On Firm Ground

Before his novels The Firm, Pelican Brief, and The Client catapulted John Grisham to the status of "commercial supernova"--as Newsweek called ...

The Day of Death and Triumph

James Guthrie, the Covenanter, woke up in the condemned cell on the morning of his execution. His servant was weeping, and he said, "Stop that at ...

Err on the Side of Life

Alva B. Weir, an oncologist in Germantown, Tennessee, told this story:

"I was awakened from sleep by the telephone. On the other end of the line, ...

In Death We Are All the Same

David Seamands ends his book Healing Grace with this story: For more than six hundred years the Hapsburgs exercised political power in Europe. When Emperor ...

First Experience of Need

When you can go through contemporary life fudging and evading, indulging and slacking, never really hungry nor frightened nor passionately stirred--your ...

The Struggle Against Death

The fundamental thing behind all motivation and all activity is the constant struggle against annihilation and against death. Death is absolutely stupefying ...

The Sands of Time

If I cast my eyes before me, what an infinite space in which I do not exist! And if I look behind me, what a terrible procession of years in which I do ...

Don't Look for Yourself

Look for yourself and you will find in the long run hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him, and ...

Life in the Waiting Room

In One Church from the Fence, Wes Seelinger writes: "I have spent long hours in the intensive care waiting room ... watching with anguished people ...

Where I Want to Die

I've heard pastors say, "I want to die in the pulpit." Well, as for me, I want to die in bed. I don't think it's any gift to the ...