thought exercise on LIfe isn't Fair

In this excerpt from Gillian Marchenko’s memoir on her battle with depression, Still Life , her husband, a pastor named Sergei describes the reality that both life, and marriage, are often not as...

Any parent who has children of speaking age has likely heard the expression, “That’s not fair.” Those words come in all shapes and sizes—quickly shouted, drawn out almost with extra syllables, or said...

A little girl from Minneapolis reunited with her family after Sunday school looked upset. “I’m not going back!” she declared assertively. Surprised, her mother asked, “Why not?” The girl frowned and r...

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 ...

How many shortcuts have been justified with the best of intentions? At the sentencing for her role in the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal, actress Lori Loughlin addressed the court:  “I mad...

When I graduated from college I was given one of the greatest opportunities of my young life. A group of my friends were told that if we were able to purchase a flight to the Cayman Islands, we would ...

To love God intellectually is to become a student of God—a student who really takes an interest in God. Have you ever noticed that a fair number of Christians are not particularly interested in God? S...

I’ve known a lot of people who have lived painful, tragic lives. When I was young, I assumed these people were abnormal. Their suffering was the exception that proved the rule that a well-lived life i...

The world, in fact, is not as it had been represented to us. Things are not all right as they are, and they are not getting any better. We have been told the lie ever since we can remember: human bein...

One of life’s enduring mysteries is that you don’t have to do anything wrong for your life to go horribly wrong. When we are abused, rejected, hurt, betrayed, or manipulated, we search our hearts and ...

Life is precious. Not because it is unchangeable, like a diamond, but because it is vulnerable, like a little bird. To love life means to love its vulnerability, asking for care, attention, guidance, ...

If a man is forever concerned first and foremost with his own interests then he is bound to collide with others. If for any man life is a competition…then he will always think of other human beings as...

The character Quentin from Henry Miller’s Play, After the Fall explains a life without God: For many years I looked at life like a case at law. It was a series of proofs. When you’re young you prove ...

Most of life is lived in the gaps between great moments. The peaks seem to protrude only after miles and miles of death valleys. While the Bible reveals its characters in terms of their high points, w...

Alfred Hitchcock said movies are “life with the dull bits cut out.” Car chases and first kisses, interesting plot lines and good conversations. We don’t want to watch our lead character going on a wal...

Why does God give some of His children more than they need and others less than they need? So that He may use His children to help one another. He doesn’t want us to have too little or too much (Prove...

Impostors draw their identity not only from achievements but from interpersonal relationships. They want to stand well with people of prominence because that enhances a person’s résumé and sense of se...

Helen Keller, who lost both her sight and hearing in childhood but became a renowned activist and author, said that there is no such thing as a secure life. “It does not exist in nature.… Life is eith...

I searched for guidance on how to combat the problem of constant comparison. I found that well-meaning teachers sometimes addressed the topic, but their advice usually ran along these lines: “You sho...

It was true, I had always realized it—I hadn’t any “right” to exist at all. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant, a microbe. I could feel nothing to myself but an inconsequential ...

Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness and remains far behind yours. Wer...

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...

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...

Every year when I was in school, we were required to go to “athletics,” better known as gym class. I always hated it because there was a possibility we’d play kickball or dodgeball or pretty much anyt...

We can rightly ask, What does it mean to take responsibility for my life in response to the way God has made and called me? The response to this question is that we learn how to work with the hand tha...

On May 20, 1990, 42-year-old Georgene Johnson arrived 15 min early for her 10K race (6.2 mi) as part of the Revco-Cleveland Marathon and found runners already heading down the course. So, she jumped i...

A few weeks after Rich Mullins died in a car accident in 1997 at age forty-one, his friend and financial manager, Jim Dunning, went to collect Rich’s possessions. Mullins was a wildly successful Chris...

In Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat , the narrator encourages the imprisoned Joseph not to despair because “I’ve read the book and you come out on top.” Unfortun...

If the Book of Job reaches across two and a half millennia to teach anything to men and women who consider themselves normal, decent human beings, it is this: Human beings are sure to wander in ignora...

Listen to your life. All moments are key moments. I discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled to it and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it…Taking your children to school and ki...