stories from ephesians 5

It is reported that after David’s secret anointing as king, he was called to play the harp for King Saul, who was abandoned by God and plagued by an evil spirit: “And whenever the harmful spirit from ...

Despite what now appears to me to be the overwhelmingly obvious connections between spirituality and sexuality, when I first came to faith and went to church, I had the sneaking suspicion that God had...

When Elizabeth Dole was appointed Secretary of Transportation by President Reagan in 1985, the media focused on the Dole marriage—her as a cabinet member, and him as a powerful senator. After a photo ...

The coaching philosophy of Don Shula helps us understand the gifting of the church for God’s mission. Shula spent 26 years as the head coach of the Miami Dolphins. Under his leadership they had their ...

In George Bernard Shaw’s play about Joan of Arc , as Joan faces her execution by burning, she addresses those in power who have condemned her: “I will now go to the common people and find comfort in ...

One time a little boy and his father got to tour Europe. During their journey, they visited a magnificent cathedral, where the boy found himself captivated by the vibrant stained glass windows. He cou...

An emissary from a learned society came to invite the eminent scientist Louie Agassiz to address its members. Agassiz refused on the grounds that lectures of this sort took up too much time that shoul...

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...

In the last class I taught at Regent, an obviously irritated young woman came up to me and said, “Dr. Peterson, three times during your lecture you did not say anything for twenty seconds. I know beca...

In his celebrated book The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman tells a story about a husband and wife struggling to relate. When the husband asked his wife, “On a scale of zero to ten, how’s your love t...

A husband and wife, prior to marriage, decided that he’d make all the major decisions and she the minor ones. After 20 years of marriage, he was asked how this arrangement had worked. “Great! in all t...

The accomplished science fiction writer and futurist H.G. Wells lived through the dark days of the Blitz in London (during the Second World War). One evening, a fellow writer named Elizabeth Bowen fou...

My wife was grading a science test at home that she had given to her elementary-school class and was reading some of the results to me. The subject was “The Human Body,” and the first question was: “N...

The relationship between wartime leaders Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been well chronicled by historians of the period. On one visit to the United States, Roosevelt wheeled hims...

A chaplain was speaking to a soldier on a cot in a hospital. “You have lost an arm in the great cause,” he said. “No,” said the soldier with a smile. “I didn’t lose it–I gave it.” In that same way, Je...

In her thought-provoking book, Teach us to Want , Jen Pollock Michel describes the tension in listening to our deepest desires: some of them these desires are integral to our identity, but they a...

Brett Favre was a driven man. He explained to USA Today that his father’s message that he was never good enough drove him to become one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history…His dad had also been hi...