Abundance Meets Need
School cafeterias, like large catering businesses, often prepare more food than is consumed simply because they can’t perfectly predict the need, and leftover food goes to waste. Yet there are many...
View ArticleDrastic Measures
The ornate ceremonial bow and quiver had hung on the wall of our home in Michigan for years. I’d inherited them from my father, who acquired the souvenirs while we were serving as missionaries in...
View ArticleThe Message of the Cross
Zhang was raised with, in his words, “no God, no religion, nothing.” In 1989, seeking democracy and freedom for his people, he helped lead students in peaceful protests. But the protests tragically led...
View ArticleDark Moments, Deep Prayers
“I had a dark moment.” Those five words capture the internal agony of a popular female celebrity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Adjusting to a new normal was part of her challenge, and in her turmoil,...
View ArticleWalking with Others
Billy, a loving and loyal dog, became an internet star in 2020. His owner, Russell, had broken his ankle and was using crutches to walk. Soon the dog also began to hobble when walking with his owner....
View ArticleGod’s Provision
Three-year-old Buddy and his mom went to church each week to help unload groceries from the food ministry truck. When Buddy overheard his mom telling his grandmother that the delivery truck broke down,...
View ArticleA Friend of God’s Friends
Something so cordial can happen in first introductions when two persons discover that they have a friend in common. In what may be its most memorable form, a big-hearted host welcomes a guest with...
View ArticleRun From Sin
Twice this summer I suffered the scourge of poison ivy. Both times it happened, I was working on clearing away unwanted plant growth from our yard. And both times, I saw the nasty, three-leafed enemy...
View ArticleGiving God My Work
The magazine I was writing for felt “important,” so I struggled to present the best possible article I could for the high-ranking editor. Feeling pressure to meet her standards, I kept rewriting my...
View ArticleCelestial Communion
When Apollo 11’s Eagle lunar module landed on the moon’s Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969, the space travelers took time to recover from their flight before stepping onto the moon’s surface....
View ArticleSurviving and Thriving
The Croods, an animated caveman family, believe that “the only way to survive is if the pack [their small family] stays together.” They are afraid of the world and others, so when looking for a safe...
View ArticleHe Knows My Heart
After a customer at a grocery store self-checkout station had completed her transaction, I made my way to the station and proceeded to scan my goods. Unexpectedly, a visibly angry person confronted me....
View ArticleNo Greater Love
Commemorations of the seventy-fifth anniversary of D-Day in 2019 honored the more than 156,000 troops who took part in the largest seaborne invasion in history to liberate Western Europe. In his prayer...
View ArticleWisdom and Understanding
In 1373, when Julian of Norwich was thirty years old, she became ill and nearly died. When her minister prayed with her, she experienced a number of visions in which she considered Jesus’ crucifixion....
View ArticleYou Can Do It!
Encouragement is like oxygen—we can’t live without it. This was true for nine-year-old James Savage. The boy swam more than two miles from the San Francisco shoreline to Alcatraz Island and back,...
View ArticleHurry Up and Wait
“What will we do with all our spare time?” That thought was at the heart of an essay published in 1930 by the economist John Maynard Keynes. In it, Keynes proposed that within a hundred years,...
View ArticleFood That Says I Love You
I attended a family birthday gathering where the hostess wove the theme of “favorite things” into the decor, the gifts, and best of all, the food. Because the birthday girl loved steak and salad—and...
View ArticleThe Dream Team
Together, friends Melanie and Trevor have hiked miles of mountain trails. Yet neither would be able to do so without the other. Melanie, born with spina bifida, uses a wheelchair. Trevor lost his sight...
View ArticleWatching Out for One Another
Jose, a seventy-seven-year-old substitute teacher, had been living out of his car for eight years. Every night, the elderly man bunked down in his 1997 Ford Thunderbird LX, carefully monitoring the car...
View ArticleTrue Freedom
While reading on the train, Meiling was busy highlighting sentences and jotting down notes in the margins of her book. But a conversation between a mother and child seated nearby stopped her. The mom...
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