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....
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). ...
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...
for the gray nudge of dawn at the window ...
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...
When I'm discouraged, I begin to believe that my actions don't matter and that the real drama of life is taking place...
She was a slip of a girl. Five years old on her last birthday; long, soft brown hair and startlingly clear blue eyes. She was full of energy and creative fun, but she...
I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was a stranger and you received me in your homes, naked and you clothed me; I was sick...
When I taught freshman composition, I called one lesson, "Wax on, Wax off." ...
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection...
C. S. Lewis once advised his godchild, Lucy Barfield, about life. "Remember that there are only three kinds of things anyone need ever do. (1) Things we ought to do; (2) Things we've got to do; ...
One Sunday after church, needing milk, I went into Safeway. My new prescription sunglasses were there in my blue jacket going in...
More than 10 years ago, before U-2s and Gary Powers, my friend Griff was one of six fliers chosen to fly secret reconnaissance missions over Russia and China. Griff was one tough guy. Earlier,...
On a recent pilgrimage to New York, the Ground Zero sprawled out before us was oddly anticlimactic. Oft-photographed skeletal structures were gone. Our view, distant and oblique, was—as the...
"Why can't you write something that a lot of people would like?" That was Regina O'Connor's question to her daughter, Flannery, well after her daughter had published a groundbreaking novel, Wise...
Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things unto His hands, and that He had come forth from God, and was going back to God, rose from supper, and laid aside His...
How does what you do relate to who you are? If the culture devalues your vocation, do you give less effort? Who tells you who you are? Which voices are loudest? Can God...
Arthur Ashe was the first African American to win national and international tennis tournaments. His powerful ground strokes and accurate serves produced singles victories in the United States and...
