Considerate Witnesses

While in seminary in Chicago's suburbs, I discovered that a Promise Keepers' convention was coming to Soldier Field. A group of us took a commuter ...

Touching the Hurting

Len Sweet in Postmodern Pilgrims recounts a letter a physician wrote to a church-related magazine:

Today I visited an eight-year-old girl dying of cancer. ...

Caring for the Hurting

Patricia L. Miller, a former hospital staff person, writes:

While at work in the emergency room, I learned to stop crying at the pain around me. Each day ...

Jesus Understands Suffering

When Detroit sportswriter Mitch Albom heard his favorite college professor, whom he hadn't seen in 20 years, was dying of Lou Gehrig's disease, ...

Jesus Weeps with Us

In Either Way, I Win: God's Hope for Difficult Times, Lois Walfrid Johnson writes about visiting Oklahoma City, a city that was changed forever by ...

Divine Love in Us

One Sunday in our church service, a woman who sings in our choir, a former drug addict with the HIV virus, told the story of how she came to Christ. She ...

Body of Christ

After an accident in which she lost her arm, a girl named Jamie refused to go to school or church for an entire year. Finally the young teen thought she ...

A Kind Interruption

One Sunday at my church, the choir had finished singing the anthem and the pastor was rising to deliver the message. It was a moment of holy expectation. ...

The Suffering Community

I’ve always wondered what makes community biblical—as opposed to community that is merely social. Often churches provide social community, ...

Walter Payton’s Compassion

In August 1984, after ten seasons with the Chicago Bears as place kicker, Bob Thomas was notified by the Bears' management that he was being cut. ...