thought exercise on Heart Attacks

In Bob Benson’s book “See You at the House” he recounts the story of a friend who had a heart attack. At first it didn’t seem like the man would live, but eventually he would recover, Months later, Bo...

One year, in the small cul-de-sac where my family lived in Illinois, three husbands in the four houses around us had heart attacks while still in their forties. This was Illinois, where the state bird...

Success is a shining city, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We dream of it as children, we strive for it through our adult lives, and we suffer melancholy in old age if we have not reached it....

Psychologists and mental health professionals are now talking about an epidemic of the modern world: “hurry sickness.” As in, they label it a disease. Here’s one definition: A behavior pattern chara...

We Christians must be armed and expect every day to be under continuous attack. . . . At such times our only help and comfort is to run here and seize hold of the Lord’s Prayer and speak to God from o...

Anxiety feels like a weight. It has been described as the feeling of tripping—the “moment where you don’t know whether you are going to catch yourself is how you feel all day long.” Or “when you tap y...

In his book Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt , author and professor Arthur C. Brooks charts the rise of anger — and more importantly, contempt — ...

Whenever you’re running your life on those fuels, Satan’s got you where he wants you. The one thing he does not want is that God’s words “You are my beloved child” become the fuel of your life and hea...

Now I have to ask you: If Jesus Christ, the Son of God, did not presume to face the forces of evil in the world without a profound knowledge of the Bible in mind and heart, how could we try to face li...

Have you ever felt like a part of you was dying while sitting in traffic? Apparently, you’re not too far off. A team of German researchers found that being stuck in a traffic jam increased your chance...

The seat of gratitude is the heart. Yet the workings of our hearts remain, in many ways, mysterious. On December 28, 2016, celebrated Hollywood actor Debbie Reynolds died at age eighty-four. The previ...

In the forward to the excellent book, Subversive Sabbath , physician and author of 24/6, Matthew Sleeth describes the process of listening to hearts as part of his medical practice. While speaking ...

Now, what is the heart? Neurologically speaking the “heart” is the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the part of the brain right between your eyes and slightly back from your forehead. It is in this br...

[Here is] a malady of modern times: unremitting and increasing levels of stress. The statistics on mounting stress and its detrimental effects on body, mind, emotions, and health shout at us. The Amer...

In the spring of 2010 a skiing accident took the life of her (Tara Storch) thirteen-year-old daughter, Taylor. What followed for Tara and her husband, Todd, was every parent’s worst nightmare: a funer...

The leading causes of death [in America] are self-inflicted — side effects of tobacco, obesity, alcohol, sexually transmitted disease, drugs, and violence. We need a transformation. We need the kind o...

One afternoon, I was playing with my son in our living room when I suddenly smelled something burning. I stood up and walked around, nose high in the air, sniffing furiously. My wife smelled it too, s...

A clock would make a poor bank. No customer would ever be able to deposit a moment to save for later because, at the end of the day, every second would be spent and the clock would be bankrupt. While ...

When the Bible uses the term heart , it means the causal core of your personhood. The heart is your directional system. The heart is your steering wheel. Your behavior isn’t caused by the situati...

Depression is one of the greatest killers of our time. It affects 50 million Americans at some point in their lives and has increased 400 percent since 1987. Depression is associated with suicide, div...

At a Christian high school, a theology teacher strode to the front of the classroom, where he drew a heart on one side of the blackboard and a brain on the other. The two are as divided as the two sid...

Race car driver Dale Earnhardt was known for being so calm before races that occasionally he would take a catnap just before the start. While other drivers would have a pulse rate of 100 to 120 before...

“When the plane leveled off at 14,500 feet, Joan Murray took a deep breath and jumped out the door. The bank executive from Charlotte, North Carolina, was enjoying her free fall through the air until ...

A life-threatening crisis came to my home when I was only 25. My wife suffered a near-fatal stroke and was rushed to the hospital, where doctors scrambled to keep her alive. Within hours, we were maki...

It is often said that people die as they lived. This was certainly true of the great Protestant Reformer Martin Luther. As Luther came close to the end of his life, he suffered from severe headaches w...

The human heart bends toward what the eye sees. Today’s image makers fling into the world's digital spectacles of sex, wealth, power, and popularity. Those images get inside us, shape us, and form...

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...

In grad school, although I was studying to become a clinical psychologist, I started working at a Baptist church. I discovered then that I loved to preach . . . until one weekend when the sermon wasn’...

When Rosina Hernandez was in college, she once attended a rock concert at which one young man was brutally beaten by another. No one made an attempt to stop the beating. The next day she was struck du...

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...