To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. Does this guy look familiar? He’s The Most Interesting Man in the World. In truth, he’s an actor named Jonathan Goldsmith who starred in a series of TV commercials for a brand of Mexican beer between 2006 and 2016. Against a backdrop of gentle Spanish guitar riffs, a narrator would calmly recount the latest of… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. Hospitals can be forbidding places. That’s true even for caregivers who usually feel at ease with others. People requiring hospitalization are generally not at their best. It can be uncomfortable walking in on a patient who is struggling physically, emotionally, and spiritually. When I was 25 years old I didn’t know the first thing… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. On May 12, 1935, William Griffith Wilson journeyed to Akron, Ohio, to try to close a business deal. The deal flopped. A familiar feeling of dread began to engulf him. He was a failure, and everyone surely knew it. Wilson needed an escape – a way to survive this sharp moment of disappointment. As… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. J.K. Rowling’s seven-volume series chronicling the adventures of Harry Potter is crowded with rich details. Readers are treated to magic, mythical beasts, evil wizards, elves, wands, pet owls, a flying broomstick game called Quidditch, and over 200 named characters – all set against the backdrop of a group of British schoolchildren trying their… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. Do all dogs go to heaven? What we know for sure is that all dogs may go to church in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. That’s where a wood carving artist named Stephen Huneck, after suffering a life-threatening illness in 1998, decided to build the Dog Chapel, a place of worship dedicated to his favorite canines. Carved… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. There’s something about the earth’s most dramatic geological events – earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis – that make people want to fire God. A few weeks after the December 2004 earthquake that sent mountainous walls of water crashing onto beaches around the Indian Ocean, taking more than 225,000 lives, Ron Rosenbaum of the… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. Author and business executive Stephen R. Covey recounted a Sunday morning subway ride he took years ago in New York City. “People were sitting quietly – some reading newspapers, some lost in thought, some resting with their eyes closed. It was a calm, peaceful scene.” Then a man stepped onto the subway with his… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. Sometimes a small group with a small amount of money can make a very big difference. John Jackman is the pastor of Trinity Moravian Church, a congregation of about 75-80 people in a ramshackle neighborhood in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He and his flock have long tried to be on the front lines of… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. When Adolph Hitler rose to power in the 1920s and 30s, Germany was thought to have one of the most Christianized cultures on earth. So where was the Church as the Nazis began their genocidal purges of “undesirable” people groups? Church leaders had to make a choice: They could speak up, or they could… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. The Bavarian village of Herzogenaurach is known as “the town of bent necks,” all because a pair of brothers couldn’t figure out how to get along with each other. Their quarrel not only divided an entire population, but sparked international intrigue and ultimately generated the global craze for sports footwear. In the wake of… Read more »
