The most important word in my Christian walk is hope. Well, faith also. But what is faith but hope for the unseen? Not all I hope for will happen this side of the...
I remember only one toy from my childhood: a kaleidoscope—a hollow tube with a peephole at one end and at the other, bits of colored glass between two glass panels, one clear, one...
Life makes us wait. We wait to get our braces off, to finish school, to learn what college accepted us. We wait...
I have a bruising relationship with a Major American Poet, founded on mutual antagonism—what with each of us trying to top the other's last witticism. More often than not, he betters me, although...
Seth Miller is a Nasdaq trader in New York City with a compelling and courageous personal story. I invited him to speak one Sunday as part of my sermon, and this is an excerpt: ...
One day, sitting in my office writing something—probably a student's letter of recommendation—words came to my imagination: "I only want to sew, to have my hands in the threads." I jotted them...
I've never been good at the whole obedience thing. As a teen I broke curfews, snuck out on dates, skipped classes, and generally believed rules were made to be broken. As a young...
"It is true that there is a silly, cowardly kind of optimism, which we must condemn. But optimism that is will for future should never be despised, even if it is proved wrong...
Who of us has not grown up with the parental reminder, "Remember to say 'thank you'"? Thanks is one of those magic...
As Jesus ended his second year of ministry, everyone seemed confused about his identity. The Pharisees thought he was demon-possessed (Matt. 12:22). His kinfolk thought he was nuts (Mark 3:22). ...
The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, "When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and set them on the...
for the gray nudge of dawn at the window ...
The author of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes generally is considered the pessimist among the stable of biblical writers. His entire book is framed by the dirge, "Vanity of vanity, all is...
From the beginning of scripture to the end, from the Bible's first chapter through the last, God is at work to create and recreate. From the beginning, God invites us humans to join...
God of Creation, you made us to love with the love You so abundantly lavished on us through our Savior, Jesus Christ. On our own we cannot see people, events, even our own...
I don't know when I started to think of God in terms of paradox—it was a long time ago. I was privileged to be reared by Christian parents who were honest about not...
Pregnant teenage girls and preppie teenage boys, each in their own worlds trying to make sense of it all. Jean's a teacher who listens to these disparate groups with their differing tales of woe....
Juan was a man in his forties or fifties in the cotton fields near my home in far West Texas, where I picked cotton sometimes after school and on Saturdays to make extra...
The nineteenth century Scottish preacher, Alexander MacLaren, once said, "Seek to cultivate a buoyant, joyous sense of the crowded kindnesses of God in your daily life." Many of those kindnesses...
For some time now, I have thought of myself as a spiritual writer and am confident enough, when someone wants to know...
