endure toward joy
When people become comatose, one of the many concerns is to keep their muscles from degenerating. Atrophy sets in quickly when there is no movement. On the other hand, most exercise trainers will tell you that muscle grows after it has been under stress. Strenuous exercise makes small tears in the muscle tissue. As it heals, the muscle grows stronger or larger than it was before the ordeal. Some pain is necessary for our bodies to retain vigor.
endurance
Recently, I took a 17-hour road trip and my family and a foreign exchange student we were hosting were also along for the ride. To save time, we attempted to cut through a bordering country. We were turned away at the border, however, because our exchange student did not possess the right paperwork. Good security resulted in bad news for us. Disappointed, but undeterred, we took the long way to our destination.
every breath you take
I had never given much thought to the value of a single breath until I encountered 2-week-old Nicole in an orphanage in East Africa. The tiny infant, who fit in the palm of my hand, was born prematurely, abandoned by her mother in the hospital delivery room, afflicted with meningitis, and plagued with painful bedsores that reached to her frail hipbones.
personal and present
If there ever was a person who had the right to ask, “Why me?” it was Joan Brock. As a young wife and mother, Joan went completely blind in a span of just 3 short weeks. If that wasn’t hard enough, 5 years later, her husband died of a rare form of cancer.
As Joan began to speak publicly about…
when faith is weak
To say my Christian faith is unflappable would be untrue. It’s to the contrary. For even though I write devotions, engage in work on behalf of the poor in East Africa, and long for my confidence in Jesus Christ to be strong—often, too often, my faith is pathetically, embarrassingly weak. In the midst of personal hardships, I find it more…
