thought exercise on Lions

Lions have an especially pernicious way of hunting their prey. It seems that they terrorize their victims into making the worst possible choice about how to protect themselves from being eaten. The hu...

When you imagine a lion, what comes to your mind? For me, I envision a lion’s strong, giant, catlike torso that is covered with a tan coat and moving with a cocky strut. I see his unflinching facial e...

It is a Masai elder who tells the story. It comes from the book, Christianity Rediscovered, in which the Roman Catholic missionary, Vincent Donovan, shares his discoveries as he worked among Masai peo...

“He’ll be coming and going” he had said. “One day you’ll see him and another you won’t. He doesn’t like being tied down–and of course he has other countries to attend to. It’s quite all right. He’ll o...

I have been reading Julian Jackson’s biography of Charles de Gaulle — it’s exceptional, so far — and I find myself meditating on a story Jackson tells near the beginning of the book. In June of 1940, ...

While teaching on Jesus’ sending out of the disciples in Matthew 10, pastor John Ortberg uses the analogy of sports teams to describe the absurdity of Jesus’ description of the disciples as “sheep.” b...

If I am asked to break the gospel and a gospel culture down into simple statements, I would borrow imagery from the man from Northern Ireland, from Belfast, C. S. Lewis. From The Lion, the Witch and t...

A man who is desperate for work applies to a zoo that he’s heard has some openings. “Well, it’s a little unusual, but I do have something,” said the zoo director. “Our gorilla died sometime ago, and w...

A decade ago I spent an unforgettable week in the Galapagos Islands. This archipelago of islands off the coast of Ecuador hasn’t changed much since Charles Darwin sailed there on the HMS Beagle in Dec...

A decade ago I spent an unforgettable week in the Galapagos Islands. This archipelago of islands off the coast of Ecuador hasn’t changed much since Charles Darwin sailed there on the HMS Beagle in Dec...

A decade ago I spent an unforgettable week in the Galapagos Islands. This archipelago of islands off the coast of Ecuador hasn’t changed much since Charles Darwin sailed there on trheHMS Beagle in Dec...

n The Wounded Healer , Henri Nouwen retells a tale from ancient India: Four royal brothers decided each to master a special ability. Time went by, and the brothers met to reveal what they had le...

“The Lord is my shepherd,” among other things, means “I have no police protection.” In those open trackless spaces the traveler and his companions are alone. Thieves, wild animals, snakes, sudden blin...

How many modern Christians consider dying to be the worst thing that can happen to them? We pray for safety, healing, and protection, and rightly so. However, do we live in the truth that death has tr...

To be sure, groups, when they are functioning well, can be among our best defenses against vicious self-deception. But when group thinking is replaced by what psychologists call “groupthink,” results ...

In The Violent Bear It Away, Flannery O’Connor’s character Tarwater works hard not to think about his lost faith. But ultimately, we can only lie to ourselves for so long before we acknowledge the tru...

I think the uber-popular Christian prayer request for a “hedge of protection” is in the Bible, but I’m not sure. It sounds like something David would have written in the book of Psalms. He is very poe...

You fear you won’t. We all do. We fear that the depression will never lift, the yelling will never stop, the pain will never leave…We wonder: Will this gray sky ever brighten ? This load ever lighten...

Chris Spielman was at one time a paragon of athletic performance. A two-time All-American Linebacker at Ohio State University, and later three-time all pro for the Detroit Lions, Spielman knew what it...

A lion is fully capable of capturing, killing, and eating a field mouse. But it turns out that the energy required to do so exceeds the caloric content of the mouse itself. So a lion that spent its...

In his book On Combat, Lieutenant Dave Grossman talks about people being in one of three categories on a bell-shaped curve: wolves, sheep, or sheepdogs. Most people fall into the category of being she...

The image of a lamb doesn’t evoke feelings of confidence or strength. Sports fans will never hear an announcer say, “Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together to welcome the mighty Fighting Lambs!...

We were in London watching the musical The Lion King. Surely you’ve seen the movie; the opening number is worth watching again this week to help your imagination seize the new earth with both hands. A...

The highest offices of the state and church resemble a pyramid whose top is accessible to only two sorts of animals-eagles and reptiles.

“You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you,” said the Lion.

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 1995, the gray wolf was reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park after a seventy-year hiatus. Scientists expected an ecological ripple effect, but the size and scope of the trophic cascade took th...

Jesus doesn’t just use the shepherd metaphor when he refers to himself as the door. Over and over in the Bible, we are compared to sheep. Some people think it’s heartwarming. But I hate to tell you, i...

During the riots in Palestine in the middle thirties a village near Haifa was condemned to collective punishment by having its sheep and cattle sequestrated by the Government. The inhabitants however ...

One glorious autumn…I spent an afternoon climbing with a friend who grew up raising sheep in the Alps. We were climbing near the bottom of a ski area …[near] this steep green slope where [a] delightfu...