In 1940, the newly opened Tacoma Narrows Bridge was the third-longest suspension bridge in the world. It was a beautiful engineering feat, until it wasn’t. One windy day, it began to twist and heave until it collapsed into a scrap heap of metal beams and cables. The...

Chris Coghlan was 15 when it happened. It was 2001. He had just finished exams for his sophomore year. He arrived home to a gathering of cars and people. He stepped inside, joking about a party in his honor. Then he saw his mom’s face. His dad had been killed in a...

I learned a cultural lesson living in Haiti. It was not uncommon for a friend to take my hand as we walked in public. The gesture prevented other pedestrians from interrupting our conversation. In our culture, handholding is a public display of affection or practical...

Tim Keller tells the story of Kevin, who worked on Wall Street at J.P. Morgan. Kevin was an atheist with stubborn doubts about God. But he had doubts about his doubts, so he and his wife began attending Redeemer Church. They met believers who were smart and...

In the movie, Forrest Gump just feels like running. While he runs, he thinks about Mama, Bubba, Lt. Dan and especially Jenny. As he crisscrosses the country and contemplates his life experiences, a young man runs alongside Gump. “An alarm went off in my head! Here’s...

Scott Hamilton won Olympic gold in 1984 as a figure skater. He became successful as a professional skater and media personality. But something was happening behind the scenes. That’s the rest of the story. Hamilton was adopted at six weeks old. As a child, a rare...

Michael Shellenberger was a “Hero of the Environment” according to Time magazine in 2008. But he soon became disillusioned with the activism that earned him that label. In 2020, he published a book, Apocalypse Never,explaining his new take on environmental issues. To...

It was a cold and foggy night last December. I was on the train to London. At one stop a young woman boarded and sat just across from me. She wore an elegant, burgundy dress and delicate jewelry. In her arms were a dozen red roses. Her wistful smile suggested a tender...

Uwe Holmer didn’t mean to have a moment of fame. He was simply a German Lutheran pastor who lived his faith in a way that astounded his fellow countrymen. As a college student in 1953, Holmer bid his family goodbye as they escaped East Germany. He stayed behind...

Ron Hamilton was living the dream. After college, he married his sweetheart and began his career in the music industry. Then came the crisis. At age 28, Hamilton’s doctors discovered cancer in his eye. He had to lose that eye to save his life. How would you handle a...

“I got you, babe” plays on the clock radio, waking Phil Connors to face the same day yet again. Bill Murray played the lead in the film, “Groundhog Day” (1993). Phil discovers he is trapped in a time loop, experiencing that same song, day, and people over and over. To...

Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired many with his words and deeds. During his 1957 Christmas sermon in Montgomery, Alabama, he based his strategy of non-violence on Jesus’ admonition to love your enemy. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that,” King...

The New Year is traditionally a time to think about new beginnings. The turning of the calendar represents a blank slate, a time to consider setting aside the old in favor of the new. The whole holiday season is an invitation to reflect, with time off work and visits...

I would like to offer you a New Year’s resolution. It may be the single most powerful change agent in your life. It is simply, listen to God. The new House Speaker Mike Johnson says he does. “I am a Bible-believing Christian,” he said. To know how he thinks about...

A 28-year-old insurance company manager took up his pen to write about something more profound than his livelihood. He crafted poetry to answer the question, “What child is this?” With those verses written in 1865, William Dix would become a part of the Christmas...

In today’s parlance “privilege” is justification for treating people differently, even unfairly. It has always been true in human history that some are born into privilege due to circumstances beyond their control. It is also true that “There is no partiality with...

I’m bad at selecting gifts, but I enjoy the gift-giving tradition at Christmas. I disagree with C.S. Lewis on this point. He calls Christmas gift-giving “a commercial racket.” Perhaps with tongue-in-cheek he says, “The modern rule is that anyone can force you to give...

Recent Harvard research indicates that many young adults are deeply troubled. The report identifies stress points and offers remedies. If you are one of those young adults, know that life can be much brighter. Harvard found that 36% of young adults in the survey...

In the episode “High Noon in Mayberry,” Sheriff Andy Taylor awaits Luke Comstock’s visit. Years prior, Taylor had wounded and captured Comstock, who spent time in prison. Now, Andy, Barney, and Aunt Bea stress over Comstock’s intentions. Comstock arrives at the Taylor...

The NFL handed down a four-game suspension to Kareem Jackson, a player for the Denver Broncos. After ejections from games and hefty fines for unnecessary roughness, the fourth infraction cost him his freedom to play. In announcing the suspension, NFL executive Jon...

Everybody has trials and tribulations. It’s a fact of life. The question is, can you make sense of those experiences? The human tendency is to flee adversity and feel overwhelmed when it catches you. Reminds me of the Dickens character Pickwick who travels by...

War is disruptive to complacency. It gives new urgency to latent thoughts, especially when the Middle East and Israel are involved. You may have thought about Biblical prophecy more than usual in the last few weeks. You should. Since the circumstances of Jesus life,...

Gothic influencer Katherine von Drachenberg (a.k.a. Kat Von D) made headlines recently. The story was not about her career as a tattoo artist, television personality, entrepreneur, and recording artist. It was far more profound than her celebrity. She publicly...

President Biden got it right. He used theological words in condemning the attack on Israel. “You know, there are moments in this life when the pure, unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world,” he said. “The people of Israel lived through one such moment this...

A wind-fueled fire destroyed the historic village of Lahaina in Maui. Libya experienced flooding. Morocco suffered an earthquake. Forces of nature contribute to these disasters, as do human activity and negligence. All of these disasters caused a loss of life. If no...

I asked ChatGPT to compose an article about artificial intelligence, or “AI.” This isn’t it. I prefer to do my own thinking (if that’s what AI is supposed to do). One user started a firestorm by posting, “I asked ChatGPT to create a fake biblical passage. I know it’s...

My first response when receiving the wedding invitation was that the distance to the venue meant a days-long, tedious trip. But reasons to go made the decision easy. For a minute, I was distracted by travel demands. I soon remembered that I would be blessed by meeting...

Oliver Anthony has joined Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix as a protest voice of his generation. Anthony’s songs released a few weeks ago touch a nerve by saying what many are thinking. Anthony feels dismissed, devalued, and angry. He turns his time into money, but it’s...

Retirees enjoy living in our mountain community. More than 34 percent of our county’s residents are over 65 years old, compared to 15 percent statewide. What attracts people here reveals deeper desires. My stories illustrate this. During leaf season, I drove to Hogpen...

I admire a philosopher willing to push his beliefs to their logical conclusion. Alex Rosenburg does that. He believes only in “physical facts,” a world without God. He concludes, “The illusion that there is someone inside who has thoughts about stuff is certainly as...

A wise man told me once that everyone has at least one bad job experience. He sure had his. His boss made arbitrary and irrational demands, fomenting discouraging working conditions. But he learned to focus on the work and how people would benefit from it. I talked to...

How do you engage the world? I see two extremes: you may absorb the daily news in all its repetitive outrage, or you are so disgusted you try to ignore it all. I’d like to offer a different way to engage – aware of the cultural context but focused on hope. Western...

I attended a conference in Oxford, UK recently. That’s probably why I noticed this news story. King Lawal, a county leader in the UK, posted a Bible verse and commented on it. He was subsequently suspended from his political post, sacked from his job, and canceled...

“No one is above the law!” demand the detractors. “There’s a two-tiered system of justice!” say the supporters. Today’s political news is more likely to be about scandal and justice than statesmanship and the national good. Why would I risk losing you, dear reader, by...

For four days, what happened to the doomed Titan submersible was a mystery. Five souls aboard the craft traveled to see the Titanic resting on the sea floor two miles below the surface. One was a teenager whose mother gave up her seat so he could join his father....

I was so naïve. I assumed moving European country boundaries by force was a remnant of the last century’s ideological horrors. But history is repeating itself with trenches, cannon fodder, and tactics reminiscent of the 1914 war. My heart hurts for the Russian and...

People are hungry for grace.  That includes you if you’ll admit it.  Grace in its most common form means a second chance, a new start. It means receiving a gift when the giver knows you don’t deserve it. I sang the world’s most popular hymn, “Amazing Grace” as a lad...

Jim Caviezel stars in the recently released movie, “The Sound of Freedom.” It is the story of Tim Ballard, who quit his job to rescue children from global sex traffickers. Ballard founded Operation Underground Railroad to further that cause. Worldwide trafficking is a...

The gameshow “Jeopardy” was in the headlines. Seems that none of the contestants knew the word “hallowed” that appears in the Lord’s Prayer. There’s a lot Americans don’t know these days. A school board doesn’t know the difference between the Bible and pornography. A...

Heaven is “some fantasy,” Arnold Schwarzenegger said. “Anyone that tells you something else is a (expletive) liar.” Here’s an immigrant from Austria who arrived in the U.S. in 1968 with little to his name. He reached celebrity status as a body builder, actor, and...

Bob Buford had it made. He was an entrepreneur in the startup days of cable TV. But financial success did not shield him from tragedy. His tragedy made him rethink his life’s calling. Buford’s father died when he was a child. In his teens he wanted to become a TV...

It was a “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” story except that in this real-life adventure, Tim Keller goes to New York to shake things up for the better. He was “perhaps the most gifted communicator of historically orthodox Christian teachings in the country” per The New...

“Everything happens for a reason” is an inarticulate way to express the providence of God. God doesn’t do evil, but He can take a sequence of events and weave something providential out of it. Here’s an example. This story begins with a noted anthropologist, James...

Long before blowing soapy bubbles with a storebought kit, we had dandelions. To this day I cannot say why it was such a childhood delight to pluck the ripe blowball and send the feathered seeds to flight on a silent whistle. To a yard it’s a weed. Its broad leaves and...

Ernest Hemingway’s Pulitzer-winning novella, The Old Man and the Sea, is about a Cuban fisherman, a marlin, and sharks. Or it may have been about something entirely different. In 1950 after a 10-year publishing drought, Hemingway released Across the River and into the...

Every life runs a certain course, including yours. To have a sense of what that course is and to stick to it is the making of a fulfilled life. This story starts with a lady who lived across from the local high school in Wyckoff, NJ. For years, Dorothea Clapp prayed...