challenges on Desert

In the desert outside of Tucson, scientists dreamed up an experiment to re-create the conditions of earth for space, when and if the earth could not be made great again. The biosphere was a little wor...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Psalm of Lament or Psalm of Trust? We’ve categorized this psalm under the psalms of lament. The psalms of lament highlight the problems and enemies tha...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Psalm of Lament or Psalm of Trust? We’ve categorized this psalm under the psalms of lament. The psalms of lament highlight the problems and enemies tha...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Historical Background In our modern world we know so much about our universe that it is easy to forget that in the Bible there is a connection between ...

If you are looking for a story that illustrates humanity's deep-seeded need for relationships, you could do far worse than the 2000 film, Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks. The protagonist, Chuck No...

What is “Good” about Friday? For the work-a-day world in the United States of America, Fridays are good. TGIF, “Thank God It’s Friday!” is an interjection we use to convey relief that the work week i...

When I talk with parents of adolescents, the conversation often turns to smartphones, social media, and video games. The stories parents tell me tend to fall into a few common patterns. One is the “co...

Preaching Commentary What is “Good” about Friday? For the work-a-day world in the United States of America, Fridays are good. TGIF, “Thank God It’s Friday!” is an interjection we use to convey reli...

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.

God never calls you to a task without giving you what you need to do it. He never sends you without going with you.

Journalist Eric Severeid recalls a valuable lesson he learned at seventeen while preparing for an ambitious journey. He and a friend had set out to canoe from Minneapolis to the historic fur-trading p...

In the frigid waters around Greenland are countless icebergs, some little and some gigantic. If you’d observe them carefully, you’d notice that sometimes the small ice floes move in one direction whil...

Heavenly Father, You are our God--full of amazing power, goodness, love and mercy! In that mercy, guide us to rely and trust you in all circumstances, instead of ourselves. Keep our eyes open to ...

Circumstances which we have resented, situations which we have found desperately difficult, have all been the means in the hands of God of driving the nails into the self-life which so easily complain...

In the midst of winter I discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.

The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are the...

In his book Unshakeable Faith , Max Lucado shares a true story about a friend who competed in an Ironman Triathlon in Lake Placid, New York. You can compete in Ironman races around the world in p...

Hard seasons can cause us to look at God in an unhealthy way. Instead of asking God what He needs us to see in these seasons, we may constantly find ourselves asking Him if He really knows what He is ...

In his excellent little book, A Testament of Devotion , Thomas Kelly describes the inward reality that governs the course of history: Out in front of us is the drama of men and of nations, seethi...

Our Father, Lord, the world is sometimes a dragon with teeth set to devour the dreams of our children. Help our little ones go softly from our homes remembering all we taught them of your great love a...

We confess, loving and gracious God, that we often find ourselves in a rut as we seek to live out our faith. We do not pray for your Spirit’s ingenuity or creativity. We close off our hearts from anyt...

Notes on the Passage Besieged from All Angles:  The context of this passage is best summed up with the words recorded throughout the letter: Trouble, Distress, Suffering, Hardship, Death at work, Ja...

Trials are the ruler and scale to reveal in our lives.

The waters are rising, but so am I. I am not going under, but over.

What we choose to fight is so tiny! What fights with us is so great! If only we would let ourselves be dominated as things do by some immense storm, we would become strong too, and not need...

Father God, we confess that our shortcomings are far more than we care to admit. Like Pharaoh, our hearts are often hardened and we don’t always look to you as the God who Saves.  Like the people...

O curse of marriage, that we can call these delicate creatures ours and not their appetites.

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

There are three stages to every great work of God: first it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done.

I’d grown up in a Boston suburb where people’s homes were set behind deep hedges or protected by huge yards and neighbors hardly knew each other. And they didn’t need to: nothing ever happened in my t...