Today’s post is a bit different. Since we’re coming up on the first anniversary of the launching of this ministry of morning reflections, I’d love to address some of the questions I hear most often from readers. How many people are on the receiving end of the reflections every morning? It’s impossible to say with precision. But the number seems… Read more »
There’s a reason it’s called Thank God Ledge. By the time rock climbers have scaled most of Yosemite’s massive geological feature called Half Dome, the narrow ledge near the top is a welcome relief. Before the 20th century it didn’t seem possible that anyone could go straight up the granite face. Three climbers – working together and using all the… Read more »
Pi is the world’s most famous irrational number. It can also prompt people to do some pretty irrational things. February 6, 1897, was not the brightest hour for my home state of Indiana. That was the day our House of Representatives approved Bill 246, which declared the legal value of pi to be 3.2. Incredibly, the proposition was titled “A… Read more »
It was a sign of the times. Almost 20 years ago, former Major League Baseball star Dale Murphy – one of the “high integrity” players of the 1980s – urged the creation of a patch that could be worn by participants in the annual Little League World Series. Every August, 16 teams of 10-12-year-old boys from around the United States… Read more »
Mary Ann Bird grew up feeling unlovely, unpresentable, unloved. From birth she had been afflicted with a variety of disfiguring features. She recounts her feelings – and the moment in which everything changed – in her book The Whisper Test: I grew up knowing I was different, and I hated it. I was born with a cleft palate, and when… Read more »
I have never learned to drive a standard transmission car. Since futurists keep insisting that the age of autonomous (“driverless”) vehicles is just around the corner, the window to address this gap in my life is rapidly closing. My associations with standard transmissions are comically traumatic. Shortly after my 16th birthday, my father insisted one Sunday afternoon that I join… Read more »
In the Bible’s four biographies of Jesus – the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – exactly one person declines his invitation to “follow me.” What could possibly be so powerful or insidious that it would compel someone to walk away from the chance of a lifetime? That would be money. We should pay close attention. The Gospels describe… Read more »
“We have fallen upon evil times, and the world has waxed very old and wicked. Politics are very corrupt. Children are no longer respectful to their parents.” Those despairing words weren’t posted for the first time on Facebook last week. Archeologists found them chiseled onto a stone from ancient Chaldea that dates to 3,800 B.C. Virtually every generation has cherished… Read more »
Earlier this month the world lost an incomparable storyteller. Walter Wangerin Jr., who had been a professor at Valparaiso University in Indiana since 1991, was the author of more than 30 novels. He also wrote numerous children’s stories, essays and plays, not to mention scores of sermons from his days as a Lutheran pastor. Wangerin was especially focused on the… Read more »
Throughout the 1950s Mahalia Jackson, the Queen of Gospel, sang to packed-out church sanctuaries and public auditoriums. Numerous agents and producers beckoned her to do what is now called crossing over: She ought to go secular. She could be big. She could become the most powerful musical presence in America. She could make a fortune. But Jackson answered only to… Read more »
