If you were a woman in the thirteenth century who wanted to devote your life to God, you joined a convent. No other options were open to you. A group of women defied convention by choosing to live for God while rejecting the cloistered life. They...
Henry van Dyke (1852-1933) was a guest at the home of Augustus Garfield, president of Williams College in western Massachusetts, nestled in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains. Henry was pastor of Brick Presbyterian Church in New York who...
I've often wondered how the Song of Songs made it into the biblical canon. For starters, God's name is never mentioned. It also happens to be the most sexually explicit book in Scripture. I'll be honest. I become embarrassed reading portions of it...
Illiteracy was widespread in medieval Europe among peasants and nobility alike. Monasteries were one of the few places where reading was taught and flourished. The mass of society depended on learned priests and monks to read the Bible for them and...
He was known around campus as Doctor Profundis (the Profound Doctor). Little wonder. He was one of the ablest theologians of his day, along with being a skilled mathematician and brilliant physicist. Thomas Bradwardine (1300-1349) came to saving...
This is a story about a woman who wanted to succeed for her talents, not her connections. Novelist Charles Dickens was close friends with the Procter family. Father Brian was a lawyer by day and a poet by night. Their home became a haven for...
When Chuck Colson (1931-2012) went to see his friend Tom Phillips in 1973, his life was imploding. Chuck was under investigation for his role in the Watergate scandal and a plot to discredit Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers. As a new...
The Bodleian Library is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. As the main research library for the University of Oxford, it contains thirteen million printed items. Its special collection archive includes a tenth century document of manuscripts...
Aloneness gets a bad rap in our day. We equate aloneness with loneliness, yet it's possible to be alone without being lonely. Aloneness is not loneliness when we are in the company of God. One danger of so much online connectivity is the temptation...
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) was the most celebrated painter and sculptor of the Renaissance period, but he's also the author of today's prayer. His first commissioned sculptor at twenty-three, the Pieta, depicts Jesus' body as it was...
We all suffer, some more than others. Jerry Sittser (1950-) was new to the faculty of Whitworth University in Spokane, WA in 1991. He and his family were returning from a visit to an Indian Reservation in Idaho when their van was struck by a drunk...
Joy is a misunderstood word. We commonly associate it with happiness, which relies on outward variables to achieve pleasure. Joy isn't contingent on external circumstances. Joy originates in the heart of God and is one of God's good gifts to...
In nearly every poll of the best American presidents, Abraham Lincoln comes out on top, eclipsing even our founding father George Washington. Abe Lincoln's popularity today would have been inconceivable during the Civil War. He was roundly...
My grandfather named his farm “Blaenant,” which my dad said is a Welsh word meaning “house at the head of the stream.” My son and family lived in an 1814 New England house called “Journey’s End.” Before houses had street numbers, they were...
The year was 1932, and Edith had just graduated from high school. She attended a meeting at her Presbyterian Church outside Philadelphia where a Unitarian minister spoke on the topic, "How I know Jesus is not the Son of God and how I know the Bible...
As Billy Graham traveled the world preaching the gospel, his wife, Ruth Graham (1920-2007), stayed behind to raise their five children. They were married in 1943 and moved to Montreat, North Carolina, so Ruth could be near parents when Billy was...
Old North Dutch Reformed Church on Fulton Street in Manhattan had fallen on hard times. Long-time members relocated to other parts of the city as new immigrants arrived looking for jobs. The church hired a forty-nine-year-old cloth merchant,...
Adela Cathcart was in her late teens and quite ill, what one doctor termed "an affliction of the soul." Today, we call it depression. Adele's family and friends gathered to share stories with her as story-telling therapy. She attended Christmas...