To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here In 1997, two days before her first birthday, Alexandra “Alex” Scott was diagnosed with a childhood cancer called neuroblastoma. At first Alex made good progress in overcoming her disease. By age two she had learned to stand and walk with leg braces. But just before her fourth birthday, doctors learned that her tumors were growing… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Dr. Craig Barnes, who retired a few years ago as president of Princeton Theological Seminary, says he will never forget the time he was called to a hospital emergency room. His good friend Duane Barney had suffered a heart attack. Barnes sat down beside Duane’s wife, Virginia. After consoling her, they prayed together. They waited to hear some… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here People change. We have the wedding pictures to prove it. But how do we know that the figure in that long-ago snapshot is the same person we can share coffee with today? This is what psychologists call the Problem of the Self. Is there something lasting and durable at the core of every human… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Not all feats of daring in the early days of America’s space program happened in outer space. There was also an extraordinary amount of bravery on the ground, behind closed doors, in NASA’s research centers. Margot Lee Shetterly’s book Hidden Figures – which became an award-winning 2016 motion picture – documents the stories of… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Dr. David Livingstone, the celebrated 19th century British missionary, anti-slavery activist, and explorer of central Africa, arrived on one occasion at the edge of a large territory that was ruled by a tribal chieftain. He was commanded to stop at the perimeter and wait. According to tradition, the chief would come out to meet… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here At the doorway to this last weekend of January, snow covers something like 65% of the United States. Is your heart set on creating the tallest snowman or the most spectacular snow fort your neighbors have ever seen? If you’re hoping to challenge some existing records, you’d better get started early and recruit a… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here My two brothers and I lost our dad eight years ago this month. He stepped into the next world on January 12, which happened to be Mom’s birthday. She had left us a mere seven months earlier. Scott, Bruce, and I pictured Mom in heaven, looking up just in time to see her husband… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here For most of his adult life, Moses felt something like deep disillusionment and hopelessness. Having failed disastrously in his own strength to free his fellow Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, he fled into the Sinai wilderness. There he spent 40 years apparently doing little more than tending sheep and keeping his head down. Then,… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Last weekend, American rock climber Alex Honnold got in a little exercise. In less than 90 minutes, he ascended Tawain’s Taipei 101 skyscraper aided only by his bare hands – no ropes or protective equipment of any kind. The building, one of the world’s tallest, rises 1,667 feet and has 101 floors. Honnold, wearing… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here All his life, Arland D. Williams, Jr., had been afraid of the water. As an undergrad cadet at the Citadel, where he was known as Chub, he had had to pass a water-safety and swimming test. Chub was afraid he wouldn’t be able to push through his fears. He did. But the biggest… Read more »
