arts and culture on Everyday Life

Imagination is absolutely critical to the quality of our lives. Our imagination enables us to leave our routine everyday existence by fantasizing about travel, food, sex, falling in love, or having th...

The same impulse that makes us want our books to have a plot makes us want our lives to have a plot. We need to feel that we are getting somewhere, making progress. There is something in us that is no...

The normal course of day-to-day human interactions locks us into patterns of feeling, thought, and action that are geared to a world set against God. Nothing but solitude can allow the development of ...

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

April 2020 is an interesting time to write a book review on the sacraments (or anything, for that matter). As Tim Chester, author of the book, Truth We Can Touch , points out, You can read you...

In the world of the rabbis, a scholar was expected to earn his keep by engaging in a secular profession. The Mishnah tractate Avot reads: Make them [the words of the Law] not a crown wherewith to mag...

The problem we face today needs very little time for its statement. Our lives in a modern city grow too complex and overcrowded. Even the necessary obligations which we feel we must meet grow overnigh...

It’s been right here all along—the land teaching us how to un-hurry our hurry-sick hearts. Land speaks stunning truths through Scripture. The Hebrew word for land is eretz. It is the fifth most freque...

We have been created by God, to be loved by God, and to receive our identity from God. But in our everyday lives, as we go about our work, school, interacting with our family and friends, we don’t alw...

Pride, and its more serious cousin, narcissism, really shouldn’t have any place in leadership circles in the church. When I became a serious follower of Jesus at a teenager, Philippians 2 became one o...

In this short excerpt written by the Christian Ethicist Stanley Hauerwas to his godson, he pontificates on the topic of courage: Usually courage is identified with dramatic and heroic acts. Though I...

Susanne Wesley, wife of Pastor Samuel Wesley, lived in the late 1600’s and early 1700’s She gave birth to nineteen children, ten survived. Everyday she would take her Bible to her favorite chair and...

Melissa Florer-Bixler, a Mennonite pastor, told me, “One of my favorite stories from the Talmud comes from a wondering by the rabbis—why did the manna come once a day instead of once a year? They tell...

Risen Lord, Loving Father ... and Ever-Present Spirit: Thank You for reaching into our doubts, giving us the faith we lack. Thank You for Your gracious condescension reaching from the glories of heave...

Help us in this time of worship to be still and know that you are God. In quietness we would hear your voice calling us away from the discordant noises of the everyday world, that our spirits might be...

At this point in the discussion some will remark that the Old Testament says a good deal about being prosperous and even occasionally speaks about wealth, but not about money per se. That is the case ...

In a culture, the most important things usually go without being said. We Westerners don’t talk all the time about being individualists or about the importance of efficiency or why we prefer youth ove...

Jesus describes his followers as being “salt” and “light” in the world in Matthew 5. When you think about salt, it doesn’t really have a whole lot of value when it’s just sitting in a salt shaker. Si...

Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing...

In this excerpt by a Welsh Farmer, Wilf Davies, we hear about someone who finds his routines life-giving, as opposed to soul-sucking. I can’t help but think it has something to do with his occupation,...

We are hyperliving, skimming along on the surface of life.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

A Story is life with the dull parts taken out.

We have never lived enough. Our experience is, without fiction, too confined and too parochial. Literature extends it, making us reflect and feel about what might otherwise be too distant for feeling....

Sometimes it takes a wake-up call, doesn't it, to alert us to the fact that we're hurrying through our lives instead of actually living them; that we're living the fast life instead of the...

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have r...

Life asks not merely what you can do; it asks how much can you endure and not be spoiled.

In his excellent little book, A Testament of Devotion , written almost a hundred years ago, Thomas Kelly describes the true heart of the problem related to the complexity of our lives: Let me fir...

Our 24/7 culture conveniently provides every good and service we want, when we want, how we want. Our time – saving devices, technological conveniences, and cheap mobility have seemingly made life muc...

There are people who do not live their present life; it is as if they were preparing themselves, with all their zeal, to live some other life, but not this one. And while they do this, time goes by an...