Have you ever found yourself reading the Bible and you came across a scene that is horrific, filled with awful violence or scheming swindlers or ethical blunders, and you find yourself unsure what to ...
A good story goes beyond just describing what actually happened. It tells us about how the world works more broadly, in ways that pertain to things that didn’t actually happen or at least haven’t happ...
What is the matter with us is a question as old as time. Many philosophers and prophets believe they have an answer, but so too does holy scripture. According to the Dutch-Canadian philosopher Al Wolt...
Before my mentor, Dallas Willard, passed over to glory, I asked him what he thought about the rapid rise of the Christian spiritual formation movement. He said, “It is a wonderful thing, but my fear i...
In his classic fictional work on spiritual warfare, The Screwtape Letters , C. S. Lewis imagined a senior demon (Screwtape) corresponding with one of his protégés (his nephew Wormwood) as the latte...
Isaiah 2:4, Matthew 5:9, Romans 12:18, Ephesians 2:14
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks tells a true story in one of his books about peacemaking in what is arguably one of the world's most difficult places to achieve it: the Middle East. One evening in the early ...
Genesis 4:1-14, Matthew 5:21-22, Exodus 20:13, 1 John 3:15, Deuteronomy 5:17, Romans 12:19, Genesis 9:6, Matthew 5:4, 9, Revelation 21:4
Notes on prayer: This prayer is designed for a leader and a congregation, but it could be further divided so that the Leader/People response sections are "voice 1" and "voice 2." ...
Across all barriers of land and language, wealth and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, we are one, created from the same dust, subject to the same laws, and destined for the same end. With this compas...
For prayer exists, no question about that. it is the peculiarly human response to the fact of this endless mystery of bliss and brutality, impersonal might and lyric intimacy that composes our experie...
A large part of what it means to be human is to be one who longs after things. Sometimes, we have trouble putting into words the longings inside us. Take for example these words from Anne Frank, just ...
In this excerpt of a poem by William Wordsworth, the poet describes our yearning for life beyond this life. Our desire for something greater than ourselves: Whether we be young or old, Our desti...
Genesis 4:1-14, Matthew 5:21-22, Exodus 20:13, 1 John 3:15, Deuteronomy 5:17, Romans 12:19, Genesis 9:6
Notes on prayer: This lament can be used as prayers of the people, but can be adapted for other uses as well. It is designed to be responsive, but it would also work if prayed in unison. Leader: ...
Matthew 25:31-46, Galatians 3:28, 1 John 3:17-18, James 2:15-16, Romans 12:10, Genesis 1:26-31, Psalm 8:, Matthew 10:24, Mark 12:31
One day, as Leo Tolstoy, the renowned Russian author, was walking down the street when he encountered a man in worn, shabby clothing. The homeless man asked him if he had any money to spare. Tolstoy s...
1 Peter 5:8, Ephesians 6:12, Proverbs 4:23, Matthew 26:41, Psalm 46:10, 1 Kings 19:11-12, John 10:10
In the Critically acclaimed 2018 horror film A Quiet Place , Earth faces an alien invasion unlike any other. In the movie, the aliens behave like merciless monsters, using their lightning-fast sp...
And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find som...
[Speaking of crucifixion] It seems almost inevitable to me that Jesus should go through this kind of darkness. . . . If you think of Jesus as God disguised as a man, then this will have no meaning for...
Every human being, each in their own way, has the same glory, and this glory is incomparably greater than the glory of any distinction they could struggle themselves into.
Philippians 2:5-8, Isaiah 53:2-3, Luke 22:27, Mark 10:45, John 13:14-15
St. Paul tells us that Jesus Christ, the revelation of God become human, “set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It wa...
On August 20 and September 5, 1977, two spacecraft named Voyager were launched. Eventually leaving the solar system and heading into deep space, they represented a revolutionary and promising breakthr...
No person has ever walked our earth and been free from the pains of loneliness. Rich and poor, wise and ignorant, faith-filled and agnostic, healthy and unhealthy have all alike had to face and strugg...
The one essential condition of human existence is that man should always be able to bow down before something infinitely great. If men are deprived of the infinitely great they will not go on living a...
Proverbs 16:18, Psalm 103:14-16, Luke 14:11, Micah 6:8, 1 Peter 5:5-6, James 4:6-10, Jeremiah 9:23-24
If you were to travel back in time to the city of Rome (either during the Republic or the Empire), you may have had the opportunity to witness the Triumph, a colossal spectacle in which the greatest m...
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
Matthew 10:29-31, Luke 12:24, Matthew 6:26, Matthew 12:11-12, Romans 5:8
A missionary in a Muslim-majority country got a call one day from his wife. Their local house-helper (a common practice in that country) had accidentally dropped and broken their carafe from the coffe...
While lying in bed due to a serious illness, the poet and pastor John Donne heard over and over again the funeral bells at his church, which would ring to announce the death of someone in the parish. ...
Leo Tolstoy, the writer of some of the most beautiful and complex stories in literature, had this to say on the topic of human nature and qualities that define us: One of the commonest and most gene...
Human flourishing is first and foremost a flourishing of relationships—our relationship with God and with others. But human flourishing is also a product of fruitful work that reflects our God who wor...
James 4:1-10, Jeremiah 9:23-24, Mark 7:20-23, Proverbs 15:25-33, Proverbs 16:18, 1 Samuel 18:null, Luke 18:9-11
When Julius Caesar returned to Rome after many years of fighting its battles abroad, he planned great festivities and triumphal processions to celebrate his victories over Gaul, Egypt, Pontos, and Afr...
On the day I was born, the doctor who delivered me inscribed my birth records with a firm hand: seven pounds, eleven ounces, twenty-one inches. It was the first legally attested evidence that I was no...