"Pay It Forward": Exponential Kindness

Pay It Forward is a movie about a seventh grader's ingenious plan to make a difference in the world. On the first day of school, Trevor McKinney (played ...

Bono and Helms Model Acceptance

In a June 2001 column, religion columnist Terry Mattingly writes:

As lunch ended in the ornate U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee conference room, ...

Lasting Effects of Encouragement

Dr. Larry Crabb recalls an incident in the church he attended as a young man. It was customary in this church that young men were encouraged to participate ...

Hospitality Takes Time

In an era when many of us feel that time is our scarcest resource, hospitality falters.… "In a fast-food culture," a wise Benedictine monk observes, ...

Sow Kindness, You'll Need It

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak ...

Kindness Returned with Kindness

Lewis and Clark's famous expedition to the Pacific Northwest in 1804 almost came to an untimely and deadly end. Half starved and almost frozen, the ...

Love's Disarming Power

On April 6, 2000, Ricky and Toni Sexton were taken hostage inside their Wytheville, Virginia, home by a fugitive couple on a crime spree. Toni had taken ...

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. ...

Unselfish Tip

Many years ago, a ten-year-old boy walked up to the counter of a soda shop and climbed onto a stool. He caught the eye of the waitress and asked, "How ...

Sign of the Christian

As a result of poor planning, Dennis, from Katy, Texas, needed some same-day dry cleaning before he left on a trip. He remembered one store with a huge ...