stories from psalm 23

Walter Brueggemann writes that the movement of the psalms is from orientation to disorientation and then to new orientation. The psalms give us a language for transformation in desert spaces: we move ...

When most of us grow up in a faith tradition, we begin with an assumption that faith is good, while having doubts is bad. As we mature however, we realize that faith and doubt are not opposites, but i...

The following poem is attributed to Nicholaus Ludwig Zinzendorf, the 18th century Moravian church leader and reformer. It captures well the ups and downs of life, the existential questions that emerge...

Ron Roheiser points out three images for retreat used in Scripture that meet us in our yearning; all of them apply in different ways at different times.  ● There is the lonely place to which Jesus ...

The story of young Matthew Huffman came across my desk the week I was writing this chapter. He was the six-year-old son of missionaries in Salvador, Brazil. One morning he began to complain of fever. ...

Some years ago our pastor told an unusual story about a Southern plantation owner who left a $50,000 inheritance to a former slave who had served him faithfully all his life. That was quite a sum of m...

The 19th and 20th century Canadian-American pastor Harry Ironside once told a story of a new Christian who gave his testimony during a church service. Beaming with joy, the man spoke of how God had re...

In John 2, Jesus creates an abundance of wine during a wedding. There are six jars that hold 20-30 gallons each (that’s about a half barrel each!).   So, let’s do the math… 20x6=120 gallons (or ...

John 21:11 tells us that the disciples caught 153 fish. Why 153? According to John Wesley, the number doesn’t matter.   Along the same lines, Karoline Lewis writes, Abundant fish. Don’t meta...

I was recently at a eight-year-old’s birthday party, and at this birthday party there was a piñata. All of the kids took turns whacking a paper mache shark with a PVC pipe until eventually the shark b...

Martin Luther said that every Christian ought to read the Bible from cover to cover every year. But, likening the Bible to a forest, he also said that reading the Bible doesn’t become really enjoyable...

In 1989, the advertising world welcomed a new icon into the world. It was pink, it was furry, it wore sunglasses, and sported a drum-set. Can you picture him? It’s the Energizer bunny. Television scre...

Mark Rutland humorously recalls a survey asking Americans which words they most long to hear. As expected, the top response was, “ I love you. ” The second was, “ I forgive you .” ...

In the second century before Christ the great rival to Roman power in the Mediterranean world was Carthage, the Phoenician city-state located on the north African coast. It had been founded in 822 B.C...

In a poignant tribute written after his son’s passing in a climbing accident, Nicholas Wolterstorff reflects: When we have overcome absence with phone calls, winglessness with airplanes, summer he...

Too many people hear the word capacity and assume it’s a limitation. They assume their capacity is set—especially if they’re beyond a certain age. People give up on the idea that their capacity or the...

Near the end of his life, the American evangelist Dwight L. Moody made a striking remark: “One day soon, you will hear that I am dead. Do not believe it. I will then be alive as never before.”

A student who had recently lost his sight was sent to the Seeing Eye Institute for the Blind in Morristown, New Jersey, for specialized training. Upon arrival, he was greeted by another young ma...

Invitations are powerful. Like tides, they ebb and flow, shaping the contours of our existence. Some invitations we desperately want but never get—“Will you marry me?” or “Would you consider a promoti...

On Christmas Eve in Tehran, house-church pastor Farshid Fatah and his family were awakened to the frightening sounds of the Iranian security police pounding at their door. After the police searched hi...

There’s no shortage of the religiously faithless who seem eager to tell us what faith is. Many of these characterizations of faith are reminiscent of Mark Twain’s precocious schoolboy who quipped, “Fa...

We should aim for rational confidence in these sorts of pursuits because certainty is a mere will-o’-the-wisp. Finite minds simply can’t pull it off. Though the distinction between aiming at certainty...

I once was significantly lost. When I was a college student in northern Wisconsin, my dad and I were hiking on a trail that was somewhat familiar to me. I had been on this trail just a few weeks befor...

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....

The story is told (as in, it’s made up!) of a small dog that had been struck by a car and lay wounded by the side of the road. A doctor driving by noticed the dog was still alive, stopped his car, pic...

Do you remember seeing the golden sarcophagus of the pharaoh Tutankhamun ? What has he got in his hands? If you remembered that he was holding a shepherd’s crook, you’re right (he is also holding a...

In the great scheme of things, light is actually quite rare. Geo-physicists tell us that 71 percent of the earth’s surface lies under the ocean, which means that most of our planet abides in eternal d...

In "Finding Peace in an Age of Anxiety," Mark Sayers points to David's formative years as a shepherd in the wilderness as a model of biblical leadership: "of a non-anxious presence,...

In his excellent study of the famous Biblical passage on shepherds, ( The Good Shepherd: A Thousand Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament ) , scholar Ken Bailey provides helpful context t...

In his excellent study of the famous Biblical passage on shepherds, ( The Good Shepherd: A Thousand Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament ) , scholar Ken Bailey provides a bit of context ...