Wednesday, 08 February 2012 15:18 Written by Peter Chin

“Reverend, I need to talk to both you and your wife about something very important. Will you follow me into surgical?”

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Monday, 06 February 2012 16:27 Written by Zak Lantz

My prayer life is pretty hot and cold—and by hot and cold, I mean sometimes I go weeks without intentionally praying to God, and other times I get frustrated that He’s not immediately answering my petty prayers. There really is no in-between for me. Most days, I’m pretty good at praying for friends or family who are in dire situations, and I'm always quick to ask God for forgiveness when I goof up. But to be quite honest with you, and with Him, I still suck at praying.

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Monday, 30 January 2012 15:17 Written by Tor Constantino

If you’ve ever used the phrase, or been accused of “living in denial,” you know that those three words tend to have a particularly negative connotation. Within the field of mental health and psychological counseling, the concept of denial is a tactic the mind uses to detach from painful external or internal circumstances by refusing to accept reality.

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Monday, 09 January 2012 14:13 Written by Marcus Hathcock

“Oh, my God!”

There are plenty of people, including me, who immediately cringe when they hear those words. Christians specifically tense up as they recall the words of the Third Commandment: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.”

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Tuesday, 03 January 2012 15:30 Written by Ray Horton

Anyone who has ever taken an English class can appreciate the need to figure out what a text means. In high school, our teachers taught us about symbols, metaphors, settings and unreliable narrators while we worked feverishly over our copies of The Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby, trying to crack the code. But if you studied those texts closely enough, you may have come across something surprising—something, perhaps, that your teacher didn’t tell you. Every time you “answer” a question about the text, that answer—whether right or wrong—only serves to open up new questions. Rather than getting closer to the meaning of a text, you only seem to get further away from that single, self-contained interpretation you so eagerly sought.

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Tuesday, 27 December 2011 14:44 Written by Marcus Hathcock

As we pulled out of our driveway on our way to a family outing today, I switched on the car radio, curiously. For the past month, at least two of our local radio stations have been fully dedicated to the broadcast of Christmas carols and holiday classics. One radio station had the standards you've come to expect (and perhaps loathe); the other had some classics alongside artistic new music inspired by the birth of Christ.

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Wednesday, 21 December 2011 11:47 Written by Jeff Goins

For years, I never understood Christmas. Admittedly, I was a bit of a Scrooge. It just seemed like the whole thing was a farce.

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Monday, 28 November 2011 15:32 Written by Joy Netanya Moyal

There were a few years there when I hated Christmas. Sure, I could bop along with the rest of them to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” but I’d had it with the obligatory gift-giving and its accompanying pressure, the crowded parking lots and the way that Target, from Black Friday till New Year’s, becomes a living hell.

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Monday, 21 November 2011 14:40 Written by David Masciotra

The Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth was a civil rights legend and American hero. Born deep in the Jim Crow South during the 1920s, he grew from the humble but durable roots of poverty, family and Christianity to become a leader of principal and power. He co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He played a pivotal part in the 1963 Birmingham campaign of boycotts, protests and civil disobedience, which led to Martin Luther King’s arrest and King’s writing of the beautiful manual of justice, "Letter From a Birmingham Jail."

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Thursday, 17 November 2011 15:29 Written by Erik Swenson

Perhaps someone has told you that Christianity is a relationship and not a religion. The phrase is common, but it is not clear. What does that mean? How do we relate to God? I have heard Francis Chan describe himself as a lump of clay trying to teach other lumps of clay about the potter. According to the prophets, he is right. Within this picture we are subordinate and the shape of our being is fully dependent on the large hand of God.

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