William Passavant (1821-1894) was walking down Fifth Avenue in Pittsburgh when he was met by a Presbyterian minister, "Brother Passavant, you must come with me to a noonday prayer meeting! We are having the most glorious meetings! Come along and...
It must have been the hardest funeral John Gill (1697-1771) conducted in his fifty-one years serving as pastor of the Baptist Church at Goat Yard Chapel (yep, it's a real name) in England. Family and friends gathered on the afternoon of June 4,...
He was the last of twenty children (this is not a typo!) born to Monica and Daniel in 1702. He was suspected of being stillborn, so a midwife whisked him away until she detected his faint breath and returned him to his grieving mother. While Philip...
Some children are compliant; others are strong-willed. Teresa of Avila (1515-1578) must have been a classic strong-willed child. At seven years of age, she convinced her young brother to join her in running away from home to seek Christian...
When I first came to faith in Christ, it was positively exhilarating. God became intensely real and personal, and the prospect of following Christ captivated my imagination. If truth be told, I loved God primarily for the blessings derived from...
American patriot Benjamin Franklin and British evangelist George Whitefield (also spelled Whitfield) (1714-1770) were worlds apart when it came to theological convictions, yet they held each other in highest regard. Ben spoke warmly of their...
One of the Reformation's distinctive contributions was the conviction that every Christian has a calling. The prevailing view in the sixteenth century was that God's calling was reserved for priests, nuns, and monks. The Reformer Martin Luther...
In December 1623, poet, and Anglican priest John Donne (1573-1631) was laid low with a life-threatening illness. It could have been the bubonic plague that was ravaging England and Europe or perhaps typhoid fever. John decided to put pen to paper...
According to my calculations, I've consumed 79,000 meals over the course of my life. Only a few are truly memorable: my first meal served by my future mother-in-law, the dinner where we learned of our daughter's engagement, and dining at Wendy's to...
Of the thirty-nine Old Testament books, none is more difficult to interpret than the Song of Songs. It has no obvious religious content, and God's name never appears in the book. On the surface, it reads like a love poem between a bride and groom,...
Church leaders branded him a radical, the enemy, and a traitor to his own denomination. Gottfried Arnold (1666-1714) hardly fits the stereotype of a militant firebrand. He was a devout and earnest Lutheran pastor who preached thoughtful sermons and...
It has been said, "The longest journey you will ever take in your life is from your head to your heart." Although the distance between our heads and hearts is a mere eighteen inches, taking what we know about God and acting on it is no simple task....
The origin of the nursery rhyme "Three Blind Mice" dates to 1609. Many suspect the author intended it as an ode to Queen Mary, who sixty years previously had orchestrated the deaths of three Anglican bishops for treason and heresy. Queen Mary,...
Roland Williams (1817-1870) made two lasting contributions to Welsh society. First, he introduced rugby to Wales, considered by many today to be its national sport. When Roland became Vice-Principal of St. David's College (now the University of...
Smart people know how much they don't know. Socrates said it well, "I know I am intelligent because I know nothing." His quote is sometimes paraphrased in more familiar words, "The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing." This seeming...
Today's prayer took me back to a 2023 Super Bowl ad. For real! A series of black and white photos of violent confrontations flashed on the screen, accompanied by the song "Human" by Rag'n'Bone Man. At the end of this mysterious sixty-second ad, the...
Henry Martyn (1781-1812) was a stellar student at Cambridge University in England, well on his way to becoming a professor or lawyer. Yet he suspected something was missing, "I obtained my highest wishes but was surprised to find that I had grasped...
Christian mystic is a term used to describe William of St. Thierry (ca. 1075-1148). Mystic is a slippery, vacuous word. For the record, it's not a synonym for people who do weird things in the name of God. Christian mystics are people who seek...