Thomas More

Lawyers have been the punchline of jokes since Shakespeare. According to one Stanford law professor, 60% of Americans regard lawyers as greedy while only 20% regard them as honest and compassionate. Thomas More (1475-1535) was a reputable lawyer in his day. He gave...

Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was an astronomer who believed God created order in the universe to understand and put to good use. So, what’s the problem? The leading scholars of his day were convinced the earth was the center of the solar system. That meant the...

James Montgomery

Recently in Sunday worship, we sang four verses of the hymn “O, for a Thousand Tongues to Sing.”  When Charles Wesley originally wrote the hymn in 1739, it contained 18 verses! Many hymns we know, and love have more verses than what we customarily sing on...

Julian of Norwich

T.S. Elliott closes his “Little Gidding” poem with the words, “All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well,” a quote from Julian of Norwich (1343-1413). On the surface, her words sound naive and simplistic, yet she lived during a...

Lewis Carroll

Some people whose prayers I research are lost to history.  There’s not much written about their past and anecdotal stories about them are hard to find. Such is not the case with Lewis Carroll, the pen name for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1889) best known for...