thought exercise on Stable

In the final book of the Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle , C. S. Lewis invites us to experience the manger scene in a fresh way. He challenges us to see the Christmas story as if we are witness...

It was a time like this,  war and tumult of war,  a horror in the air. Hungry yawned the abyss— and yet there came the star  and the child most wonderfully there. It was a time like this ...

In this excerpt, Frederick Buechner shares a meditation on the vulnerability of Jesus’ birth: The child born in the night among beasts. The sweet breath and steaming dung of beasts. And nothing is...

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for y...

Pope John Paul I recounted a story about Jonathan Swift and his servant. One morning at an inn, Swift asked his servant why his boots hadn’t been cleaned. The servant replied, “I didn’t see the point,...

An angel came to me And I was unprepared To be what God was using. Mother I was to be A moment I despaired, Thought briefly of refusing. The angel knew I heard According to God’s word, ...

In a November 1882 sermon on 1 John 2, the renowned pastor and preacher C. H. Spurgeon offers a profound insight into the nature of Christian maturity. His remarks come as part of his exposition on th...

In a very real sense, the Christian community lives in Advent all the time. It can well be called the Time Between, because the people of God live in the time between the first coming of Christ, incog...

Several years ago near the start of Advent, I awoke to a television report of five people murdered in a fast-food restaurant, and later that same morning I opened my newspaper and read that two robber...

Seek not in courts, nor palaces, Nor royal curtains draw; But search the stable, see your God, Extended on the straw.

In 1938 a group of researchers from Harvard University set out to answer the question of what habits led to a fulfilling life. They chose a group of 268 men who for the next seventy-five years were st...

In his excellent book, An Unhurried Life, Alan Fadling contrasts our overly busy lives with a vision of the kingdom from Isaiah chapter 61: Isaiah envisioned a kingdom in which those people in need ...

In I’d Like You More If You Were More Like Me , John Ortberg uses an interesting analogy for an aspect of our relationships. In 2015, Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner announced the Starshot Initiati...

A 2014 study by Wendy Wood found that approximately 40% of people’s daily activities are performed out of habit. According to Wood, “an important characteristic of a habit is that it’s automatic…We fi...

Although we use the word stress in a negative connotation, it actually is a value-neutral concept. In the medical sense, stress is the body’s response to any change required of it or any demand impose...

Would you like a no-stress life? A wise person would not accept that option, no matter how tempting it might sound. A stress-free life would be fatal. If we do not have change, challenge, and novelty ...

Happy marriages are based on a deep friendship. By this I mean mutual respect for and enjoyment of each other’s company. These couples tend to know each other intimately—they are well versed in each o...

Sociologist Ann Swidler has written persuasively about the difference between “settled” and “unsettled” times. Settled times consist of “traditions and common sense; [within which we] refine and reinf...

Status quo, you know, that is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.

The cornerstone was a critical element of ancient architecture, the anchor that the rest of the building relied on. The cornerstone was the stone that set the alignment of the entire building. Every o...

The word stewardship has recently fallen on hard times. To many it’s no longer relevant to the day in which we live. To some it’s a religious cliché used to make fund-raising sound spiritual. It conju...

There is a story about a farmer who had a few animals he kept in a barn that had gotten old, drafty, and leaky. Concerned for his animals' well-being, the farmer decided to build a new barn. He bu...

When we aim at certainty when it comes to our Christian beliefs, it sets us up for failure. …Imagine someone with a lot of time on their hands who painstakingly constructs a five-foot-high house of...

Have you ever heard of "Stein’s Law"? Named after University of Virginia economics professor Herbert Stein, it states: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." Do you...

Everyone wants it. It’s the thing that fuels what we do. It’s the thing that stimulates courage and perseverance. It’s what gets you through the tough times and keeps you from quitting. It’s hard to b...

Tolerating absence is, in essence, trusting presence—even when the one who is present to us is not physically present. Think of the two-year-old gradually loosening his clinging grasp to the leg of hi...

Abide is an old English word for “remain,” “stay steady” and “keep your position.” What it means to abide in Christ—that is, always to be resting on him, anchored to him, fixed in him, drawing from hi...

Contentment is when we tell the Shepherd that His provision is enough for all our physical and material needs. If our old car gimps down the road, that is fine. If we get a shiny newer auto with less ...

Presence is experienced as a unitary whole. Think, for example, about the experience of sitting on the top of a hill, far from the polluting lights of a city, gazing at a dark, starry sky. Unless you ...

The Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway bills itself as “the ultimate insurance policy for the world’s food supply,” storing 1,214,827 seed samples from every nation on Earth. The seeds are stored at -18°C...