What Percent of God is Good? Recently I heard a wonderful and inspiring story of a young man who, during a routine physical, was sent immediately to the hospital to investigate a knot on his collar bone. After extensive testing, it was determined that there was a 99%...
I remember what it felt like as a child needing comfort and receiving it. To hear my mother say, “Come here” when I was hurting and relaxing in the rest of her arms. Even if my need arose from something I had done wrong, I found welcome and respite from my distress in...
I recently received a series of tragic updates that tipped my normally trust-filled, hope-saturated prayers into anguished, aporetic cries of lament. A very close friend’s preteen daughter had suddenly and inexplicably fallen into the darkness of mental illness,...
Several years ago, I had cancer. It was rare and fast-growing and came out of nowhere. Despite my trust in Christ and knowing that I would be with him if this cancer took my life, the fear I felt was persistent and, on a few terrible days, crippling. Fear is a deeply...
There’s a tiny Italian bar and restaurant in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, called Valentino’s. Their generation-spanning secret spaghetti sauce recipe is comparable to Feast-of-the-Lamb fare (I exaggerate only slightly). This plate of wonders is complemented by a basket...
I hate disappointment. When plans get canceled, expectations are not met, or I simply can’t have my own way, I tend toward brooding. Last year I experienced a couple of sharp disappointments, denials of things I prayed fervently for. Good things. Things I thought were...
A sliver of me doesn’t want to give any gifts this Christmas—at least not to my family. It’s not because I don’t think they deserve gifts or that they’ve been “bad” in some way. I have a wonderful family. And I love giving them presents. It’s just that part of me...
This is the time of year when I reprogram the presets on my car radio. Gone is NPR. Gone are the country and oldies stations, so Christmas music is the only option I have on several radio buttons. It’s my glorious, two-month hiatus from news, seventies hits, and...
When my children were small, I sometimes worried about emphasizing Santa, even as we celebrated Christ. What if, when I worried when they would see the truth about the North Pole, they would also apply the same reasoning to Bethlehem? Still, every Christmas Eve after...
Recent decades have left Christians a bit unsettled. Skewed views of sexuality, increased disdain towards religion, and dogmatic secularism have steadily seeped into our culture. Until recently, the troubling changes seemed more like a vague mist on the horizon. For...