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 was 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." We call it depression. Adele's family and friends gathered to share stories with her as story-telling therapy. She attended Christmas worship,...
I hardly know what to make of Catherine of Siena's (1347-1380) mysticism. While walking with her brother at age six, she had an ecstatic vision of Christ seated in glory. At seven, she devoted her life to Christ and resolved to live a celibate...
Asia Minor was afflicted with a severe drought in AD 368, resulting in a famine in Caesarea, the city where Basil (329-379) served as bishop. He had already given away his substantial inheritance and joined a monastic order. Some of his wealthy...
The church was filled to overflow an hour before the service. A 1911 headline in The New York Times announced his arrival, so the press was there, expecting to hear a sensational preacher deliver a dazzling oratory. John Henry Fawcett (1864-1923)...
It's a story about a poor Scrub Lady and a Millionaire who, in the author's words, was "a self-made man who worshipeth his maker." This Millionaire walked past the Scrub Lady often but never noticed her, "for his head was high in the air, and he...
It was a warm, sunny morning in July 1801. They arranged to meet under the shade of elm trees on the lawn of Yale College. The college president, Timothy Dwight, requested the meeting with Benjamin Silliman (1779-1864), a former student at the...
Joseph Henry Gilmore (1834-1918) was a young, newly ordained minister who was asked to substitute for the pastor at a midweek service at First Baptist Church in Philadelphia. The year was 1862, during the darkest days of the Civil War. Joseph...
Emotions are fickle. Feelings are like waves; they come and go. Frederick Brotherton (F. B.) Meyer (1847-1929) made popular the slogan, “Fact! Faith! Feeling!” in his preaching and writing. The point of the motto is the order. First, the facts...
Her pastor saw real talent in her poetry. Robert Lowry, pastor of Hanson Place Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York urged Anne Hawks (1836-1918) to try her hand at writing hymns. When Anne sent Robert a copy of her simple five-stanza hymn, he...
The Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC has more than six hundred Bibles in its collection. One Bible on display is a rare 1872 Aitken's Bible, sometimes called Congress' Bible. Less than thirty copies are still in existence. Although Robert...
"Chronological snobbery" was a term coined by Owen Barfield in the 1920s and made popular in the writings of C.S. Lewis in the 1950s. The phrase communicates our modern prediction to regard the past as intrinsically inferior to the present. New is...