Choosing to Live in Darkness

At first glance Steve and Kathryn's home might look like a dingy basement apartment. But then you notice that everything rests on crates. You see, ...

Tolkien's Gollum Illustrates Well the Deformity Caused by Sin

Gollum. What a great name. Just from the sound of it, you can tell that it is attached to a ne'er-do-well.

Gollum is the slimiest character in J. R. ...

Cook Offers Encouragement and Prayer at Children's Hospital

An article in the Chicago Tribune told the story of Bettye Tucker, a Christian cook who works the night shift at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, ...

Flawed People Drive Author Back to the Church, Not Away

Where human frailty once served as a reason for me to withdraw from the church, with its unruly and divergent congregants, this is now what compels me ...

Football Player Can't Forget the Ball He Dropped

Noble Doss dropped the ball. One ball. One pass. One mistake. In 1941, he let one fall. And it's haunted him ever since. "I cost us a national ...

Woman Chooses Painful Route to Gain Respect

Hajnal Ban decided she was tired of being what she considered short. The five-foot-one Australian woman had been made fun of most of her life, and she ...

Pastor Discovers Meaningful Way to Help Others in Pain

In an interview about his book The Folly of Prayer (IVP, 2009), author and pastor Matt Woodley shared a story about his friend Theresa. Theresa was experiencing ...

The Limits of the Human Will

Many of us act as if repentance is a matter of the will. [But] we can't "will" ourselves into change. We can't "will" ourselves ...

Wanting the Cure Without the Care

What we see, and like to see, is cure and change. But what we do not see and do not want to see is care: the participation in the pain, the solidarity ...

Praying Against the Consequences of Sin

Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats, then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.

—Fred Allen, U.S. ...