faith and work on Stars

Creator of heaven and earth, you have studded the sky with stars and made it bright with lights, enriched the earth with fruits to satisfy our needs, given to humankind the clear light and the shining...

The Sabbath day is a holy day. Interestingly, the only thing God deems as qadosh, or “holy,” in the creation story is the Sabbath day. The earth, space, land, stars, animals — even people — are not de...

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.

If you see a thing whole—it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives… But up close a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life is a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You ne...

Our cities’ gleaming spires point to the greatness that mankind can achieve, but also to our hubris.... Urban innovation can destroy value as well as create it.

arrives in the world, scattering a song in the silence of the night: eternity utters a day.

[A] rock-star preaches capitalism. Wow. Sometimes I hear myself and I just can’t believe it. But commerce is real. . . . Aid is just a stopgap. Commerce—entrepreneurial capitalism—takes more people ou...

The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows, is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn'...

Hey, what if those crop circles are just ads for Target?

Writer Philip Yancey notes that toward the end of his life, Albert Einstein removed the portraits of two scientists–Newton and Maxwell–from his wall. He replaced those with portraits of Gandhi and Sch...

A vision we give to others of who and what they could become has power when it echoes what the spirit has already spoken into their souls.

I had just started dating my husband, Joe, when I met international speaker and bestselling author Keith Ferrazzi. He was a friend of Joe’s …but on this day he was an intimidating public figure. I wan...

Like a path through the forest, Sabbath creates a marker for ourselves so, if we are lost, we can find our way back to our center.

If you are what you should be, then you will set the world on fire.

A young boy was heard talking to himself as he wandered through his backyard, sporting a full baseball uniform, jersey and cap included, as well as a ball and bat. "I'm the best hitter in the...

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

You'll never do anything creative, innovative or world changing if you fear criticism. Pioneers are easy targets for arrows!

We swim in an ocean of feedback. Each year in the United States alone, every schoolchild will be handed back as many as 300 assignments, papers, and tests. Millions of kids will be assessed as they tr...

Brandon and Faith Lee, who started Bird and Branch Coffee, are what faithful witnesses look like. When they sat down across from my wife and me, they had a dream to start a coffee shop that would serv...

I recently attended an event sponsored by Compassion International, the International Child Sponsorship Organization. The event was called “Stepping into My Shoes”. The purpose being to show children ...

In his highly insightful work, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares the sobering truth of what happens to many leaders when they climb the “ladder of success”: The ground at the foot of the ladde...

Jesus: You gave us Your love at a high price – Your own death on the cross in our place! By Your grace you give us eternal life and entrust to us Your creation. Thank You, Lord! We come today as Y...

If you think of your identity and heart as an engine, you could say there is a kind of fuel that powers it cleanly and efficiently—and a kind of fuel that is not only polluting but also destroys the e...

The movie The Intern did not win any Academy Awards, which is hardly surprising. Punchy blockbuster comedies rarely receive Hollywood’s highest honors. But its message is nevertheless award wort...

We swim in an ocean of feedback. Each year in the United States alone, every schoolchild will be handed back as many as 300 assignments, papers, and tests. Millions of kids will be assessed as they tr...

Two thousand years ago, Christians were often hunted down and killed. Amid this darkness, the church began a radical practice. When a brother or sister was martyred for faith in Jesus, the Christian c...

Colonel William Pogue requested a day of rest from mission control for his overworked and exhausted space crew: “We have been over-scheduled. We were just hustling the whole day. The work could be tir...

In the land whose founding metaphor was the mutuality of John Winthrop’s seventeenth-century vision of a “city set on a hill,” we live more and more in estranged, hostile, exclusive enclaves, linked o...

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.

Oh Lord, our Lord, When you called your child Abraham out of Ur, You were beginning a new project in human history. You were creating a new people. A people who would be known as salt and light, A peo...