count the cost
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 try to sit on two chairs, you will fall between them. For life, you must…
faith and fear
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 think that they’re not…
march 29, 2010
What does Easter mean to you? How will you remember Jesus' passion this week?
hold on loosely
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 plastic lid on…
maximum sentence
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 though most countries don’t recognize adultery as a criminal…
a noun or a verb
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 broken relationships as the backdrop, she said some profound…
letting go
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 in hopes of gaining speed. As much…
God stands here
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 forward these core beliefs: Jesus’ story was not imprisoned by the West, and essential to the…
wasted gift
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 ceased publishing it. It’s been said of…
give it a rest
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 mind and quick tongue that enabled Ockenga to shine in the pulpit also wreaked havoc on…
March 22, 2010
What does it mean to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind" (Matthew 22:37)?
go ask mom
The story is told of an unmarried (and childless) professor of child psychology who taught a seminar that he confidently called, “Ten Commandments for Parents.” Then he got married and became a father. After a year of fatherhood, he changed the seminar title to “Ten Guidelines for Parents.” Three years later, a second child came. The seminar was once again…
cause celebs
A majority of today’s celebrities have a cause. Whether it’s cancer research, animal rights, human rights, global warming, or a myriad of other charitable undertakings, countless high-profile actors and professional athletes have sought to use their platform of popularity to evoke change.
Instead of considering the impetus behind these stars’ good deeds, however, let’s look at our motivation and the…
de-baptism?
Have you known people who wanted to backtrack on their baptism? The National Secular Society in London has created “certificates of de- baptism” that can be downloaded from the Web site. The certificates were originally created to “mock the practice of baptizing infants,” but atheists and those who no longer hold to Christian faith are now downloading them to the…
