The Power of Persistence
In 1917, a young seamstress was thrilled to get admitted to one of New York City’s most renowned fashion design schools. But when Ann Cone (later Ann Lowe) arrived from Florida to register for classes,...
View ArticleMore Than Brand Ambassadors
Competition in the internet age has become fierce. Increasingly, companies are developing creative ways to attract customers. Take Subaru, for instance. Subaru owners are famously loyal, so the company...
View ArticleFestivals of Worship
Attending a large event might change you in a surprising way. After interacting with more than 1,200 people at multi-day gatherings in the UK and US, researcher Daniel Yudkin and his colleagues learned...
View ArticleThe Power of Christ
In 2013, about 600 on-site spectators watched aerialist Nik Wallenda walk on a tightrope across a 1500-foot-wide gorge near the Grand Canyon. Wallenda stepped onto the 2-inch-thick steel cable and...
View ArticleFinding Open Spaces
In his book Margin, Dr. Richard Swenson writes, “We must have some room to breathe. We need freedom to think and permission to heal. Our relationships are being starved to death by velocity. . . . Our...
View ArticleThe Gift of Encouragement
Your bees are swarming!” My wife stuck her head inside the door and gave me news no beekeeper wants to hear. I ran outside to see thousands of bees flying up from the hive to the top of a tall pine,...
View ArticleGod’s Eternal Church
“Is church over?” asked a young mother arriving at our church with two children in tow just as the Sunday service was ending. But a greeter told her that a church nearby offered two Sunday services and...
View ArticleWitnesses
In his poem “The Witnesses,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) described a sunken slave ship. As he wrote of “skeletons in chains,” Longfellow mourned slavery’s countless nameless victims. The...
View ArticleOpenhearted Generosity
No one ever died saying, ‘I’m so glad for the self-centered, self-serving, and self-protective life I lived,’ ” author Parker Palmer said in a commencement address, urging graduates to “offer...
View ArticleWhat a Friend
It had been a few years since my long-time friend and I had seen one another. During that time, he’d received a cancer diagnosis and started treatments. An unexpected trip to his state afforded me the...
View ArticleHumbled but Hopeful
At the pastor’s invitation at the end of the church service, Latriece made her way to the front. When she was invited to greet the congregation, no one was prepared for the weighty and wonderful words...
View ArticleDealing with Disappointment
After raising money all year for a “trip of a lifetime,” seniors from an Oklahoma high school arrived at the airport to learn that many of them had purchased tickets from a bogus company posing as an...
View ArticleLosing Everything
The timing couldn’t have been worse. After making a small fortune engineering bridges, monuments, and large buildings, Cesar had aspirations of starting a new endeavor. So he sold his first business...
View ArticleWhen You’re Weary
I sat in the stillness of a workday’s end, my laptop in front of me. I should’ve been exhilarated about the work I’d finished that day, but I wasn’t. I was tired. My shoulders ached with the load of...
View ArticleFreedom on the Path
In Beep Baseball, the players who are blind listen for a beeping ball or buzzing base to know what to do and where to go. The blindfolded batter (to account for various degrees of blindness) and...
View ArticleUnknown Route
Perhaps I shouldn’t have agreed to join Brian on a run. I was in a foreign country, and I had no idea where or how far we would go or what the terrain would be like. Plus, he was a fast runner. Would I...
View ArticleGod’s Epic Story
Life magazine’s July 12, 1968 cover displayed a horrifying photograph of starving children from Biafra (in Nigeria during a civil war). A young boy, distressed, took a copy of the magazine to a pastor...
View ArticleTo Know God
On a visit to Ireland, I was overwhelmed by the abundance of decorative shamrocks. The little green, three-leafed plant could be found in every store on seemingly everything—clothing, hats, jewelry,...
View ArticleThe BLESSED Mask
As the mask mandate requirements during the pandemic loosened, I struggled to remember to keep a mask handy for where they were still required—like my daughter’s school. One day when I needed a mask, I...
View ArticleExtreme Kindness
Fast-food restaurant worker Kevin Ford hadn’t missed a shift in twenty-seven years. After a video surfaced showing his humble gratitude for a modest gift he received to commemorate his decades of...
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