The greatness of God is most clearly displayed in his Son. And the glory of the gospel is only made evident in his Son. That's why Jesus' question to his disciples [in Matthew 16] is so important: "Who do you say that I am?"

The question is doubly crucial in our day, because [no one is as popular in the U.S. as Jesus]—and not every Jesus is the real Jesus. …

There's the Republican Jesus—who ...

Amy Carmichael (1867–1951) was a missionary to India who suffered enormously in her life. She once wrote these words:

I have noticed that when one who has not suffered draws near to one in pain, there is rarely much power to help. I have wondered if it can be the same in the sphere of prayer. Does pain accepted and endured give some quality that would otherwise be lacking in prayer? What if every stroke ...

Perfection, human perfection, is one of the rarest things on earth. The world of sports shows how rare, or short lived, perfection is for us. For example, last week (the week of July 20, 2009) as I walked out of the office and got into my car for my daily commute home, I turned on sports radio. The hosts were in the middle of an interview with White Sox ace Mark Buerhle, and they were excited. Soon ...

Have you heard about the personals website designed to facilitate extramarital affairs? Log on and you have immediate access to thousands of men and women willing to kick their vows to the curb for a no-strings-attached sexual tryst. And should you want to use the site to have an affair, the designers behind the site have worked hard so that no one will ever know about your misdeeds. For example, ...

Pests—bugs and rodents—even the thought of them makes our skin crawl. But pests find their way into everyone's home at one time or another. The question is, do we hate these pests enough to do what it takes to get rid of them? One survey says that depends on what sort of pest is in the house. Researchers found that people will dish out their hard earned money for an exterminator—meaning ...

Jack Handey, known for his odd sense of humor frequently expressed in an old Saturday Night Live segment titled "Deep Thoughts," wrote an equally odd book entitled Fuzzy Memories. In it Handey relates the story of a bully who demanded his lunch money every day when he was a child. Because Handey was smaller than the bully, he simply gave the bully his money.

"Then I decided to fight back," Handey ...

A transformation occurred in me with the birth of my children. I traded in that professional look for sweatpants. I found myself at the park with my children, looking at working women and thinking, I'd like to be doing that.

But the transformation went deeper than trading my business suit for a pair of sweatpants. There was something else going on when I had children. I knew my life had been invaded ...

Among his many virtues, [St. Francis of Assisi] is known for his passionate embrace of poverty. Not only did he forbid his emerging Order to own property, he added this discipline for each of the brothers: "Let none of the brothers … wherever he may be or go, carry, receive, or have received in any way coin or money, whether for clothing, books, or payment for work."

There were few exceptions. ...

The 2009 economic crisis brought an interesting phrase into the headlines: toxic assets. Toxic assets are one of the factors contributing to the trouble that banks are in now. The assets are loans. Somebody owes the banks money. Normally banks want people to owe them money and pay them interest on the principal. But as the economy now stands, especially with the mortgage foreclosure crisis, many of ...

God has made [our] fantasies … so preposterously unrewarding that we are forced to turn to him for help and for mercy. We seek wealth and find we've accumulated worthless pieces of paper. We seek security and find we've acquired the means to blow ourselves and our little earth to smithereens. We seek carnal indulgence only to find ourselves involved in the prevailing erotomania.

—Malcolm ...