When world-renowned tenor Luciano Pavarotti was a youth, he became the pupil of a professional tenor in Italy. Later, he studied music education in college. Upon graduating, he asked his father, “Shall I be a teacher or a singer?” “Luciano,” his father replied, “if you... read more »

Death scares me. I love my life, and I don’t want it to end. There’s also a part of me that wonders what the afterlife is really like. What if it’s different from what the Bible says? Some people might think that my fears are unchristian and a threat to my faith. On the contrary, I... read more »

What does Easter mean to you? How will you remember Jesus’ passion this week? ... read more »

Recently, I stopped at a fast-food restaurant for a quick bite to eat. I placed my order at the drive- thru, picked up my beverage and chicken sandwich (minus the sauce), and was all set for an uneventful meal—or so I thought. A minute later, as I went to take a sip of my soft drink, the... read more »

South Korean courts sentenced actress Ok So-ri to 8 months in jail for cheating on her husband. During court proceedings, So-ri fought to stay out of prison, claiming the 1953 law against adultery was an invasion of privacy. The courts upheld the law, but suspended her sentence for 2 years. Even... read more »

A recent movie portrayed a teenage girl who got pregnant and had to decide what to do with her baby. Her relationship with her boyfriend wasn’t working out, her dad’s first marriage had failed, and the couple to whom she decided to give her baby was having major marital issues. With... read more »

I’ve never been a particularly fast writer, but when it came to texting, my speed was somewhere in the range of “turtlelike.” While receiving a second or third text, I was still responding to the first. So when it came time for a new cell phone, I chose one with a QWERTY keyboard... read more »

Shusaku Endo, widely acclaimed as Japan’s finest modern novelist, penned Silence, a haunting story raising questions about Western religious assumptions concerning Jesus and the gospel. Emerging from his dual (and unique) identity as a Japanese Catholic, Endo used his novels and essays to push... read more »

The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge possessed a tragic lack of discipline. He left Cambridge University to join the army; he left the army because he couldn’t rub down a horse; he returned to Oxford and left without a degree. He started a weekly newspaper that made it to just 25 issues before he... read more »

Harold J. Ockenga, friend of Billy Graham and first  president of Fuller Seminary and the National Association of Evangelicals, was one of the  founding fathers of American evangelicalism. But like most great leaders, Ockenga was not perfect. His problem was sarcasm. The same brilliant... read more »