The Pastor Who Ran Away

Kevin Martin was a minister at a massive church—but one of those churches where it got too burdensome. The administrative machine ate him up, and ...

A Runner’s Sudden Existential Crisis

Devin Kelly looks forward every year to meeting his running friends at Farmdaze. Every February at a farm in Brooklet, Georgia, a 24-hour ultra-marathon ...

Hardship Can Cause Spiritual Growth

Bristlecone Pines are fascinating trees that grow in the western mountain regions of the United States. Sometimes as high as two or more miles above sea ...

The Heart - a Cup or a Scale?

It seems that folks sometimes offer biblical encouragements—“fear not,” “do not be anxious,” and so on—as if the heart ...

The Companies That Help People Vanish

All over the world, from the US to Germany to the UK, some people decide to disappear from their own lives without a trace--leaving their homes, jobs, ...

The Benefit of Tears

In Christianity Today, Al Hsu writes:

Encouraged by a 25 percent-off coupon given to me by a friend, I went ahead and had [laser eye] surgery [to correct ...

Living with Uncertainty in a Time of Crisis

Author Elizabeth L. Silver wrote the very personal memoir The Tincture of Time. It is about her then baby daughter’s stroke at six weeks and the ...

The Price of Admission to a Meaningful Life

In a recent TED talk, Psychologist Susan David shares how the way we deal with our emotions shapes everything that matters: our actions, careers, relationships, ...

Suffering Is Fertile – It Can Grow New Life

"Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have existence," said Leon Bloy, ...

The Pests We Need

In 1958, Mao Zedong ordered the extermination of every sparrow in China. He could scarcely have guessed the magnitude of the disaster he had set in motion. ...