stories on Prescription

Books on the problem of pain divide neatly into two groupings. The older ones, by people like Aquinas, Bunyan, Donne, Luther, Calvin, and Augustine, ungrudgingly accept pain and suffering as God’s use...

A pilgrimage is a journey undertaken in response to a story.

Preaching Commentary Paying Close Attention to Subjects and Verbs Psalm 22 is well known to Christians because our Savior used this psalm in his dying hours on the cross (Matt. 46), quoted in Arama...

Our Scriptures that bring us the story of our salvation ground us in place. Everywhere they insist on this grounding. Everything that is critically important to us takes place on the ground. Mountains...

There is a branch of medicine known as etiology , which studies the causes of diseases. One college describes it as the study of the “backstory” of an illness. Etiology tries to figure out why a ...

I believe we all need to reframe our stories, at least parts of them, in order to heal, to discard lies, to move from partial truths to richer, fuller explanations, to see our lives as God sees them.

Robert C. McFarlane was a well-known businessman in the Los Angeles area. He had moved to California from Oklahoma in 1970, and within just a few days of his arrival—due to a disastrous misunderstandi...

In his book Flesh: Bringing the Incarnation Down to Earth , Hugh Halter opens with an unlikely scenario: taking his teenage daughter to get her first tattoo. While watching his daughter get “inked...

I have a word for you. I know your whole life story. I know every skeleton in your closet. I know every moment of sin, shame, dishonesty and degraded love that has darkened your past. Right now I know...

Some of the Words are Theirs: The Art of Writing and Living a Sermon by is a book by a preacher who loves the craft of writing . And what is the writing of poetry, fiction, essay, but offering ins...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously declared that experiencing a story—any story—requires the reader’s “willing suspension of disbelief.” In Coleridge’s view, a reader reasons thus: “Yes, I know Coleridg...

I believe one of the principal ways in which we acquire, hold, and digest information, is via narrative. So I hope you will understand when the remarks I make begin with what I believe to be the first...

Paying Close Attention to Subjects and Verbs Psalm 22 is well known to Christians because our Savior used this psalm in his dying hours on the cross (Matt. 46), quoted in Aramaic, his native language...

There was what an Orthodox Hasidic rabbi had said on a flight westward. He’d put his prayer shawl in the overhead compartment and sat down, sweeping aside the tassels dangling from his pockets. And so...

When we submit our lives to what we read in scripture, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but our stories in God's. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories...

Joining the Story “We read to know that we are not alone” (Anthony Hopkins as C. S. Lewis in Shadowlands ). That’s also why we listen to sermons. Someone once told me that in every sermon they hope ...

The Puritans in American Literature “Welcome to Honors American Literature!” You probably haven’t heard that line since high school, right? After his first couple of weeks of school, my boy came home...

300 10-Minute Devotions For the past six years I’ve been a volunteer chaplain at Haywood Pathways Center , a Christian residential program for people working to turn their lives around from addict...

Fiction doesn’t tell us something we don’t know, it tells us something we know but don’t know that we know.

When we observe evil, sinful behavior from a distance, the inclination is simply to see people as acting with malicious intent. We assume they are “bad people.” But often the motivations that lead to ...

There is power in bringing untold stories to light. The freedom to speak about the reality of suffering and death results in a freedom from denial.

“We’re gonna live like we’re telling the best story in the world. Are you ready?”

“He held up a book then. “I'm going to read it to you for relax.” “Does it have any sports in it?” “Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True Love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men...

The Old Testament on its own is an unfinished story; a promise without a fulfilment. We must read on to the New Testament if we want to know what it really means. And the New Testament constantly look...

A Story is life with the dull parts taken out.

Being in God’s story does not mean passively letting things happen to us. It doesn’t mean dumb submission or blind obedience.

The truth to which all this fiction refers, from which it takes its authority, is the very oldest truth, right out of Genesis. We are not at ease in this world, and sooner or later it kills us.

Imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our real life.

Fiction does not ask us to believe things,” he points out, “but to imagine them.” “Imagining the heat of the sun on your back is about as different an activity as can be from believing that it will be...

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.