Some doors, like the front gate of the White House, are tough to walk through. The White House has one phalanx of security after another, and you simply don't get in unless you are wanted, unless you have clearance, unless you have an appointment.

Some people do get into the White House based on who they are. Some get in based on who they know.

On Sunday July 26, 2009, one of the biggest and most famous ...

Early in his career, many had hoped A. N. Wilson, a brilliant philosopher, would become the next C. S. Lewis. But as a young man, he began to wonder how much of the Easter story he accepted. By his thirties, he had lost all religious belief and publicly repudiated his Christian faith, becoming an atheist. He soon embraced the role of a harsh, cynical critic of Christianity and any faith in God at ...

I was in line at the grocery checkout. A few feet in front of me, a mother guided her toddler ahead, anchored her baby on her hip, and elbowed her checkbook open to pay the clerk. In what seemed like one single gesture, she retrieved her toddler's hand from the candy rack, tore the check from her book and offered it to the clerk while placing a comforting smooch atop her baby's head. The baby drooled ...

As our Bible study group began focusing on the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, I felt pretty smug. After all, I didn't worship more than one God, steal, commit adultery or murder, lie about my neighbors, or plot to cheat them out of what was rightfully theirs. But one evening we came to the command to honor our father and mother (v. 12). Against my will, I thought of my mother, who'd passed away ten ...

When Michelle Attaway moved in with her boyfriend, Jay, for a life of drugs and partying, she assumed Jay's parents would turn their back on them in disgust. So it was a bit shocking when Jay and Michelle were instead invited over for dinner. She writes about the events that followed:

I was incredulous because I knew that Jay's parents were "normal" people, the type that crossed to the other side ...

In his book Sacred Marriage, Gary Thomas writes:

If we are serious about pursuing spiritual growth through marriage, we must convince ourselves to refrain from asking the spiritually dangerous question: "Did I marry the right person?"

A far better alternative to questioning one's choice is to learn how to live with one's choice. A character in the Anne Tyler novel A Patchwork Planet comes to realize ...

At my daughter's elementary school musical, the printed program noted: "This musical was originally written for 15 actors, but it has been adapted to accommodate our cast of 206." You know what kind of show this was. No-cut auditions, no performer left without something special to do. They danced, they sang, they delivered lines, and somehow 206 children graced the stage that night.

It was not a short ...

Improvisation is the willingness to live within the bounds of the past and yet search for the future at the same time. Improvisation is the desire to make something new out of something old.… It is experienced in being open to letting the people around you…have impact on what you are creating.

Wynton Marsalis is the artistic director of jazz at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts ...

As I read accounts of the New Testament church, no characteristic stands out more sharply than [diversity]. Beginning with Pentecost, the Christian church dismantled the barriers of gender, race, and social class that had marked Jewish congregations. Paul, who as a rabbi had given thanks daily that he was not born a woman, slave, or Gentile, marveled over the radical change: "There is neither Jew ...

In 1977, fish merchant Lee Lantz traveled to Chile and "discovered" the toothfish, a species the locals deemed too oily to eat. Thirty years and a name change later, Chilean sea bass is so popular with American palates that it's almost on the verge of extinction.

After Canadians developed an oil from the rapeseed plant, they still had to deal with the name. So, in 1988, the FDA approved a name change ...