I lost my daughter in Barnes & Noble. ...
The most exhilarating, enlightening trip I’ve ever taken lasted less than ten minutes start to finish. I wasn’t carrying my driver’s license, my passport, or my keys. My traveling companion was a... ...
A schoolboy reporter named Charles Schnee once saw the great stage producer, Max Reinhardt, conduct a rehearsal. Instructing an actor, Reinhardt said: "Always act the part—and you can become...
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. ...
The British comedy team Flanders and Swan sing a wonderful song about a sloth who imagines all he could be if he were a different creature. He could “win a war then write...
Just last night, I saw a roadside billboard advertising a local bank. It said: “Have a little fun(d) today!” Well, okay, the bankers want you to invest with them. But the slogan set...
Life is hard. I concede the point. But life is funny too, and that is not an accident. ...
I stood beside the opened trunk of my car and began to remove my jewelry, as instructed. Rings, earrings, watch, bracelets dropped...
[Elijah] went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O...
When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?" ...
Tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free ...
When my son called home to tell us he’d fallen into a cold blue funk that could only be called "depression," we weren’t totally surprised; we were, however, saddened and afraid. ...
How beautifully the essayist and social critic Henry David Thoreau speaks of the journeyer: "A traveler. I love his title. A traveler is to be revered as such. His profession is the best...
The cliché that it’s not the destination but the journey that matters is, of course, silly. If the destination didn’t matter, the journey wouldn’t either. What gives a journey its momentum—its... ...
When they heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill them. But a Pharisee in the council named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, respected by all the people, stood up and...
Once at a women’s retreat I was asked to be a small group leader, and in my group was a woman from Zimbabwe: Madelyn. ...
Jesus told a story of a man who went out to clear the land. He uprooted gnarled old trees and chopped up rotting stumps. He put a shoulder to large boulders and pushed...
I decided that a novel I was writing would climax in one of the most dangerous countries in the world. At the...
I sit on the floor, lean against the couch, and listen to a house wrapped in the unmistakable quiet of a child asleep. The refrigerator hum blurs into the muffled drone of rush-hour...
"Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A...
