecdote from a friend. This friend was attending a traditional Anglican worship service with his wife and their y...

A friend often told me about the problems he had getting his son to clean his room. The son would always agree to tidy up, but then wouldn’t follow through. After high school the young man joined the ...

When you are in your twenties, you live to please other people. When you are in your thirties, you are tired of trying to please others, so you get miffed with them for making you worry about it. When...

In 1988, I (Randy) moved with my wife and two sons (ages two and eight weeks) from Texas to Sulawesi, an island north of Australia and south of the Philippines. We served as missionaries to a cluster ...

In this excellent little character study, Tolstoy describes the inner monologue of the character Pierre Bezuhov from War & Peace , who is able to justify and convince himself that a promise made ...

Psalm 101:3: “I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless.” The term here—worthless—is a compound, literally: without profit. It is “the quality of being useless, good for nothing.” Pg.11...

The author Oscar Wilde once remarked that by the age of forty everyone has the face they deserve. This is a truly profound, if painful, truth. But it really applies to the “within” expressed by the fa...

A climber recently had to be airlifted off Japan’s Mount Fuji due to altitude sickness. That alone would have been a dramatic enough story. But four days later—still recovering—he climbed back up ...