Here's a little experiment: start a sentence with the words "I believe…," and then finish it with something deeply heartfelt. It is impossible to do without feeling uplifted and stirred.

The need to declare our deeply held beliefs is an irrepressible aspect of being human. In the act of defining what we believe, we define ourselves. I am one who can discern what is true and real and noble and bind ...

In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien writes about a kingdom called Gondor which for many years has had no king. While waiting for the rightful heir to come and claim his throne, a series of stewards has been placed in charge of the land. The steward in charge at the time of the events described in the book is named Denethor. He has two sons, Boromir and Faramir, both of whom figure prominently in the ...

While writing about the Nativity in his book The Faces of Jesus, author and pastor Frederick Buechner reflects on an early scene in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Three characters—Horatio, Marcellus, and Barnardo—are keeping watch at night, discussing the possibility of having seen a ghost. In the midst of their conversation, they briefly stumble into a discussion about the night of Christ's birth. ...

I suspect that most of us do not honor and obey [Jesus] because he often comes to us [much like] King Edward the Disguised.

In Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, we are introduced to Prince Edward and a poor boy named Tom Canty. In the opening pages, they meet each other and discover they look identical. Since each one is dissatisfied with his social situation, they decide to swap places and see ...

In Jack's Life, Douglas Gresham's book about his stepfather C. S. Lewis, Gresham comments on the great love that the young Lewis had for Lizzie Endicott, the Irish woman who helped look after Jack (as he was called) and his older brother Warnie. Gresham notes, "Jack was also fond of his nursemaid Lizzie, and she would tell him old Irish folktales and fairy stories."

In Prince Caspian, we find a comparable ...

Leif Enger's Peace Like a River tells the story of Jeremiah Land, a janitor for the local school who has been known to perform miracles from time to time. He lives a relatively quiet life with his three children: 16-year-old Davy, 11-year-old Reuben, and 9-year-old Swede, a precocious little girl.

The novel takes a dark turn when Davy kills two teenage thugs who invade his family's home. It isn't long ...

Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.

—William Butler Yeats, poet and dramatist, 1865–1939

I believe it to be a grave mistake to present Christianity as something charming and popular with no offense in it.

—Author Dorothy Sayers

Getting a novel published is an extremely difficult affair, especially if you are an unknown author. One freelance writer named Chuck Ross decided to test this maxim in an unusual way. Ross took a novel by Jerzy Kosinski, titled Steps, which had won the National Book Award six years before. Ross retyped the first 21 pages of Steps and sent them out to four publishers, using the name Erik Demos as ...

In 1963, Kurt Vonnegut wrote a book entitled Cat's Cradle in which the narrator and main character, John, sought to write a book about the day the world ended. Vonnegut was prompted to do so by the nuclear bomb at Hiroshima. His fictional story deals with the technological ability of the human race combined with its stupidity.

Within the story, in the process of his research and travels, John comes ...