Soon after a tornado disaster in the US, I saw aerial photographs of its path. Entire neighborhoods were flattened. From the high angle of the photographer’s shot, all of the wood and debris looked like scattered, splintered toothpicks, tossed violently over a wide swath of city blocks.... read more »

Early in 2011, a US baseball coach made the best call of his career. Tom Walter, the coach of the Wake Forest University baseball team, chose to give up one of his kidneys so that one of his players could live. A freshman player, Kevin Jordan, had been stricken with a disease that attacked his... read more »

Shirley Dygert wanted to celebrate her 54th birthday with flair. So she signed up to skydive from nearly 21⁄2 miles above the terra firma. In tandem with Dave Hartsock, her instructor, they leaped from the plane. They pulled the ripcord, but the parachute became tangled and only partially opened.... read more »

My wealthy neighbor decided he no longer wanted to pay his mortgage, so he left our neighborhood for a larger home. His former house has gone into foreclosure, which lowers the value of my home, for foreclosed homes normally sell far below what the market is dictating. He also stopped paying his... read more »

You’ve likely heard the phrase: “He’d give you the shirt off his back.” It describes the kind of generosity displayed by someone who thinks of the needs of others ahead of his own. A pastor friend of mine infused life into that phrase when he gave this startling challenge to his... read more »

Go ahead. Say these words out loud: “That’s not fair!” Whether as a sibling, a spouse, an employee, or a sports fan, we’ve all said those words. At some point, we’ve all compared ourselves to someone else or their situation and concluded that we’ve gotten a raw deal. The cry of... read more »

“There are two kinds of people,” said advice columnist Abigail Van Buren. “Those who walk into a room and say, ‘There you are!’ and those who say, ‘Here I am!’” The one Person who could have rightly declared, “Here I am,” seemed oddly reluctant to promote Himself. Jesus was... read more »

In The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church, Reggie McNeal writes, “A growing number of people are leaving the institutional church for a new reason. They are not leaving because they have lost faith. They are leaving the church to preserve their faith. They contend that the church... read more »

He stood in the doorway with a toothy grin and an evident social awkwardness. My friend, lying in his hospital bed after having endured major surgery, deftly shooed the visitor away with one-word answers and obvious disinterest. Tom (the visitor) was also a patient. His background and behavior were... read more »

Tom Thompson works for the charitable organization World Help. One day as he sat in a boat on the Ganges River, he saw people ceremoniously dumping ashes from incinerated corpses into the same water where people bathed, collected drinking water, brushed their teeth, washed their clothes, and... read more »