World's Empty Promises

When I was a senior in high school, I was voted co-captain and most improved player on the basketball team. At the annual sports assembly I was called ...

Prison Cell: Picture of Advent

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, imprisoned by Hitler during World War II, writes to his fiance on one lesson learned from life in prison:

A prison cell, in which ...

Henri Nouwen Defines Christmas

Songs, good feelings, beautiful liturgies, nice presents, big dinners, and sweet words do not make Christmas. Christmas is saying yes to something beyond ...

Hope Beyond Earthly Life

When divers combed the wreckage of the Kursk (the destroyed Russian nuclear submarine on which 118 sailors perished), they found a letter written by Lt. ...

Running toward Unseen Goal

United States runner Marla Runyon has been legally blind for 22 years. Even so, she competed in the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. In ...

Eternal Life: The Next Great Chapter

On the final page of the final book of The Chronicles of Narnia, some of the children who have been to Narnia lament that they once again must return ...

Christ's Hope for the Suffering

In the Koch Gallery of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts hangs Bartolome Murillo's Christ after the Flagellation, a painting that depicts two angels ...

Attitude Tested

When I was 11 and my brother Joe was 15, I was sure he could lift small cars and jump small buildings without breaking a sweat. He was the coolest, toughest, ...

Persevering after Loss

In his book Alive, Rick Christian recounts a low point in Thomas Carlyle's life. The noted historian had just spent two years writing a book on the ...

Waiting for Final Resurrection

Two days have earned names on the church calendar: Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Yet in a real sense we live on Saturday, the day with no name. What ...