I didn’t expect the loneliness. When the world shut down, people took sides, cultural wars raged in our homes, and bombs fell halfway across the globe, I wasn’t prepared for the deep sense of isolation that followed. I’ve never needed a great deal of social interaction, but loneliness still found…
The church is in a season of supernatural growth and harvest. To embrace our assignment and bear fruit for the kingdom, we must be in alignment with God. And that alignment begins in the garden. After washing His disciples’ feet and instituting the Lord’s Supper, Jesus walked with them to…
The crabapple tree remained barren through May and June, leaving its caretakers puzzled. A visit to the local garden center revealed a surprising explanation: the winter had been too mild to provide the conditions the tree needed to bloom. In an unexpected way, the tree needed the cold of winter…
Two artists set out to create paintings that represented perfect peace. The first depicted a carefree woman sitting in a boat on an idyllic lake, its surface undisturbed by even the slightest ripple. The second painted a raging waterfall, with powerful winds whipping the spray through the air. Yet on…
If you could erase the painful parts of your life story, would you? Psychologist Jonathan Haidt described a thought-provoking hypothetical experiment in which participants were given a summary of someone’s life and asked to imagine it as the inevitable journey of their unborn daughter. With an eraser in hand, they…
When we admire beauty apart from God, we risk making an idol of what He created. The grandeur of mountain peaks, the beauty of the human form, delicate flowers, and countless other wonders all point to the magnificence of their Creator. When we focus on the creation rather than the…
Some mountains are climbed. Some are tunneled through. Some are conquered one shovel at a time. And some can only be moved by faith. A Chinese proverb, Yu gong yi shan, carries a meaning similar to the familiar phrase, “Faith can move mountains.” The proverb comes from an ancient fable…
We all have a way of deciding what matters most. Sometimes our priorities are revealed by what we say. More often, they are revealed by what receives our time, our attention, our resources, and our best. A farmer once learned this lesson in an amusing—and somewhat uncomfortable—way. One day, he…
There are moments when life leaves us standing still—not because we have nowhere to go, but because we aren’t sure which way to turn. The path ahead may be unfamiliar, the answers may seem out of reach, and the silence can make us wonder if we’ve somehow lost our way.…