stories on Embrace

A soul without a center is like a house built over a sinkhole. “How collapsed you are my soul , and how you sigh over me.” On the other hand, the soul comes alive when it is centered on God. “Let...

Billy Graham had a weekly radio show titled The Hour of Decision. Normally it was a tape recording of the service and message he’d given at a recent evangelistic rally. And at the conclusion of every ...

I have a photo of one of my children: on a day of pure sunshine, he is running down the hillside, leading with his chest, his smile and stride wide as his speed picks up. Running is pure delight. Agai...

In this beautiful illustration from Tom Long’s well-known preaching guide, The Witness of Preaching , a pastor shares a true story of what valuing human life can look like when God’s Kingdom takes ro...

Ronald Rohlheiser tells a true story of a Jewish boy named Mordechai who could not be coaxed into going to school. When he turned six years old, his mother forced him to go, but the process was misera...

I remember being with a Christian student on a beach during an evangelism training week. Bob and I met several religious skeptics and began talking about all sorts of things. Eventually the conversati...

Becoming a teachable person has two prerequisites: There must be a teacher and a person willing to be taught. Increasingly, Western culture has become an environment that celebrates and platforms the ...

The film the Dead Poets Society is set in 1959 at Welton Academy, a strict, elite, all-boys preparatory school. The main character, Todd Anderson, is a shy and insecure student who struggles wit...

There’s a somewhat naïve belief among some that, in general, most people are inherently good. While many Christians may not fully embrace John Calvin’s doctrine of total depravity (which I believe is ...

In this excerpt, musician and author Ginny Owens shares a childhood exercise that only makes specific what all of us as human beings struggle with, the desire for wholeness: I wish you could know my ...

The runners for the Special Olympic, 400-meter dash were being helped to their marks. As I watched, a gentleman in a three-piece suit jumped up in the stands in front of me and began yelling, “Lenny! ...

When the first Christians were trying to decide whether Gentile Christians should keep Jewish dietary laws, they weren’t just quibbling over doctrine. Just like we do, ancients were transferring their...

In a quiet hospital room in North Carolina, an eager young doctor with a bright future evaluates his elderly patient with not much future left at all. She has a terminal heart condition, inoperable. A...

My friend Tim is a manager of a small company. Because he often hires people for their first full-time job, he gets to tell new employees about their benefits. One time, Tim was trying to explain to a...

In his important book When Narcissism Comes to Church, professor and therapist Chuck DeGroat makes an important connection between shame, narcissism and addiction by looking at the myth of Narcissus. ...

I was in London browsing one of the ubiquitous British tabloids and an advertisement for a new health club grabbed my attention. The picture was of a magnificent gothic church sanctuary that had been ...

My friend Tim is a manager of a small company. Because he often hires people for their first full-time job, he gets to tell new employees about their benefits. One time, Tim was trying to explain to a...

Before I really talk with Eric and Kate for the first time, I can already make a rough guess of their status and occupations. Eric is athletic, handsome, in a suit with an open collar; Kate is dressed...

There’s been a lot of talk about friendship because of Facebook and the internet. You can collect friends and “likes” and begin to feel pretty good about yourself, depending on how many you accumulate...

Imagine making the shape of a valentine heart with your hands and holding it up to your face. That’s the posture of seeing with compassion. You might picture yourself looking through the heart at a pe...

In their excellent book on reconciliation, Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice share the true story of Billy Neal Moore, who would both find Jesus in prison and ultimately find his victim’s parents to b...

In her book Family Ministry, Diana Garland relates the following account by R.L. Honeycutt on the origin of the Irish expression “Chancing one’s arm”: On display in St. Patrick’s cathedral in Dublin...

In the early fifth century, even as Rome had officially embraced Christianity, the brutal spectacle of gladiatorial combat continued in the Colosseum, drawing massive crowds. One day, a Christian herm...

Galileo Gallilei was a remarkable individual with a variety of talents, which he utilized effectively throughout his life. One day, while observing a swinging lamp in the cathedral at Pisa, he made a ...

Before Columbus crossed the Atlantic, many believed the world ended somewhere beyond Gibraltar, reflected in Spain’s royal motto: “Ne Plus Ultra,” meaning, “there is no more beyond.” But when Columb...

In the sixteenth century, Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci journeyed to China, bringing religious art to share the Christian story with those unfamiliar with it. The Chinese readily embraced images of t...

It’s been eight years since I started using Instagram. May 7, 2011, to be exact. We’d moved to the Upper East Side of New York City the previous summer, and though many of my friends were becoming mor...

The apostles were like a capstone spectacle in the arena, the supreme sacrifice to satisfy the bloodlust of the world. In their weakness, pain, and suffering, they become to this world just another fo...

Father Damien was a priest who became famous for his willingness to serve lepers. He moved to Kalawao, a village on the island of Molokai in Hawaii that had been quarantined to serve as a leper colony...

In 1933, as Hitler’s Nazi party rose to power in Germany, the Jewish artist Marc Chagall painted Solitude. In the foreground, a seated man sits wrapped in a tallit, or prayer shawl. His right hand sup...