Four lessons from a waiting father

LUKE 15 DOESN’T just crystallize the message of the gospel—that Jesus came to seek and save the lost—it also offers some guidance for how we might…

Ready to party!

WE’RE WELL AND truly into the party season, with Fall Festivals behind us, Thanksgiving turkey leftovers for the foreseeable future, then Christmas and New Year to…

Walking in their Crocs

I WAS REMINDED of the simple but significant truth that you don’t know what don’t know, and how that can lead to all sorts of unnecessary…

Different kinds of lost

IF YOU WERE asked to point to one chapter in the Bible that sums up the gospel, which would you choose? For many, it would be…

Choosing the right Jesus

IF THERE’S ONE thing that’s clear from the Gospel accounts, it’s that it is awfully easy to lose sight of the real Jesus. From the disciples…

Honey, I shrunk the world

NEIL POSTMAN is rightly remembered for his prescient classic, Amusing Ourselves to Death, in which, way back in the 1980s, he worried about how visual media…

Keeping their secrets

OVER THE PAST year or so, three people whose life stories I got to hear in uncommon detail have died, leaving me as the keeper of…

Living unafraid

I’VE NEVER BEEN much of a “guy’s guy.” I have zero interest in cars (I believe that ours may be white), and I loathe fishing with…

Singing what I can’t say

THE FIRST RECORD I ever owned of my own choosing (there was a previous Christmas gift of an Alvin and The Chipmunks novelty single) was “Ferry…

Notoriety and no-names

NEVER HAS THE definition of a celebrity as someone who is “famous for being famous” been truer than it is today. Even in the church we…